Officials Seek Lessons From Ike, Gustav

As 2008 Hurricane Season Ends, Emergency Planners Continue To Focus On Averting Another Katrina

(AP)  In New Orleans, a dire warning to flee emptied the city before Hurricane Gustav in early September. In Houston less than two weeks later, a plea to "hunker down" might have kept evacuation routes from clogging before Hurricane Ike struck.

The strategies were different but the results largely the same: Both cities avoided repeating disastrous evacuations that cost lives during the deadly 2005 hurricane season.

Many Gulf Coast cities overhauled their disaster plans after hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago. With another destructive storm season ending Sunday, emergency planners are reflecting on lessons learned from Gustav and Ike to get ready for next year.

Retired Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, New Orleans' emergency preparedness director, said residents deserve much of the credit for a successful Gustav evacuation.

"The number-one reason we succeeded for Gustav is that our citizens listened to us," he said.

Following catastrophic failures in evacuating people before and after Katrina, Louisiana emergency planners developed a model system using public transportation. It paid off for Gustav, the first time it was used.

Two days before Gustav made landfall, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation for what he called the "mother of all storms" and warned residents they wouldn't get emergency services if they stayed.

In a mass migration orchestrated by state officials, an estimated 2 million residents of coastal Louisiana evacuated before Gustav crashed ashore 90 miles southwest of the city Sept. 1.

The number of people left behind was minimal compared to Katrina, when thousands sought shelter at the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans convention center and were stranded for days without food and water.

Gustav was blamed for 46 deaths in Louisiana and caused $1.9 billion in insured losses, numbers dwarfed by Katrina's death toll of more than 1,600 and $41.1 billion in property damage.

"To our knowledge," Sneed said, "no city has ever evacuated their entire population, and we feel 97 percent of the city's population did evacuate."

There were some flaws: Evacuees were taken to shelters without showers or adequate medical care; a state contractor who was supposed to provide 700 buses for the evacuation only delivered 311; and victims endured long lines for disaster food stamps.

Thomas Sanchez, a University of Utah professor who studies evacuation planning, said cities can't plan for disasters in a vacuum.

"This kind of planning really has to happen on a regional basis, and that's not what we're finding," Sanchez said. "It's more than about a city figuring out how to take care of itself."

Texas learned that the hard way. In 2005, before Hurricane Rita struck, its evacuation plan required Houston to wait until 2 million people on the Gulf Coast had moved past the city, which sits 50 miles inland. But city leaders ordered Houston to evacuate early anyway.

Hundreds of thousands jammed the freeways in sweltering late September, stalled for days. Some 110 people died in accidents or from exposure or heart attacks. Only a handful died in the storm itself, which missed the Houston area and hit mostly rural southeast Texas.

By the time Hurricane Ike's path was apparent - a direct hit on Galveston Island and Houston - mandatory evacuations were ordered for coastal counties and a few Houston ZIP codes along waterways sure to flood. Everyone else was ordered to stay put.

"We are still saying: Please shelter in place, or to use the Texas expression, hunker down," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the county's chief administrator, said at the time.

This time, the freeway was jammed leading away from Galveston immediately after the order, but by late afternoon on Sept. 12, the day before Ike arrived, many evacuees had made it north of Houston.

"'Hunker down' definitely got the message across," said Francisco Sanchez, a spokesman for the Harris County emergency management office.

Still, in part because of the direct hit on Galveston and Houston, Ike was blamed for at least 72 deaths, including 37 in Texas, and caused $8.1 billion in insured losses, eclipsing the $5.6 billion in damage attributed to Rita.

The 2008 hurricane season was one of the most active on record, with 16 named storms, including eight hurricanes, forming in the Atlantic. Five of the eight hurricanes were at least Category 3 strength.

[downsteamjim]

Petrol49: My you have a lot of hate, but I much prefer you taking your rage out on me rather than your wife or dog. Have a nice day.

[petro49l]

Hey downstreamjim, save your paranoid schizophrenia. Ask your doctor for a modified frontal lobotomy. Your brain is damaged from liquor and narcotics.

[downsteamjim]

Gov. Jindal of La. took charge during Gustav. It was nice to have an adult running things.

[pensacola98]

The State of Texas has a perpetual dilemna whether to serve its'' citizens better through the state level or the local government. The problem with local level government is the taxation districts resist bearing the load for essential infrastructure and become extremely dependant on federal earmarking.

Since Texas has no state income tax, little redistribution of revenues exist beyond the distribution of sale tax to the cities who made the sales. Said another way, there is little hope for the coastal areas of Texas to acquire revenues from other parts of the state for critical infrastructure because those projects are too big for city budgets.

Better planning and a new state constitution complete with State Income Tax and a full time legislature would help the quality of life for Texans immensely. Texans have already proved the demand for government is there and the state needs to step up to the plate and provide it.

[flsunjnky]

That''s fairly reflective of a lot of this country. That''s why the people this time said enough is enough. Some day, the people of Texas will do the same.

[pensacola98]

No zoning in Texas was ever imposed until about 25 years ago and as a result, utilities, drainage, and roadbuilding just took a back seat to jobs. Property tax abatements were given to employers and left employees to go home and fend for theirselves when they desperately needed, flood drainage, utilities, roads and schools for their children.

The Texas traditional attitude is that developers will provide a home, and investors would provide a job, and it was up to government and regulated utilities to provide infrastructure to connect the two dots.

The apathetic voter attitude towards improving a state government that is currently part time, and officiates 90 days every two years, and allowing larger cities to dominate, shows that citizens of Texas do require government and demand it so much that 90 percent of the population is in Houston/Galveston, DFW, or San Antonio/Austin. Republican party control of Texas has failed to meet the citizen''s needs citing less government is needed - AKA taxes.

The retired US Senator who told us we are a nation of whiners and are in a mental recession and opened loopholes for finance and accounting meltdowns to be possible like, Enron, is Phil Graham from Texas. He wants the whole country to be depressed as Texas.

Ike shows that there is a depression of common sense about critical infrastructure in Texas. A lack of modern education dominates most forms of government in Texas.