Hurricane Katrina:
Some Thoughts on Preparedness
Given the events that transpired in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we wanted to weigh in on a debate that first stormed the Internet's blogosphere and then made it to cable news.
This essay is about preparedness, evacuation in hurricane territory, and who's to blame for not evacuating the entire city of New Orleans in the days before Katrina made landfall.
First, we should note that we live in the Tampa Bay area in Florida.
Second, we have backgrounds in security awareness training (that's the people part of security). We've worked with two Fortune 100 clients on disaster recovery and business continuity planning. What are our mantras in that field?
1). The only secure computer is a dead computer. The only secure community in a hurricane zone is a dead community. There are always trade-offs involved. Decisions are made in the real world.
2). You can't prevent disaster, you can only prepare for it and manage it when and after it happens. It will happen.
Should New Orleans have prepared better? Of course! So should every community in hurricane territory and beyond. Even after the bizarre 2004 hurricane season, we still don't have enough shelters in Tampa Bay — let alone properly stocked shelters. There isn't sufficient political will to ensure they are built and properly stocked, even after the 2004 season. Too many people can simply get in their car or hop on a plane and leave. Those same people tend to be the more powerful political constituencies in the community. Who's to blame? City and state officials are making decisions in a political climate where people don't want to pay for disaster preparedness.
Moreover, it is quite likely that even if you aren't a resident of a coastal community, if you live in the East or Mid-West your own community is ill-prepared for a hurricane.
Consider that hurricane Agnes hit Florida's Gulf Coast on June 21, 1972. In Virginia, the remnants of the storm dumped 13.6 inches of rain on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The rapid, voluminous rainfall engorged the waterways of central Virginia and the James River flooded to record-high levels. The cost? Thirteen lives and $222 million in damage. In Washington D.C., Maryland, and Delaware, Agnes caused the death of 22 people. The damage was just over $110 million. Pennsylvania, a state far, far from Florida, was hardest hit: 50 people died and the entire state was declared a disaster area.
Please also note that when reading documents pertaining to evacuation orders, it should not be assumed that the word “evacuation” means removing people entirely from the area. Here in the Tampa Bay region, we face a somewhat similar threat from hurricanes. Base surge flooding means St. Petersberg could become an island. Only a thin strip of land between Belleaire and Palm Harbor would be left, a sliver of an island that was once a peninsula. Tampa and all the communities lining the bay would be submerged.
Under those conditions, evacuation means only that our neighbor has to move in with us to be considered evacuated. The same situation held for New Orleans: evacuation did not entail moving everyone out of the city, but getting as many as possible to move out voluntarily and then moving any remaining people to the shelters located on higher ground. (Update: More on New Orleans' evacuation plan.)
This is not surprising if you live in a hurricane territory. In Tampa Bay for instance, Pinellas county cannot possibly evacuate everyone. The county will need space for 150,000 people but its shelters can only house 70,000. In Hillsborough County 120,000 shelter spaces are needed but there is currently only room for 70,000. Additionally, the shelters are only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane.
So, why can't they evacuate everyone anyway? Good question.
1. HURRICANE PREDICATION IS NOT PERFECT
In the Gulf region, forecasters can only tell you 36-72 hours in advance that a hurricane is headed toward a region. At that point, a hurricane's strike zone is several hundred miles wide.
“Forecasters cannot come close to predicting a storm's landfall accurately beyond 24 hours. Three days before a hurricane hits, the official forecast can be off by as much as 250 miles in either direction -- the distance from New Orleans to a point between Pensacola and Panama City, Fla., to the east and Beaumont, Texas, to the west.”
Just ask the residents of Tampa Bay about the reliability of hurricane prediction. Many residents left for the “big ones,” Hurricanes Charley and Ivan. For Charley, people who fled to Orlando ended up weathering the storm anyway. Charley made landfall at Punta Gorda and made a beeline across the state, striking the greater Orlando area with hurricane force winds, tornadoes, and flooding. For Ivan, people evacuated only to find that the prediction was off the mark. Instead of hitting the West coast of Florida, hurricane Ivan struck the Panhandle.
2. A PRE-HURRICANE EVACUATION IS NOT A CAKEWALK
a). A 24-hour window for calling a mandatory evacuation is normal. This is partly because of the inaccuracy of early prediction, partly because of the political constraints on calling evacuations so early, and partly because of the economic damage.
It takes 72-84 hours to evacuate New Orleans. In that time frame, Katrina was, at first, a Category 1 hurricane. It then turned into a tropical storm about three days before it made landfall again.
Timeline: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168413,00.html
To understand this more fully, this Times-Picayune article is a helpful record of what happened the day before the hurricane.
What happened in NOLA is not unusual since the same thing happened here in the Tampa Bay area before the big ones, Hurricane Charley and Hurricane Ivan. Last year, before Ivan, our local officials were discussing what to do three days before Ivan was expected to make landfall. At that time, on a Saturday, they hadn't decided whether to close the schools on Monday.
Yes, that is how difficult hurricane prediction is: officials were so uncertain, even for a killer like Ivan, they hadn't yet decided whether to close the schools, two or three days before expected landfall.
b). Consider also that the business community in a tourist area doesn't take kindly to mandatory evacuation.
Of note: “Nagin said late Saturday that he's having his legal staff look into whether he can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he's been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses.”
3. YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE 24 HOURS TO EVACUATE.
a). 24 hours before a hurricane is supposed to make landfall, its strike zone can still be 170 miles wide.
b). So, which way do you go? In NOLA, should you have gone East? West? North? If your answer is that you'd move directly ahead of the hurricane, moving inland, please read up on 2004's Hurricane Charley. As Tampa Bay and South Florida residents learned, moving directly ahead of a hurricane further inland isn't always the wisest move to make.
c). Our generous guess: it would take 6 hours to get the first bus on the road. That is generous because you'd be dealing with a population that isn't prepared:
- rumors would fly; panic would ensue
- it would take time for them to pack
- they would bring pets which would have to be removed from distraught owners
- the recalcitrant would cause problems
- you stress your first responders by adding traffic to the roads
Again, we're back to risk management.
d). Do you have fuel for the evacuation vehicles? In our experience, there often isn't any fuel to be had prior to a hurricane. The truckers and tankers stop delivering to the region.
If you give up all your spare fuel to evacuate the city, and you can't evacuate everyone, are you just leaving yourself with no fuel to power generators and emergency vehicles? Intelligent people will disagree.
e). Would you have sufficient evacuation vehicle drivers? In 2002, NOLA discussed using buses to evacuate at the last minute. At the time, it wasn't clear the drivers would agree. As this article notes, when a similar evacuation plan was tried in Key West, only 20% of the drivers showed up.
As we've since learned, this was precisely the problem in New Orleans, while they had the buses, they didn't have the drivers. They had either evacuated or were not interested in driving in unsafe conditions with a panicked population.
f). In the best pre-hurricane conditions, it takes 6 - 8 hours to evacuate to Baton Rouge or Hattiesberg.
g). When a storm is large, feeder bands move in 6-10 hours ahead predicted landfall. The feeder bands bring flash floods, tornadoes, lightning, downed power lines, tropical storm-force winds (40 MPH) that shut down the highways, and power outages that would make driving at night difficult at best. These conditions make the roads hazardous, particularly in an area like New Orleans where the evacuation routes are already prone to flash flooding. With their high surface area, buses can easily tip over in high winds and it's difficult to handle them in flash flood conditions.
More....
The following articles help explain why evacuating the populace from the city was unlikely on such short notice and, even were it to happen, many would still be left behind.
This is not to say that we don't hold the local government accountable. We do. It is a tragedy that they didn't have well-stocked evacuation shelters. Should they have saved the buses? Absolutely! Would they have had fuel? We don't know. Should they have reserves of fuel? Probably.
We're not surprised, however. Here in Florida, we use public school buildings for evacuation centers. Last year, after only short stays of 2-3 days, they sometimes didn't have enough food to serve school lunches when the schools reopened. They were not prepared to handle people for any length of time. This isn't a wise strategy given what Tampa Bay would face were it to contend with the “big one.” Our hurricane shelters are also only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. For a region which relies on the shelters for 25% of the population, a population that they do not plan to even try to evacuate, this isn't particularly wise.
We should all ask ourselves: Were it our community, would we (do we) have the political will to raise the revenues or shift spending to prepare for such a disaster?
This link brings you to a series of articles at weather.com. The articles are about New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Miami, Long Island, and Galveston, cities that are uniquely vulnerable to hurricanes. The articles are especially instructive, particularly regarding the difficulties of evacuation.
Stuck In Harm's Way
By Baird Helgeson And Neil Johnson
The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 29, 2005
Note that, in the above article, disaster planners understand the Tampa Bay and S. Florida regions simply cannot evacuate everyone from the region in case of the “big one.”
