In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind [To poor - "You'll Be on Your Own"]

New Orleans Times-Picayune ^ | July 24, 2005 | Bruce Nolan

[willieroe]

In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind - Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
July 24, 2005
Author: Bruce Nolan

City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own.

In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation.

In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the city in the event of an evacuation.

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," Wilkins said in an interview. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you.

"But we don't have the transportation."

Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of a Category 3 hurricane.

Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.

"The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill said.

In addition to the plea from Nagin, Thomas and Wilkins, video exhortations to make evacuation plans come from representatives of State Police and the National Weather Service, and from local officials such as Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, and State Rep. Arthur Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Allan Katz, whose advertising company is coordinating officials' scripts and doing the recording.

The speakers explain what to bring and what to leave behind. They advise viewers to bring personal medicines and critical legal documents, and tell them how to create a family communication plan. Even a representative of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals weighs in with a message on how to make the best arrangements for pets left behind.

Production likely will continue through August. Officials want to get the DVDs into the hands of pastors and community leaders as hurricane season reaches its height in September, Katz said.

Fleeing the storm

Believing that the low-lying city is too dangerous a place to shelter refugees, the Red Cross positioned its storm shelters on higher ground north of Interstate 10 several years ago. It dropped plans to care for storm victims in schools or other institutions in town.

Truehill, Wilkins and others said emergency preparedness officials still plan to deploy some Regional Transit Authority buses, school buses and perhaps even Amtrak trains to move some people before a storm.

An RTA emergency plan dedicates 64 buses and 10 lift vans to move people somewhere; whether that means out of town or to local shelters of last resort would depend on emergency planners' decision at that moment, RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said.

But even the larger buses hold only about 60 people each, a rescue capacity that is dwarfed by the unmet need.

In an interview at the opening of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Joseph Matthews acknowledged that the city is overmatched.

"It's important to emphasize that we just don't have the resources to take everybody out," he said in a interview in late May.

A helping hand

In the absence of public transportation resources, Total Community Action and the Red Cross have been developing a private initiative called Operation Brother's Keeper that, fully formed, would enlist churches in a vast, decentralized effort to make space for the poor and the infirm in church members' cars when they evacuate.

However, the program is only in the first year of a three-year experiment and involves only four local churches so far.

The Red Cross and Total Community Action are trying to invent a program that would show churches how to inventory their members, match those with space in their cars with those needing a ride, and put all the information in a useful framework, Wilkins said.

But the complexities so far are daunting, she said.

The inventories go only at the pace of the volunteers doing them. Where churches recruit partner churches out of the storm area to shelter them, volunteers in both places need to be trained in running shelters, she said.

People also have to think carefully about what makes good evacuation matches. Wilkins said that when ride arrangements are made, the volunteers must be sure to tell their passengers where their planned destination is if they are evacuated.

Moreover, although the Archdiocese of New Orleans has endorsed the project in principle, it doesn't want its 142 parishes to participate until insurance problems have been solved with new legislation that reduces liability risks, Wilkins said.

At the end of three years, organizers of Operation Brother's Keeper hope to have trained 90 congregations how to develop evacuation plans for their own members.

The church connection

Meanwhile, some churches appear to have moved on their own to create evacuation plans that assist members without cars.

Since the Hurricane Ivan evacuation of 2004, Mormon churches have begun matching members who have empty seats in cars with those needing seats, said Scott Conlin, president of the church's local stake. Eleven local congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints share a common evacuation plan, and many church members have three-day emergency kits packed and ready to go, he said.

Mormon churches in Jackson, Miss., Hattiesburg, Miss., and Alexandria, La., have arranged to receive evacuees. The denomination also maintains a toll-free telephone number that functions as a central information drop, where members on the road can leave information about their whereabouts that church leaders can pick up and relay as necessary, Conlin said.

[bonfire]

Ping list BIG TIME.

[VeniVidiVici]

After reading this no wonder the Democrats are against "No Child Left Behind".

[lonestar67]

someone needs to get a hold of this DVD.

The video clips of local officials would be invaluable in placing blame at the end of this torrid affair.

[ckilmer]

The Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan specifically stated that people without private transportation were to be transported on public buses.

There were not just "200 buses". There were 200 buses in just one photo and Freepers studying the post-Katrina satellite images have counted over 400 buses altogether at other city parking.

At 70 people per bus that is 28,000 people per round trip that could have been taken out of the storm surge area in the 48 hours prior the Katrina striking.

After the storm hit, what makes you think that buses sent from outside of New Orleans could drive through the flooded mess any better than the 145 New Orleans city buses that were parked 1.2 miles away from the Superdome?

Was Scotty supposed to beam the outside buses to the Superdome and them beam them back out so that they would not have to drive through impassable roads?

The time to evacuate those 200,000 low-income people on public buses OUT OF THE STORM SURGE ZONE was BEFORE the Category 4 storm struck.

That was what the Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan for New Orleans specifically called for.

The Democrat Governor and the Democrat Mayor did NOTHING to carry out that portion of the plan. They left 200,000 low-income resident abandoned and they now blame the Federal Government for not having Scotty beam down a massive logistics effort after a human disaster of their own making.

[bonfire]

I will just NEVER EVER get over this. That picture should be shoved in the Mayor and Gov's face over and over and over again.

[finnman69]

Nagin was criminally negligent.

[Yellow Rose of Texas]

An RTA emergency plan dedicates 64 buses and 10 lift vans to move people somewhere; whether that means out of town or to local shelters of last resort would depend on emergency planners' decision at that moment, RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said

TEXAS sent 500 buses how many times?

[WestSylvanian]

From the start of the rooftop evacuations, I've noticed something peculiar. Healthy, muscular black guys have been plucked off the roofs of what appear to be rather substantial houses. I've been up on the roof of my own house for repairs numerous times and I know how big it is. These houses are two or three times as large. They have solid looking roofs with newish shingles. How is that people in such circumstances lack transportation or the means to leave the city? These aren't shanties and their owners certainly weren't destitute.

It appears to me that Coast Guard and Army guys are risking their lives to rescue lots of fools who had plenty of opportunity to leave New Orleans and refused to do so. And taxpayers are footing the bill. Infirm elderly, poor people with no means to leave--by all means we should do everything to help these hapless victims. Perfectly healthy idiots who refused to leave are a disgrace.

[finnman69]

We better get thse DVDs out telling folk they are on their own. Yeah, thats a good plan

[Yaelle]

Also, the city could have made one lane of the highway expressly for buses during the pre-storm evacuation. (In addition to making all lanes outgoing ones.)

[finnman69]

[IronMan04]

Nagin was criminally negligent.

He warned the people a month before the storm hit that they were on their own and had to be responsible for themselves. What is Criminal about that?

[mylife]

Bombshell

[flashbunny]

"I keep hearing Democrats insist on the need for "a plan." There sure wasn't one in New Orleans. I must have missed the news. "

Forget about an exit strategy for iraq - what happened for the 'exit strategy' for new orleans?

Wait, that was the responsibility of liberals, so it can't be mentioned.

[GW and Twins Pawpaw]

They have really screwed the pooch on this one. None too soon either. Liberalism is a virulent cancer upon our society.

[sionnsar]

"But we don't have the transportation."

What about all those school buses now under water...?

Frankly, if the evacuation and relocation of the poor out of the hellhole environment we were hearing NO was (before the storm), into a situation where they can (and do) help themselves up into the mainstream... this will be a good thing.

[ChadGore]

This is Fuuuuuuny. A DVD ? My 10 year old nephew knows how to burd a DVD.

How cute.

[ChadGore]

Attn: LA FREEPERS ! WE NEED THIS DVD !

The world needs to see, on film, the "you're on your own" on film !

[ChadGore]

re:Perfectly healthy idiots who refused to leave are a disgrace.

Here's the process:

Reality: Cat 5 in the gulf ?
Reaction: I'll stay

Reality: Cat 4 on my house ?
Reaction: I'll stay

Reality: Leeve topped?
Reaction: I'll stay

Reality: Fresh water gone?
Reaction: I'll stay

Reality: Food gone?
Reaction: I'll stay

MSM films him saying "Where's the help" ? ? ?

[finnman69]

Actually, he barely told the city to evacuate as it was with minimal notice and he never did bother to get the message out the people are on their own.

And isnt it negligent to leave the population on their own?