Not Exactly a Well-Oiled Machine


Following up on Gustav evacuees being warehoused--literally-- is this article noting that some lost possessions or had luggage mishandled. Some of these bags are gathering dust at New Orleans City Hall:

There are hard cases, strollers, a wheelchair, day packs, backpacks, shoulder bags and garbage bags. A shabby brown teddy bear stares from one bag. Half-empty medicine bottles are stashed in another. A tennis racket pokes out from a shoulder bag.

"One man came in a motorized wheelchair from Jefferson (Parish). He got here by going down the highway," said Maria Kay Chetta, an assistant director of criminal justice who runs the lost luggage room. "People left all kinds of things: Food, baby formula."

Since the catastrophic failures in evacuating people before and after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana emergency planners developed a model system using public transportation. The effort paid off for Gustav, the first time it was implemented.

"We're one of only a handful of cities that have a publicly assisted evacuation," said John Renne, a University of New Orleans evacuation expert.

And it worked. The number of people left behind as Gustav crashed ashore Sept. 1, flooding towns and bursting levees outside New Orleans, was minimal compared to Katrina. About 27,000 took bus transportation out of town and another 1,000 left by publicly funded trains and aircraft.

But if Gustav proved that a publicly assisted evacuation can work, it also showed Louisiana hasn't mastered the second phase of an evacuation: Making sure the exit and re-entry are safe, comfortable and humane.

The article goes on to note that school buses were pressed into service after a Jacksonville, Florida based company produced just over half the vehicles they'd contractually promised. It also notes problems with on-board sanitation and staffing--many evacuees were/are elderly and in poor health--along with confusion over directions to shelters, etc.

That said, it was better than nothing at all...but just as the stories about the horrible conditions made quite an impression on me in September, reading about someone literally having to ride a wheelchair along a highway to look for lost belongings--while auto executives are flown in private jets to request billions in government assistance--is galling...

Particularly given that we're by far the wealthiest nation to have ever existed on earth.