NOLA Evacuation Plan

[Air Force Met]

I am not sure if this has been posted...probably has, but if not...I wanted all to see the "plan" that was in place. I have talked at length about the work I have done in this area. I finally found this and wanted all to be able to read it. Compare the "plan" agreed upon by the state and local gov'ts to what happened. I don't want to start the blame game again...but I want people to be able to see some of what I was talking about.

Pay careful attention to Page VI-1. It states very clearly that the Superdome is only a refuge of last resort once evac routes are closed. Period. It was totally improper for anyone to tell people to head to there as a shelter before the evac routes are closed. It is clear that it was a staging area. Read also II-2.B.5. It states clearly that school buses are to be used to get people out.

It's all there folks...please read it through. It's the exact plan we exercised last year with FEMA..State...and Local Gov'ts.

http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf

[MBismyPlayground]

OMG.......thank you........This document definitly shows which agencies dropped the ball..........
Wonder if there is a SOP for the govenor for circumstances such as this.( I am sure there is, really wondering if you can get it)

[Cookiely]

That was one of the things that burned my grits was seeing all those school buses underwater when they could have been used to evacuate people.

[Air Force Met]

OMG.......thank you........This document definitly shows which agencies dropped the ball..........
Wonder if there is a SOP for the govenor for circumstances such as this.( I am sure there is, really wondering if you can get it)

There is...but part of the gov's responsibility is listed in there. Look at Part I.D.1. Sad part is...people will blame FEMA and the national government because the response was inadequate.

Here's the problem with that...the FEMA/National plan that was implemented was done so under the idea (although A VERY FALSE ONE) that this plan had been followed by the letter. If the plan had been followed by the letter by the Gov...Mayor...and Parish Presidents (which by and large DID do it right)...then the FEMA response woould have been on target. But...because the plan was not followed, the federal assistance actually needed was way short. Make sense (just want to see if people understand what I am saying)?

[MBismyPlayground]

That was one of the things that burned my grits was seeing all those school buses underwater when they could have been used to evacuate people.

When I first saw them, my first question was, where would they have taken the people.......But apparently that was supposed to have already been put in place. Plus I sure didn't see any form of transportation lines up outside the superdome to transport these people to other shelters.
I am even more disgusted then before, reading this, and in hindsight knowing what was supposed to happen!!! Total incompetence.

[MBismyPlayground]

AF Met, Thanks........Wow......It is taking me a while to digest this. So many different people dropped the ball, city wide/ state wide.
If this has been followed to the letter, I seriously doubt we would be seeing what we are now.

[Air Force Met]

AF Met, Thanks........Wow......It is taking me a while to digest this. So many different people dropped the ball, city wide/ state wide.
If this has been followed to the letter, I seriously doubt we would be seeing what we are now.

IF it had been followed to the letter...there is absolutely NO DOUBT we would not be seeing what we are seeing. If you add to that "IF people had also not chosen to stay behind"...then there is little doubt NOLA would be a ghost town right now...and all the survivors would have been out by Wed...tops.

[Rainband]

I believe being complacent was a big part of the problem. Boy who cried wolf syndrome..so to speak. They were threatened numerous times and never had the "big one" I honestly think many people had no idea what would occur during and after a Major storm hit . Some of the people couldn't leave due to financial problems and others chose to stay..I believe if they had any inkling of what was about to happen they would have walked out of town. I know I would have.

[Air Force Met]

I believe being complacent was a big part of the problem. Boy who cried wolf syndrome..so to speak. They were threatened numerous times and never had the "big one" I honestly think many people had no idea what would occur during and after a Major storm hit . Some of the people couldn't leave due to financial problems and others chose to stay..I believe if they had any inkling of what was about to happen they would have walked out of town. I know I would have.

The good thing about the plan was that they had a plan to help those who could not leave because of finances. Those buses we see underwater were supposed to be used by the city (along with the city buses) to pick people up...take them to a staging area...and then from the staging area (which was not supposed to be a shelter until AFTER the evac routes were closed) to some place outside of the city. If the plan had been followed...the only people left in the city would have been those who wanted to stay. All those who couldn't afford to leave or had a disability were covered under the plan.

[Pegg]

And this from the CNN website:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

Responding to a CNN inquiry, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Short said Friday the gear has not been moved because none of the governors in the hurricane-ravaged area has requested it.

A federal official said the department's Office for Domestic Preparedness reminded the Louisiana and Mississippi governors' offices about the stockpiles on Wednesday and Thursday, but neither governor had requested it. (See the mayor blister feds for requiring formal queries for help -- 0:34)
The gear -- including generators, radios, breathing apparatus, cots and other items -- is stockpiled by DHS in nine locations. The three closest to New Orleans are College Station, Texas; Columbia, S.C.; and Clearwater, Fla. The gear is intended to replenish or sustain up to 150 first responders.

Contractors who maintain the gear are required to transport it to a disaster site no later than 12 hours after the initial request is made by local authorities and approved by DHS.

Short said that while the stashes contain some items like generators, much of the gear would not be useful in the circumstances faced by the Gulf Coast region.

But Steve Beaumont, a retired contract manager for Homeland Security's Prepositioned Equipment Program, said the gear would be helpful for fire departments wiped out by the hurricane. Each pod has 200 radios, including sophisticated equipment to make radios inter-operable, tying different communications systems together. (Watch the video of first responders in 'hell' -- 3:25)

"The concept was basically, if you had a major incident, this equipment could be brought into the city and reconstitute the local first responders. So they get fresh bunking gear, breathing apparatus," Beaumont said.

Each stockpile consists of a tractor-trailer filled with $2.2 million in gear, he said. Contractors are on call 24 hours a day to move the gear.

"There has been no movement of this equipment to this emergency. As of now there's been no movement at all," Beaumont said. (See the video of the mayor demanding feds to 'get off their asses' -- 12:09)

"I think it's sad because you've got almost ... $20 million worth of gear that's ready to be distributed. You've firefighters (in New Orleans) fighting fires in shorts. That tells me they're running out of stuff."
The project is run by DHS' Office for Domestic Preparedness.

[shaggy]

whats burning my grits is the mayor of NOLA.To me it seems he sat on his hands with his mouth wide open after katrina hit and was dumbfounded for a short period of time.Then the levee broke and him and the Gov just stuttered and stammered until the city was lost into anarchy.I heard his rant against bush and i wanted to puke all over my TV.The initial response is suppose to be on a local and regional level.After Floyd our goverment had everything already staged and in place and everything went rather smoothly.Because they dropped the ball the US government didn't know they were needed so quickly.The local government should have handled the 1st days better allowing the US relief to see what ws needed and then respond.

It should work like this:

after the storm the state and local governments should supply shelter and food and water until the national relief gets a good look at what needs to be put in place.This is why the states NG units are activated not the US military.Its a state issue at first and thats where the ball was dropped as soon as the devastation was recognized by the bush Admin he sent navy ships and 40,000 troops along with 10 billion dollars just for relief and aid.To blame the US government is ridiculous and to add race into the picture is also annoying.The bush admin is giving more aid(albeit slowly) while the Mayor let his city turn into a war zone without food or water for thousands where was the local aid that didn't get there and why isn't that racist that they did not adequately supply the people first.

Sorry for the rant but had to say what i had to say

[themusk]

I am not sure if this has been posted...probably has, but if not...I wanted all to see the "plan" that was in place. I have talked at length about the work I have done in this area. I finally found this and wanted all to be able to read it. Compare the "plan" agreed upon by the state and local gov'ts to what happened. I don't want to start the blame game again...but I want people to be able to see some of what I was talking about.

I'm not certain that the failure to evacuate the public has been the only error (for example this one is another), but it certainly was the pivotal one. I'd like to know more, as I think we all do, how the city could so painfully drop the ball (it's tempting to put it entirely at the foot of the mayor, but a mayor is just the tip of the political iceberg in a city). Was there influence, corruption, bad advice, or complacency? Simple incompetence? Political jockeying among persons or departments?

I do remember hearing the city repeatedly say, well in advance of the storm, that it could not evacuate persons without their own transportation, and that it had tried to organize a church-based volunteer buddy system for the evacuation of those without transportation. Perhaps that "may" use school buses was blocked at some level by some other municipal agency or by the state or by our beloved city attorney, or perhaps the EOP supplement is based on some unrealistic assumption of which the planners were not informed (availability of drivers, or gasoline, or whatever). Perhaps the city thought that using volunteer faith based organizations was good enough (if so, I'd like to take the city's emergency manager over my knee and spank some sense into him or her. When you need to mobilize a lot of people to quickly act in concert to do something they don't necessarily want to do, that's when you need government). I'd like to see the City's EOP, if there is such a beast.

Perhaps we'll never know the full details, but I suspect we will at least know quite a bit more someday.

(And this does settle the exasperated question I asked after the Governor talked about "dual control" (ahem... "incident command system" ring a bell with anyone over there?). They do have emergency planners in Louisiana. It would be really cool if they used them in, oh, say, an emergency.)

[RichG]

Please folks lets get this message out. Send the photo of the buses out with a copy of the plan to anybody you know in the media or even outside the media. I am so sick and tired of hearing how this is a white black thing. I am sick about the tragedy in NO and I am as white as they come. I am even more sick seeing that it could have been mitigated by simply following the plan.

[gratefulnole]

After reading the evacution plan I believe the person who failed is pointed out here :
Part I.D.2
Adjutant General/Director, Louisiana Office of Emergency
Preparedness (LOEP):
a. Serve as the Governor's executive agent and lead agency for the
management of emergency and disaster operations.
b. Coordinate state and local operations.
c. Prepare and coordinate requests for assistance to other states
and the Federal government.
d. Keep the Governor and the Legislature informed of progress and
problems in dealing with the emergency or disaster.

[Air Force Met]

Themusk...

You can BET there is a congressional investigation coming...and I say lower the boom on everyone that did not follow their plan...local...state...fed...doesn't matter. Why do I spend weeks away from my family every year working various exercises to plan for events like this if the plans aren't going to be followed?

The first thing the Congressional investigation needs to do is get all the emergency action plans together...everyone's...and hold people accountable to whether they followed their plan. AND DO NOT PLAY POLITICS. Hearings...unfortunately...are usually set up to blame some little guys in the loop...and to protect the major political figures who are really at fault (regardless of political party...they always protect their own). Then...start on those who should have just stepped up OVER the plan and taken the initiative to do it themselves.

[flarrfan]

Personally, as a 25-year veteran of state and local government bureaucracies, I will point out that plans for action depend on coordination between agencies. The bureaucrats needed to implement this plan probably evacuated themselves Friday and Saturday, so that by the time officials tried to implement the plan, there was no way to make it work without the bureaucracy needed to get everything coordinated and the personnel on the ground to make it work. I've seen lots of plans for how to do something completely torpedoed by bureaucratic incompetence, inability, inaction. The buses people keep pointing to here were not under the control of the city. Even if they were, most of the drivers probably would have been unavailable, unreachable or unwilling to drive them.

Again, my experience in government is that the top officials may have the best of intentions, but without the rank and file bureaucratic ability to implement those intentions, the best-written plans for government action are likely to be only so many more trees destroyed.

[Stephanie]

I agree ncdowneast. The ball was dropped in so many areas. HOWEVER, the focus should now be to get these people the supplies that they need and shelter and to make sure this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

[shaggy]

I agree ncdowneast. The ball was dropped in so many areas. HOWEVER, the focus should now be to get these people the supplies that they need and shelter and to make sure this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

well a good start to never letting this happen again is to abandon the city(sadly) this will happen again and there is no stopping it if mother nature wants that land back she will get it eventually.Your 110% right that it is now just a hindsight issue to blame but that these people need water food and medicine before the death toll climbs anymore!

[artist]

Thanks so much for finding this Air Force Met.

Those poor people in the nursing home that died were also covered by this plan as well.

[Air Force Met]

Thanks so much for finding this Air Force Met.

Those poor people in the nursing home that died were also covered by this plan as well.

Now maybe reading the plan (and remembering I worked the plan during a 5 day exercise just last year with these city officials (and state))...people can understand the level of my frustration the last few days.