Out of every tragedy however does come good, and in this case, lessons were learned. They were learned by individuals all along the Gulf Coast, who had witnessed the devastation both first-hand and through 24/7 news coverage of the event. So, when Hurricane Rita threatened just a month later, an estimated 2.7 Texas and Louisiana residents evacuated, making this the largest migration of individuals to date in American history. The 2005 hurricanes also served as all too real wake-up calls for emergency planners as to the need for better planning and execution of evacuations of whole regions of states and major cities within them. Ozlem Ergun, who is the co-Director of the Research Center for Humanitarian Logistics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, recently commented that: Evacuation planning is very complicated. Given how bad the 2005 hurricane season process was, it is evident that there
is a big need for this to be done in a systematic way.
Evacuation planning Proper evacuation planning can help save thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet, the un-
sistance in such a scenario. As has been seen in the recent hurricanes, hundreds of thousands of individuals and families will elect to evacuate on their own, using their private cars and other forms of transportation to travel outside the cone of uncertainty for an approaching
The unpredictable nature of any storm makes effective evacuationrelated decision making difficult predictable nature of any storm also makes effective decision making difficult. In fact, as shown in the figure on the next page, there is what might be referred to as a lifecycle to potential disasters, as there are distinct stages to any potential disaster potentially requiring a mass evacuation for emergency managers and public officials to go through. In the hurricane scenario, emergency planners have to work with forecast tracks and models to make their all-important calls on when and what areas to evacuate, fully cognizant that their decisions, made in the isolation of an emergency operations center, have very real-world costs and consequences for hundreds of thousands ‒ even millions ‒ of citizens. As Chief Jack Colley, Chief of the Texas Governor s Division of Emergency Management (GDEM) recently observed, We live in a 72 hour world, from decision to evacuation. Further, there is always the uncertainty as to exactly who will need as-
storm, bearing the cost ‒ and responsibility ‒ for their own transport and shelter in a safe location. After the storm passes, they also can make their own decision as to when to come home to the affected region ‒ subject to the opening-up of the area by their state and local officials. However, in cities such as Houston and New Orleans, many thousands of individuals will need government assistance to evacuate the danger zone, to be sheltered in a safe area, and then be transported back to the affected area when it is declared safe. Many will need special assistance due to their medical condi-
Proper evacuation planning can help save thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars
photo by Tidewater Muse
been ordered for Hurricanes Georges (1998) and Floyd (1999), both of which fortunately passed east of their forecasted paths, causing little to no damage to the New Orleans area itself. Yet, Katrina did closely follow its projected path, striking just to the east of New Orleans. As we now know, for all too many of these individuals, Hurricane Katrina produced tragic results. In the end, an estimated 1,600 to 1,800 lives were lost from the storm in New Orleans alone.
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