Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<There was plenty of time to get Amtrak trains in there to help evacuate. >> Crap Tom... an Amtrak train can hold maybe 500 people at best. How many of them would you need to evacuate even 100,000 people? You would need 200 passenger consists. I doubt Amtrak has even half that many consists in their entire system. We’ve got to protect people where they are or let them die.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip ^^^ I'm not suggesting that "let them die" is an acceptable solution. I'm saying it is the inevitable result if our nation can't come up with better plans than we have right now.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom To me this is not a Lib versus Conservative issue. This is Public safety issue. Everything need to be on the table. Giving a complete evacuation order needs to be a tool that can be used if the situation demands it ( and I hope and pray that NEVER has to happen to any community). New Orleans HAD to give a complete evacuation order. Houston felt it was in their best intrest to do so as well. Personally, I'm not going to live in a city that isn't willing to give a complete evacuation order. The county I live in is the ONLY county in metro Atlanta with tornado sirens. The population of metro Atlanta is 4 million people. Cobb has 500,000 people that live here and we are the ONLY ONES with Tornado sirens. That is unacceptable.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <<Crap Tom... an Amtrak train can hold maybe 500 people at best. How many of them would you need to evacuate even 100,000 people? You would need 200 passenger consists. I doubt Amtrak has even half that many consists in their entire system.>> RoadTrip each Mack VI monorail at WDW can hold 365 people in their six car sets. I'm sure Amtrak can hold much more than 500 per train set. I was told each train that was in New Orleans ( that the Mayor decided not to use ) could hold 900 people. A few is better than nothing. Again my point is there may be times when a complete evacuation order of a city is justified.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<The county I live in is the ONLY county in metro Atlanta with tornado sirens. The population of metro Atlanta is 4 million people. Cobb has 500,000 people that live here and we are the ONLY ONES with Tornado sirens. That is unacceptable. >> And what do you do when a tornado siren sounds?? Do you evacuate or get the heck in your basement as fast as you can?? Evacuation IS NOT always the answer. As for Amtrak train capacities: <<As an operating comparison, Amtrak trains have an average capacity of around 325 passengers. Most European trains in main-line intercity service offer seating for between 500 and 600 passengers. The two newest trains in European intercity service, the British HST and the French TGV, have capacities of 419 and 386 respectively. However, in operation the TGV trains are usually made up of two sets with a total capacity of 772. American railroads have realized economies of longer freight train operations for years. The same principle needs to be applied to passenger trains.>> Source: <a href="http://www.azrail.org/amtrak90/s90_3.htm" target="_blank">http://www.azrail.org/amtrak90 /s90_3.htm</a>
Originally Posted By basas <<And what do you do when a tornado siren sounds?? Do you evacuate or get the heck in your basement as fast as you can?? Evacuation IS NOT always the answer.>> Maybe not in a tornado situation, but in a hurricane situation, perhaps it is. The point Tom is making is that being prepared for disasters is important: whether that be tornado sirens going off and people running for the basements, or hurricane warnings being issued and people evacuating. There is no difference really, except that you have to prepare for different types of disasters differently, and with a hurricane, that often means evacuating.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Maybe not in a tornado situation, but in a hurricane situation, perhaps it is. The point Tom is making is that being prepared for disasters is important:>> I agree. I just DO NOT agree that the complete evacuation of a major metropolitan area is a feasible solution. Recent experience has shown that it is not. Obviously another solution is needed. I've proposed mine. What is yours?
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "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." So far, only one home has burned along with a few abandoned structures. The only reported injury is a fire captain who was hit by a falling rock. That's it.
Originally Posted By ElKay trailsend: "You've got to be kidding. You're going to blame THIS on Pres. Bush??" Darn straight! Bush's whole argument against Kerry last year was that he was the only candidate able and willing to protect the country from danger. His rejiggering of FEMA and the creation of DHS was supposed to shake off the cobwebs of the supposed irresponsible Clintonites in the wake of 9/11. For the past four and a half years Bush was beating the drums for prepairing for a catestrophic attack on the homeland. While his intent was terrorism, a natural disaster like Katrina it's exact equal. The only difference is that it's much easier to predict a hurricane slowly moving toward landfall than to identify a terror cell intent on attacking a city. Bush's admin. if they were "walking the walk" instead of "talking the talk" would have included along with their imbecillic color coded threat level detailed plans on how to evacuate every city that would reasonably consider as a target for attack. If dolts like Mayor Nagin or Gov. Blanco were unwilling or unable to draw up their detailed to plan, the DHS would cut off their homeland security grants, like the Feds regularly threaten to do with highway or education funds. Bush's chickens have come home to roost. For all his warnings about imminent attacks, he's done nothing to really prepare to defend the homeland, except appoint political hacks in vital emergency positions. Since 9/11 there have been plenty of independent security analysts that have posed the potental that Houston was as a target for terrorist attack, because of the petro-chemical plants that could release a toxic cloud of gas toward the city's center. In that event, IF the FBI was able to alert Houston officials of the plot, there would be no viable plan to evacuate and a potential for tens of 1,000 people would die. Would Bush just say he feels their pain?
Originally Posted By ElKay trailsend: "The only problem was not opening the other side of the interstate." That was the easiest of the lapeses in Houston's evacuation. What were motorists supposed to do when their cars ran out of gas waiting for hours in non-moving lanes? What about distribution of food and water? How were disabled cars to be removed from traffic lanes? Would those elderly residents been spared a horrific, firey death IF there was a dedicated bus lane that kept them moving at 55mph? What about an odd/even license plate queue system, like they used during the energy crisis back in Jimmy Carter's Admin.? That could at least cut in half the number of cars clogging the interstate for a short window of 24 hrs. This NOT Monday morning quarterbacking, but something that DHS or Transportation Dept. officials should have automatically thought about years ago. These questions could have been applied to any metro evacuation over 500,000 in population. If another hurricane or heaven forbid a real terrorist attack occures, many 1,000 more people WON'T heed orders to evacuate just because of the terrible chaos last week. All al Quada has to do now is post a few bogus warnings in the Internet that they will attack a major American city and that'll send the Bushies into a frenzy of panic and order an evacuation, causing even more panic and dozens of deaths, like Houston.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom I have already stated my plan that a complete evacuation has to be on the table and that as a country we need to have better mass transportation to move / evacuate the populus.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Other states need to take the lead from Florida. Of particular note is the Florida Keys. There is only one way in and one way out. When they do evacuate it is very orderly and precise. They start with tourists and folks in high profile vehicles. Then, they start letting people out in waves so that not everyone leaves at once. The same happens in mainland coastal communities where there are various zones set in place by the professionals who understand how surge/wind damage will persist from area to area. Folks on the intracoastal get out and then it moves inland from there. The only downside in Houston, from what I could see, was that they did not open the inbound lanes to outbound traffic early enough in the process which caused the massive backups.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Elkay, the way you work Bush into all of your posts is very entertaining. I mean, when ever I see you post something, I just scroll down till I see the word BUSH. How you blame him for everything is impressive. Of course you and Cindy Sheehan are really going to win some elections with this approach.
Originally Posted By ElKay "Other states need to take the lead from Florida. Of particular note is the Florida Keys." It's really impossible to use the Keys as a model for a major metropolitan evacuation. The residents of the Keys may number 5,000 and by virtue of living there you either have to have a boat or a car, usually both. Because of their vulerability to hurricanes they are more use to evacuating on the first sign of a storm. However, because of the large area and huge numbers of people that a major city has to deal with it is vastly more difficult to conduct. That doesn't mean that governments at all levels shouldn't plan for a mass evacuation.
Originally Posted By SuperDry I have to agree with Kennesaw Tom here: an evacuation of a major metro area (certainly at least in hurricane zones) must be considered. As a Houstonian that chose to stay during Rita, and know many people that were in many different situations (evacuated to another city, tried to evacuate but turned back, chose to stay, and so on), and as someone that's familiar with the area and watched the national and local coverage very closely, I feel that I need to chime in here. First of all, I think we're very fortunate that we didn't suffer a lot of damage in the Houston area, and that the Rita evacuation served as a very important fire drill of sorts. Reportedly, we did get about 50% of the people evacuated. I think there are two big lessons that can be learned from the Houston evacuation: 1. There needs to be a plan in place to open the contraflow lanes on the interstates as soon as the evacuation starts. I haven't researched this in detail, but I get the sense that this never was part of the official plan, but implemented only when there was no other option. If this had been implemented at the beginning, traffic would not have backed up as it did. 2. A plan for maintaining refueling capacity along the evacuation routes needs to be improved. Reportedly, there already is a state plan of some sort to provide for this, but it was not properly implemented. Whatever the underlying problems are need to be fixed. But I would note that if a contraflow plan on the highways was started at an earlier time, you'd not have people stuck in traffic and driving very slowly for nearly as long as was the case this last time, thus reducing the need for fuel. Although things can always be improved, the notion that we can just improve building codes to withstand hurricanes is not feasible. There's no way you're going to be able to build out an entire city such that it can take a direct strike of a Category 5 hurricane without significant damage. And consider that even if you were able to do this economically (or even feasibly from an engineering standpoint), it would take 50 years before even half of the structures were built to this new standard. What are you going to do in the meantime? Also, consider that it would be impossible to hurricane-proof every tree in the area. Even if every structure were to be a reinforced cinderblock fortress, trees are going to fall right and left, and these will block roads and down power lines. Even though Rita made landfall 100 miles away, and Houston for the most part never even got hurricane force winds, there was a substantial amount of power outages. I think the power being out is the biggest problem the city faces in the event of disaster. Without power, you don't have traffic control, ability to pump gas, ability to provide air conditioning (which is a very real problem when it's 95 degrees and humid outside), possibly the ability to provide drinking water, operate stores or food service, or any number of other things. A city simply can't function during a prolonged power outage, and there's not much you are going to be able to do to prevent major, prolonged outages in the event of a direct strike from a major storm.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom This AM on the news they were reporting how many people have died as the result of Carbon Monoxide from using portable generators in enclosed spaces when power went our from the two hurricanes.
Originally Posted By SuperDry A statistic that I heard today is that 22% of Entergy customers in SE Texas are still without power as of today, nearly 2 weeks after the storm. This reinforces my belief that evacuations will always be a necessary component in advance of a hurricane. Rita made landfall as a Cat 3 and there are still widespread outages 2 weeks later. I can't imagine what it would be like if it had been a 4 or 5 and/or hit a large city.
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Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom <<A statistic that I heard today is that 22% of Entergy customers in SE Texas are still without power as of today, nearly 2 weeks after the storm.>> Why don't they bury that stuff? The city of Newport RI got hit with enough hurricanes for them to bury all utilities in the city. Now when there is a hurricane all that happens is a little salt water in the fresh water supply. Becides who wants to see powerlines and telephone wire when your looking at the Hammersmith Farm ( Jackie Bouvier's Mom's home ).
