| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
13 Sep 2005 08:13:41 PM |
| Object: |
New Orleans had a plan to warn the poor, but it sat on a shelf in L.A. |
Save Yourself
New Orleans had a plan to warn the poor, but it sat on a shelf in L.A.
By Nicholas Riccardi and James Rainey, Times Staff Writers
NEW ORLEANS — After years of warnings, community leaders this summer
prepared a video guide to hurricane evacuations with a stark message:
Many of this city's poor, including 134,000 without cars, could be
left behind in a killer storm.
But the 30-minute DVD still has not arrived. Some 70,000 of the newly
minted videos that were to be released this month remain on warehouse
shelves in Los Angeles.
Their warning: Save yourself, and help your neighbors if you can.
"Don't wait for the city, don't wait for the state, don't wait for the
Red Cross," the Rev. Marshall Truehill warns in the public service
announcement.
The program, titled "Preparing for the Big One," was one of several
related but incomplete plans aimed in particular at the one-quarter of
the city's population that did not own cars or have ready
transportation out of town in the event of evacuation orders.
Churches had agreed to provide rides to those without cars as part of
"Operation Brother's Keeper," but a pilot program had been started in
only four large congregations.
The Regional Transit Authority, the city's bus system, had a plan to
transport people from a dozen pre-designated evacuation points, but
some residents reported waiting interminably for buses that didn't
show up as the storm bore down Aug. 28.
From the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the state government
and City Hall, officials knew that the poorest residents in the city
would be in danger if New Orleans took a direct or near-hit from a
major hurricane. Not only did so many lack the means to flee in an
evacuation, but they also tended to live in geographically vulnerable,
low-lying parts of town.
"It almost makes me want to cry," Truehill, 57, said of the unfinished
evacuation plans during an interview in his temporary Baton Rouge,
La., office Monday. "We knew we were going to lose thousands of
lives."
Ann Duplessis, the Democratic state senator who represents the Lower
9th Ward, where many of the city's poor lived, said officials had been
working on a solution.
"Within nine months a lot happened," Duplessis said. "A strategy was
developed. The tapes were done. Commercials were prepared…. [The
hurricane] just came too fast."
National Guard Lt. Col. William J. Doran III, who heads Louisiana's
emergency response system, said that the state's disaster plan had
been 90% complete when Katrina struck. Only the transportation element
"hadn't been fleshed out," Doran said.
Those trying to clear the city in advance of the deadly storm faced
obstacles besides the dearth of vehicles in the poor sections of the
city.
Most significant, residents of the Crescent City had been numbed by
years of warnings about hurricanes that either petered out or turned
before they reached New Orleans.
"People don't understand this who don't live down here, but when a
voluntary evacuation comes, people choose not to go. They have been
through hundreds of these," said a state health official who asked not
to be named because she was not authorized to speak to the news media.
"Then when it's a mandatory evacuation, sometimes it's too late."
The hurricane threat confronting New Orleans' poor had been an open
secret for years. In September 2002, FEMA called a meeting with city
and church leaders to discuss how to assure that no one was left
behind, Truehill recalled.
But even as officials tried to work with community groups and churches
to find a solution, problems arose. Among them was a concern that
residents and parishioners who gave their neighbors lifts out of the
city could face legal liability if something went wrong.
Democratic state Sen. Francis C. Heitmeier last year introduced
legislation to release drivers in a hurricane emergency from
liability, and the measure passed easily in the Senate. But it
encountered unexpected opposition in the Louisiana House of
Representatives. Some members wondered, for instance, whether a
drunken driver could escape responsibility for an accident if he or
she was transporting an evacuee.
Heitmeier recalled arguing, "Why would y'all want to vote against poor
people getting out from a storm?" But to no avail. The bill died.
The lack of liability protection slowed progress, and only the four
churches were involved in the pilot program.
--
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike
"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net
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