You're On Your Own

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That is precisely what the city and state want. In announcing evacuation plans in early May, the city's embattled Mayor Ray Nagin, who won re-election Saturday, pointedly noted that there would be no shelter of last resort like the Superdome or "vertical" evacuations to hotels downtown. He said the city would be calling more readily for evacuations, ordering everyone out for a hurricane as weak as Category 2. The state last week geared up shelter plans, identifying places for 55,000 evacuees--more space than was available last year after the Superdome closed. In addition to Red Cross facilities, the state said it would open up its own shelters and has called in advance for help from the Federal Government.

While stressing that residents should arrange for their own evacuation, Nagin has promised that buses and trains would take those without transportation, as well as the elderly and people with special medical needs, to out-of-town shelters before a storm hits. The state, which has responsibility for transportation, has already contracted with private coach companies and school districts for an unknown number of buses. State help is key since the Regional Transit Authority, which runs public transportation in New Orleans, has only about 100 operating buses that survived Katrina. A new system of processing evacuees at two locations in New Orleans--the convention center and Union Passenger Terminal--gets its first real test during this week's hurricane exercise.

Complicating matters for city hurricane planners is the current state of the city's emergency workers, with police and fire employees largely working out of trailers--about the worst place to be in a hurricane. Unlike the police, which had scores of defections in the aftermath of Katrina, the fire department had none. But of the 600-plus firefighters, 100 are out sick on any given day, much of it ascribed to Katrina-related illnesses, says Superintendent Charles Parent. To avoid a repeat of last year's looting, Police Superintendent Warren Riley has promised that the city's cops will be on the streets patrolling with National Guard troops and enforcing a 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew on those who don't leave. He has already asked for 3,000 Guardsmen for the next storm, whenever it comes.

Communications are expected to be a huge headache yet again. During Katrina, New Orleans overnight lost $500 million worth of telecom structure--fiber-optic and copper wire--leaving the city's emergency-operations center at city hall with a superfast T1 line as useless as a set of tin cans. Deputy mayor Meffert ended up handing out Nextel walkie-talkies for all the out-of-town help and cobbling together a voice-over-Internet communications system out of old computers, which still serves the city.