Steve and List members,

You mentioned you're on the regional emergency operations team.  Your post also included a reference to "fleets of school buses."  I've read reports that part of the problem with Katrina was that many of the school bus drivers in NO had evacuated along with their families or apparently had otherwise fled.  I haven't heard if the city had contingency plans for that happening--that is, qualified, authorized replacement drivers ready to step in to replace the regular drivers.  I did see the story about the young 20 year old man who simply commandeered a school bus and drove a bunch of people to Houston.

On a personal note, I'm very interested in the issue of how a densely populated urban area evacuates people who don't have cars.  I live in the Washington, DC suburbs (in north Arlington, VA) and I do not own a car!  Natch, I sometimes make plans to ride to places with my boyfriend or other friends but those are planned outings, unrelated to sudden crises.  When there was an hour long delay one morning on the subway, and taxis and buses were in short supply, I actually walked to work from Rosslyn in Northern Virginia to my office near Judiciary Square in DC.  Took me almost an hour and a half on a nice spring morning, but I'm lucky I'm in good shape for age 54, LOL.

Obviously, a mandatory evacuation would be much more chaotic than anything triggered by a major subway disruption.  (Anybody ever seen DC during a regular rush hour, yikes?)

Another area previously affected by "an event," which has a high number of people who rely on public transportation rather than cars, is New York city.

I've read that DC is giving more thought to  evacuation issues for people without cars in the wake of Katrina.  Well, it should! But  I haven't heard  any discussion of liability issues.

I read the article at
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20050913/ts_latimes/saveyourself.  Having just read that you're on the emergency operations team, I was wondering how your jurisdiction and others are handling liability issues and contingency planning related to transport of people who cannot drive themselves out of an affected area.  The LA Times article mentions legislation that attempted to address that in Louisiana but failed.

Maarja

>>> [log in to unmask] 9/14/2005 12:37 PM >>>
Pretty good article Larry, lots of good points and recommendations.   I
am on the regional emergency operations team here, and we have regularly
scheduled training and drills at the EOC.

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