Posted on 05/03/2006 9:02:07 AM PDT by Graybeard58
NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters.
"There will be no shelter of last resort in the event of a major hurricane coming our way," Nagin declared.
The mayor, facing a runoff election May 20, has been widely criticized for failing to get the city's most vulnerable residents out of town as Hurricane Katrina approached.
The Superdome and Morial Convention Center became a scene of misery for days after the Aug. 29 hurricane as thousands of evacuees, many of them ill or elderly, languished with shortages of food and water.
In the future, Nagin said, the Convention Center will be a staging point for evacuations, not a shelter.
"There will be a mandatory evacuation and I would be shocked if people did not abide by it," Nagin said. "We're dealing with adults, so if you decide to disobey a mandatory evacuation, you are confining yourself to your home in an emergency."
Nagin also said federal Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had cleared the way for the use of Amtrak passenger trains in the event of an evacuation.
The new plan will take effect for any storms stronger than a Category 2, which have sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or higher. An alternate plan for smaller storms, relying on temporary shelters set up inside the city, is being devised for those now living in FEMA trailers.
Most trailers become unstable once wind speeds surpass 45 miles per hour, which would be a weak tropical storm.
The plan also addresses specific problems that arose during Katrina, such as tourists being stranded in hotels and looters raiding stores and damaging property.
"By default, whether we like it or not, we are the most experienced in this in the United States," New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert said.
Ebbert said the emergency plan calls for a central hotel guest processing center with the aim of ensuring those with return plane tickets can rebook earlier departures.
Ebbert said federal officials were working with the airlines on a plan to increase departures 36 hours before a storm is expected to strike.
People with special medical needs and the elderly would be picked up by city, school and church buses and taken to the train station or evacuated by bus to shelters farther north.
For security, 3,000 national guard troops could be stationed with local police throughout the city prior to a storm, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew would be in place once the evacuation was over, Police Superintendent Warren Riley said.
"It will be an overwhelming force," Riley said. "When citizens leave, they will have no doubt their property is protected. Obviously, it is far beyond what we have done in the past."
In the days before Katrina hit, about a million people drove out of the area on interstate highways as authorities converted all lanes coming toward New Orleans into outbound traffic. But many of the city's poor either had no transportation or couldn't afford to leave.
The storm ended up killing more than 1,300 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. Forecasters are expecting the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, starting June 1 and running through November, to have at least nine hurricanes, five of them intense.
The new evacuation plan applies to a city that now has a vastly diminished population, less than half its pre-storm number of about 455,000.
In addition to the human elements, the plan touches on a heart-wrenching decision evacuees faced ahead of Katrina: To board the buses, they had to leave their pets, and some refused to go without them. In the future, evacuees will be allowed to bring pets with them as long as they have some type of cage to safely put them in.
To help the recovery in New Orleans and other hard-hit regions, Gov. Kathleen Blanco has proposed a $7.5 billion rebuilding and buyout program. A state House committee approved it Tuesday, and the governor's allies hope to have full Legislative approval by early next week.
Nagin, meanwhile, faces a mayoral runoff election in less than three weeks against Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who got 29 percent to Nagin's 38 percent in the April election.
Pretty easy to do when most of the people are ALREADY GONE!..........
Better late than never. lol
There isn't THAT many people to evacuate. Should be a breeze.
Nagin gets a mulligan.
Mayor Ray "Chcoclate City" Nagin = racist, dolt.
I just presume that for future evacuations he'd use his new fleet of yellow submarines.
This is a swell idea! Why didn't the powers that be think of it before?
What a guy!
Buses, of course.
They had numerous 'plan' for the last one. But, for a plan to work, one has to implement it. Nagin and the Governor failed to do that.
No matter how good a plan looks on paper, it does little good unless officials inact when at the necessary time.
Now, all he has to do is to figure how to get the bus drivers and police to come to work, rather than being the first to evacuate, and how to get a huge fleet of Amtrak rail cars to New Orleans on short notice!
Chocolate funoodle...mmmmmmmmmmmm</p>
No food or water, but free chocolate bars for everyone!
Can we all agree that if NO is hit by another hurricane that the place should be shut down and turned into a wildlife sanctuary???
Ok, where's the Hieniken beer guy with the box full of emergency plans?
I am waiting ...
Hindsight is always 20/20. And with a hind as big as Naggin it must be 10/10 or better.........
That's what The French Quarter is.............Bourbon Street......ahhhhh, the memories..........
It would have been nice to have a plan last year.
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