Mandatory or Voluntary Evacuations for MS Before Katrina?

[gabrielle01]

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/12735459.htm

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Posted on Sun, Sep. 25, 2005


Latham 'had an uneasiness'

Pre-Katrina worry well-founded

By MELISSA M. SCALLAN

mmscallan@sunh1erald.com


BILOXI - •

Now, the weary Latham knows there will be a book about another storm sitting on his desk - one whose destruction he saw firsthand.

No one knew how much damage Hurricane Katrina would cause when she roared ashore Aug. 29, hitting Louisiana and Mississippi. The monster Category 4 storm flooded the city of New Orleans and wiped out nearly all of Hancock County.

So far, Katrina has caused more than 1,000 deaths in the two states, destroying landmarks and homes along the Mississippi Coast left untouched by previous storms. She was stronger and wrought more damage than 1969's Camille, something Coast residents never thought possible.

It took Hurricane Katrina less than 12 hours to virtually level cities built up over hundreds of years. Latham now is trying to help these communities rebuild to better than they were before.

A feeling of apprehension

Just before hurricane season began in June, Latham had an uneasy feeling. Something told him this would be the year Mississippi would be hit by a major storm.

Latham was in Washington, D.C. as the tropical depression that became Katrina formed in the Atlantic in late August. Ironically, he was there to give a presentation on hurricane preparedness to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

Katrina continued to strengthen, battering South Florida as a Category 1 hurricane on Aug. 25 before moving into the Gulf of Mexico.

Forecasters predicted the storm would cross South Florida, then make a northeast turn and head for the Florida Panhandle.

The uneasy feeling in the pit of Latham's stomach returned.

"...

I kept looking at what they said was a ridge that was going to allow it to make that turn," he said, shaking his head. "I'm not a genius, but I didn't see it. Maybe it's like a radiologist looking at an X-ray and I don't know what I'm looking at. This is like four or five days out, and it just never made that turn.

"I said if it ever gets into the Gulf, it doesn't matter what the meteorologists say; it doesn't matter about the models - you throw all of that out the window. Because when it gets into the Gulf, those hurricanes have a tendency to create their own atmosphere and environment, and there are very few things that can affect them."

Worrying, praying, preparing

While Katrina pounded South Florida, Latham and other state officials began making plans based on a track that showed the storm hitting Louisiana or Mississippi.

"Thursday is when we really started looking at it seriously because the models kept shifting back toward Louisiana and then it would move back toward us," he said. "We started ramping up and making some plans on Thursday. On Friday is when we really ramped up the emergency operations center and the governor (declared a) state of emergency."

Latham, Gov. Haley Barbour and everyone else in the state were hoping and praying that the storm would move further west or east. But it never happened.

"In five years I've done a lot of states of emergency that maybe didn't need to be done, but there comes a decision point at which you've got to do it or not," he said. "Saturday, our federal officials started arriving and of course that storm never did make that turn to the north like they kept saying it was going to do.

"Starting Saturday, they started showing some intensification of the storm, which I feared once it entered the Gulf, and it seemed like there was no weather feature affecting that storm at all. It was doing its own thing."

Latham spent that Saturday on the Coast, touring the area and sending coordinators to local operations centers. He also set up search and rescue teams at Camp Shelby so they would be ready when the storm was over. Similar teams also were activated in Pensacola.

He spent some of the day driving up and down the beach and saw people gathered like it was just another summer day. Many of those at local stores were buying beer and party foods, not canned food, ice and water.

It made the furrow in Latham's brow grow deeper.

"They were having parties on the beach - barbecues and bonfires," he recalled. "I remember saying that in the Camille book it was just like this."

By Saturday, no emergency officials in coastal counties had issued mandatory evacuation orders, and Latham was worried. He knew the public was irritated by evacuation orders for previous storms that didn't hit Mississippi, but said he felt this storm was different - and he didn't want people to die because they didn't leave the area.

"They were starting to make some decisions for (zones) A and B, and I was real concerned that we were being too complacent about the whole thing," he said, shaking his head, "and I was encouraging them to be consistent across the Coast. A lot of people don't know what zone they live in. I told them to be consistent across the Coast and make the decision early and don't put it off too long."

Latham went back to Jackson that night, watching Katrina warily. Somehow, he knew this wouldn't be one of those storms that veered or collapsed at the last minute. His apprehension grew stronger when he found out that Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, called Barbour and told him that Katrina was going to be a "Camille-like storm."

"Saturday was one of those days, when I think back on it, even up until the time that I finally got into bed, you're hoping that storm is going to do a little turn," he said. "I was praying big time because it was already obvious that this was going to be a big storm. I don't know that on Saturday we thought it would be that big."

Latham left his office at about 10:30 Saturday night and got in bed sometime after midnight. He said he only slept about an hour because he was worried about the storm and resigned to the fact that Mississippi would take a pounding.

Latham awoke Sunday morning at about 4:30 to see the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center and to call his office.

The news wasn't good.

"It jogged back to the east a little bit and was coming into Mississippi," he said. "I think at that point I just really realized that it wasn't going to turn enough to get away from us. By midday the projections and intensification were obviously huge, and I said if this thing shifts 50 or 100 miles one way or the other, it's not going to make any difference because it was so big."

Latham grew quiet as he recalled that moment - the one where he knew a monster was about to hit the state, causing an untold amount of damage and death. He also knew he had to talk to emergency officials on the Coast and convince them to call a mandatory evacuation if they hadn't already because people still could escape Katrina's path.

His voice sounded desperate as he remembered the conference call to the coastal counties:

"Whatever you do, you've got to do a mandatory. This is too big to not do it," he said he told the emergency officials. "That was the point at which I said you have to make your final stand basically, and that's the point at which I did that... You don't want an evacuation in the middle of the night, but there was still time to get some people out. There wasn't much after that in the way of traffic flow that indicated a big evacuation.

"Even though I felt like most people that were going to evacuate had already done so, I felt like I had to make one more call and say, 'Folks, this is serious. Tell them whatever you want to tell them, but I think you have to do a mandatory.'

Conference calls among emergency management agencies normally are routine, but this one was anything but, Latham said.

"They've been pretty scripted," he said of the calls, "but that one wasn't like that. This call was the 'Oh, poop.'"

All of Hancock County was under a mandatory evacuation order; Harrison County officials ordered an evacuation for residents living in Zones A and B, the low-lying and flood-prone areas, late Saturday night. Evacuation was voluntary, but strongly recommended, for people living in the higher Zone C elevations.

Jackson County officials followed the same plan as Harrison County - mandatory for low-lying and flood-prone areas, voluntary in higher elevations.

Mandatory or voluntary?

Directors of county emergency agencies around the state answer to their boards of supervisors, not Latham. He can give them advice, but he cannot force them to order evacuations.

Latham isn't sure why Coast officials seemed so hesitant to call a broader mandatory evacuation. Last September, when Hurricane Ivan threatened South Mississippi, then-Harrison County Civil Defense Director Linda Rouse ordered a mandatory evacuation of all areas south of Interstate 10 nearly 48 hours before the storm hit.

That hurricane was much smaller, and Mississippi was on the west side, not the most dangerous northeast quadrant.

"Theywere still kind of playing around with recommended (evacuation), and nobody really wanted to use the word 'mandatory,'

" he said, describing the day before Katrina hit.

Latham said in some ways he understood their hesitancy because he never wants to have a "knee-jerk reaction," but he believes inexperience was one of the biggest factors in their reluctance.

Rouse retired April 30, and the Harrison County Board of Supervisors appointed John Edwards to serve as interim director. Edwards is the director of Homeland Security for Harrison County. Edwards was criticized for his decisions during the near-miss Hurricane Dennis in July, and in early August supervisors hired Col. Joe Spraggins, the former head of the Air National Guard in Gulfport.

Spraggins' first day was supposed to be Aug. 29.

Spraggins defends the county's decision not to order an evacuation for the whole county and said the same storm can have various impacts.

"Different circumstances require you to do different things," he said. "The eye wall was passing over Hancock County, not Harrison County. If we issued a mandatory evacuation for Zone C, the ambulances couldn't run and then the hospitals would have had to evacuate, and we didn't have any place to put (patients)."

He added that he and other officials strongly recommended that everyone in Harrison County leave.

But Latham has maintained since Hurricane Ivan that the coastal counties need to be uniform in their decisions.

He said that Spraggins' inexperience, as well as that of the Coast's many new mayors, made a bad situation even more difficult.

"The most experienced person on the Coast had just retired. (Rouse) was also, I think, the glue on the Coast that pulled all of them together. This is just an outsider's opinion, but I know Linda very well, and I know how serious she was about her job and how frustrated sometimes she was.

"But nonetheless I remember in some of the first hurricanes I was involved with down here after getting this job that Linda pretty much got them all on the phone and said, 'Here is what we're going to do,' and they all pretty much followed her lead.

"You also had a lot of new mayors on the Coast, so a lot of them had never had to deal with this before. I think those two factors, and a third one is that we don't want to cry wolf again too soon. We've done that three or four times in the last six or eight months, and the public is tired of hearing it, so there was some hesitancy, I think."

Even as he was pleading with Coast officials to call for a mandatory evacuation, Latham had doubts. He didn't want people to evacuate needlessly, but he also didn't want people to die.

"I had the same problem," he said. "I'm thinking, 'Here I am, and the last few months I've encouraged people to evacuate and the darn thing changes course or doesn't have the impact we think it's going to have, so to some degree I had the same problem. But the indicators, whether it was atmospheric or weather systems or something that I hoped would happen, never did happen and it came to that point on Friday when I said I just couldn't take a chance."

Latham knows he did everything he could to get people to leave South Mississippi; still, the burden of those who didn't weighs heavily on him. As of Friday, the death toll in the state was 220.

"Even now I'm second-guessing myself and saying, 'Maybe I should have come down here a day earlier... Maybe I should have stayed down here Sunday.' All this has gone through my head, and I keep thinking back about what else could I have done that would have made a difference and what else could I have done that would have made one more person leave - just one more.

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "I guess that's just something I'll have to live with."

Bobby Strahan, director of the EMA in Pearl River County, heard the conference calls in which Latham did everything but demand emergency officials in the coastal counties make evacuations mandatory. He said he understood Latham's insistence but believes the local people had to make their own choices.

"These guys still have to make the final decision," Strahan said. "(Latham) can encourage them, but he can't make them do it. They made a decision, and they had to stand by it."

Katrina strikes

Early Sunday morning, Hurricane Katrina reached Category 5 status, with winds of 175 mph and a clearly defined and gigantic eye. That night, Latham's sleep patterns followed the times of the updates from the National Hurricane Center, and he woke from fitful sleep every few hours.

"I thought, 'Maybe I'd get a couple of hours sleep and when I wake up they'll call and say it's turned. But I couldn't sleep. I called the office, and they said it was coming in then and had turned a little bit more toward us."

By 5 a.m. hurricane-force winds were starting to hit Mississippi, and Latham knew there was nothing more he could do but wait out the storm.

That turned out to be an exercise in patience - the storm's fury lasted nearly 12 hours.

With electricity out and communication nearly impossible, news was scarce, and the frustration grew for Latham and his employees.

About mid-morning Monday, he got a little information, but it was disturbing. The Beau Rivage had water up to the third floor, and the roof of the Hancock County EOC had caved in.

"That was the point I think that I really realized how bad it was because I could really relate to that," he said. "I knew we had done everything we could do to get ready for it, but it was just not being able to talk to somebody. The only communication we had was satellite radio."

The day after

Latham dreaded coming to the Coast to see how Katrina's rage had played out, but he also couldn't wait. He thought he was ready for what he would see.

"When I came down here Tuesday morning and flew over and saw how bad it was," he said, his voice fading. "... I was looking for key landmarks that I could find, and it all looked the same. That was just so... to me just like tearing our guts out... you couldn't see farther than a few feet in front of you. When I came here the day after landfall, to be honest with you, I thought I had prepared myself, but you have to see it to be able to appreciate what the people down here have had to endure."

He spent five days on the Coast after landfall, sleeping on the floor of the operations center in the Harrison County Courthouse and frantically trying to find refrigerated trucks to place the bodies found by search and rescue teams.

Communications did not improve once the storm passed, adding to Latham's feeling of helplessness.

"The frustrating feeling there, not being able to communicate outside the Harrison County EOC, not having a clue and finally at one point I just got in a vehicle and drove over to Hancock County just so I could see."

Latham wasn't prepared for the sights in Hancock County - the cities of Bay St. Louis and Waveland now piles of rubble strewn over what used to be city streets. His voice was barely audible as he recounted a conversation he had with a funeral home director in Hancock County who had too many bodies and not enough room for them all.

MEMA had ordered refrigerated trucks but couldn't find them after the storm.

"I just told somebody, 'Just go out and confiscate one; just go get one' and we couldn't find any," he said, his voice growing louder. "I remember somebody said they were down at the port and heard one of the trailers down there that had coolers on it was running, so I told them to go down there and see if it was running and get a truck and pull it in here.

"There was a guy that came by in a (refrigerated) truck, and I said, 'What are you hauling?' and he said ice, and I said, 'Well, I need to rent your truck.' I told him what I wanted it for, and he said he couldn't do that, so I said, 'Can I buy your truck?' So I bought this truck from him right there."

Latham doesn't remember how much he paid, about $25,000 he thinks, but he tears up at the memory of the conversation.

"I just knew we had to have that for the respect of the people," he said softly. "I knew it was everywhere. That was the hardest thing."

'No doubt in my mind'

Strahan believes Latham did a good job leading and supporting emergency officials during and after Katrina.

"He's always been out there in the front and given us good direction," Strahan said. "He works with us and doesn't try to step in our business. I felt like he did a good job and supported us, but we have to stand up and make our own decisions."

Latham has traveled back and forth from Jackson to the Coast many times since Katrina hit Aug. 29. And while he admits it's difficult to keep the tears from falling sometimes, he knows the people here will help rebuild this area even better than it was before the storm.

[HurricaneQueen]

Amazing story but who is Latham?

[Lindaloo]

Latham is the head of the Mississippi Emergency Management Operations. (MEMA).