Originally Posted By RoadTrip The recent experience during Katrina and Rita suggest that complete evacuation of a major city is NOT the best way to protect human life during a hurricane. While the politicians wrangle over whose fault it is that the evacuations did not go more smoothly; the obvious conclusion that evacuations DO NOT WORK has been completely overlooked. I found the following particularly chilling... <<The Houston Chronicle reported that at least 107 people in Texas died because of the hurricane, most of them due to accidents or health problems during the evacuation.>> In Houston many people died needlessly. People who would have undoubtedly lived through the storm if not for the misguided evacuation that was attempted. What is the answer? I think there are many. 1) DO NOT ALLOW reconstruction in areas that are below sea-level. 2) Modify building codes to require hurricane resistant construction methods as was done in Florida after Andrew. 3) Identify those areas MOST AT RISK and make realistic plans on how they will be evacuated. DO NOT evacuate entire large cities. The result is chaos and death. I know there won’t be many out there who agree with my position on this. Is there anyone who does?
Originally Posted By TomSawyer I fully agree, RT. I think the neighborhoods under sea level in New Orleans should be filled to sea level before rebuilding. Evacuation in Houston was a big mistake. The fuel cost of the evacuation alone was too high, especially since Rita was heading for the refineries. And amen on the building codes. That's one of the things our government gets right.
Originally Posted By Disneyman55 Hmm, darned if you do, danged if you don't. I always like second guessing in times of crisis. I absolutely agree with you about building codes and also infilling places below sea level however. If they had not evacuated and Rita slammed into Houston full bore as a Cat 5, what do you think would have happened? And I am not just talking about South Houston or the parts near the Galveston Bay. Better safe than sorry. And until we have the ability to accurately predict landfall and strength in time to make the decision regarding evacuation, then we should do what is necessary to save peoples lives. Even if it ends up not being necessary later. Hindsight is always 20/20. Unfortunately foresight is not.
Originally Posted By ElKay Complete evacuation is indeed impossible, there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of residents that even if they had the means, won't leave their homes for any number of stupid reasons. In the "retreat from Houston" there were stories of residents that saw the disaster on the I-10 freeway and decided it was "smarter" to stay at home. They were just lucky. The real disaster of the evacuation of Houston is that there was seemingly no real plan to orderly evacuate the metro area. For once, when the local officals told people to go, they went and how! Keep in mind that dispite all of the criticism that neocons are heaping on Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco, that they got out nearly 80% of the residents with a fraction of the problems Houston had. Sure, New Orleans is a lot smaller than Houston, but likewise the road system had less capacity and because of the lake and river, much tricker to move their residents. Most importantly, Gov. Blanco got her highway patrol to do a contraflow and direct ALL of the traffic outbound, while, Texas was clueless, dispite the example of what Louisana was able to do. In the event of an actual terrorist cities wouldn't be given a 48 hour warning like the IRA gave to London. WHY didn't Bush's DHS people plan for potential evacuations of cities on the size of Houston? DHS could have tied access to security grants for homeland security project on the development on evacuation plans and drills conducted by computer drills. The most terrible result of Houston's evacuation is that this time next year, ma ny, many more people will be reluctant to flee on the order of their local officials because of the chaos in Houston. That care facility in Lousiana that lost so many elderly residents convinced themselves that they could loose more lives if they evacuated in un-air conditioned school busses than they might if they stayed where they were. Too bad they were wrong.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom I disagree. I think that a complete evacuation is something EVERY major city has to plan for an anticipate. Sure maybe Houston should not have been evacuated for a hurricane and yes the building should have been constructed to survive a hurricane. Where I have an issue is again with the evacuation. I firmly believe that there may be situations when a city even a major city has to evacuate the population.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<I firmly believe that there may be situations when a city even a major city has to evacuate the population.>> I firmly disagree. In a metropolitan area with 2 million plus people, there is NO WAY you can have an orderly evacuation with existing roads and transit. The key is to make the cities safer so evacuation is NOT necessary. Even if you could (which I doubt) provide an orderly evacuation, the stress on surrounding cities is frequently far more than they are prepared to handle. Make your city safe in event of a catastrophe. End of story. Evacuation is nothing but a plan that puts one city’s problem in the lap of another.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom RoadTrip look at the fires going on right now in southern California.... your going to have those people stay in their homes? Oh we can't possibly consider evacuating those communities since complete evacuations cost too much, cause too much chaos. "Sorry folk we know there are wild fires approaching your home but we your local and state government have decided its safer for you to stay in your home than leave".
Originally Posted By trailsend <<>>WHY didn't Bush's DHS people plan for potential evacuations of cities on the size of Houston? <<>> You've got to be kidding. You're going to blame THIS on Pres. Bush?? All this is hindsight. At the moment everything was happening, I would bet most of this country felt Houston was doing the right thing. The only problem was not opening the other side of the interstate. The company that owned the bus that burned had already been cited for numerous violations as has now been found out. I agree that it makes no sense whatsoever to rebuild below sea level and from what I'm hearing on the news, many taxpayers have a strong opinion about this.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<RoadTrip look at the fires going on right now in southern California.... your going to have those people stay in their homes? Oh we can't possibly consider evacuating those communities since complete evacuations cost too much, cause too much chaos. "Sorry folk we know there are wild fires approaching your home but we your local and state government have decided its safer for you to stay in your home than leave".>> And how many people will need to be evacuated for these fires? A couple of hundred? A couple of thousand at absolute most? That is a long ways from evacuating a city of a couple of million. I'm not saying that evacuation is not desirable. Just that it is impossible to evacuate an entire major metropolitan area. This fact must be taken into account and alternative plans developed.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Those wild fires in southern California have burned 17,000 acres so far and the fires are out of control. So yes we are talking about thousands of people. Now I don't know how many acres Houston takes up but 17,000 acres is pretty darn big.
Originally Posted By MissCandice The population in Houston is much more than the population in those 17,000 acres. When wildfires hit California they usually are in sparsely populated areas where there is fuel for the fires. So there is not a huge amount of people that need to be evacuated. Therefore, those evacuations will run smoother that trying to get MILLIONS of people out of an affected area. Evacuation because of fires is totally different from a hurrican situation.
Originally Posted By debtee Every Summer people die here in Australia because they refuse to leave their homes when bush fires are ravinging around them! No matter what Evacuation order is in place from a government, if people won't go when told to they will die. So I've always believed we would leave straight away no mucking about.... but then watching those scenes of people stranded on your freeways (fleeing from Rita) for hours on end recently has made me question millions of people leaving a city in one go???
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom The problem with the evacuation for Rita is that Houston ( like many major cities in the US ) doesn't have any really good way of moving massive numbers of people out. I know I don't need to remind people that I really do see the need for mass transportation (like monorails), and even high speed trains ( like the Acela ). Lets not blame the lack of mass transportation on giving an order to evacuate a city. To me this is the arguement given while the Titantic was being constructed... oh we don't need to have enough life boats or life preservers.... a few hundred people is an acceptable loss. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<If you fail to plan you plan to fail.>> That is 100% correct. And since there is no reasonable way to evacuate two million people from a metropolitan area, the only reasonable solution is PLANNING to build facilities to protect them where they are. That would be HUGELY more economical than building vast freeway and transportation networks that would NEVER be used except during a disaster. Evacuation is a non-starter.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <<When wildfires hit California they usually are in sparsely populated areas where there is fuel for the fires. So there is not a huge amount of people that need to be evacuated. >> I'm not sure if this is the case in southern California right now or not. All I know is the news is showing homes burning not dessert or brush. My point is that city have to plan for EVERY potential disaster and if they need to declear a complete evacuation then so be it. When I first read the topic of this thread I was thinking of a nuclear bomb. If they reported that there was a nuclear bomb somewhere in Atlanta and it was going to go off in 24 hours you better believe I am getting out of town. I don't want some bureaucrat deciding for me that "Oh well we can't possibly tell the people because some people might die while the city was being evacuated". This all or nothing thinking has got to go.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom RoadTrip your arguement is "all or nothing thinking" which is a cognitive disorder ( sorry the Social Worker in me is coming out ). "We can't possibly have a complete evacuation because the consequences would be too grave". "We can't have mass tranportation systems because they would never get used and would be too costly". So in other words a number of people dieing is an accecptable loss. How many people dieing is acceptable? A hundred? A thousand? All to justify a road, bridge, highway, mass transportation system not being built.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Houston had three days to evacuate. There was plenty of time to get Amtrak trains in there to help evacuate. Heck if more TSA workers decided to show up for work those days instead of staying out sick, thousands more could have flown out of Houston. But instead the answer is to have a policy to NEVER declare an evacuation. I just find that Unacceptable.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip No Tom... you've got it all wrong. I'm not saying that a certain number of deaths are acceptable. I am saying that evacuation IS NOT NOW AND NEVER WILL BE a satisfactory solution. We must discard failed solutions and find things that will work. I'm not saying it is OK to kill a certain number of people. I'm saying make plans so that everyone can live without a logistically impossible evacuation. Why are we "libs" supposed to give up failed solutions when conservatives are so darned reluctant to give up THEIR failed solutions?
