Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Gaming Hurricanes

Hurricane Pam was a storm that never hit land, yet should have taught lessons in preparation for Hurricane Katrina. Its projections included extensive flooding and massive casualties in New Orleans in as little as a Category 3 storm.

This part struck me:
A month before Katrina hit, state and federal officials working on the Pam exercise estimated that government plans to evacuate people from New Orleans were only 10 percent complete.

"If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait till you see lines" at collection points in New Orleans, Transportation Department regional emergency officer Don Day said at a July 29 briefing with federal and state authorities.
I assume that means that evacuation plans could only move ten percent of the people who need moving. One problem that I did not hear about was the lines at evacuation points prior to the storm hitting. What I want to know is to what degree the gamed evacuation plans were actually put into effect. For that matter, just how involved and aware of the results were the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana?

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