Hurricane Season Starts Today!

Hurricane season starts today. Already, some organizations are predicting "an 80% chance of an above-normal hurricane season" with "4-6 major hurricanes." I'm not making this up. Check out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) lengthy discussion for yourself. There are others. Here are the 2006 tropical storm names.

So the question is this — are you ready?

Here are FEMA recommendations for your family and your property and businesss. Here is a link to the City of Houston Disaster Preparedness Guide. Here is a link to the Governor's Division of Emergency Management. These plans have been enhanced from last year's plans. (One can hope.) Speaking of enhancement, here are the State of Louisiana's plans and the City of New Orleans' plan, including an impressive (so as to avoid culpability) comprehensive plan.

Isn't it good to know that there are now plans in place for New Orleans and Louisiana? Of course, there were plans in place last year.

The story of buses has become the seminal tale of dereliction in New Orleans. Though the city owned hundreds of buses, it failed to use them to move its most vulnerable citizens — vulnerable either because of poverty or physical infirmity — out of the bowl-shaped city to safe higher ground. Initially it seemed as if the city that knew the levees protecting it would one day break just didn't have a plan to move so many people to safety. But it turns out that emergency-preparedness officials in New Orleans did have a plan, and they did think to use buses to evacuate the city before a major hurricane. They just decided not to fully implement it as Plan A. The plan was developed as a hurricane Georges lesson learned. This appeared in an article that appeared in November 2004 in the Natural Hazards Observer:

Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.

So the question after dodging the Georges bullet seemed to be, "Do we figure out a way to use buses or do we allow 50,000 people to die for the crime of not having a car?" They chose Plan B.

Yes, as far back as 2004, New Orleans officials knew what to do. They just decided not to do it. Read the entire article on National Review Online to become even more disgusted.

So, as it turns out, the question is not "are you ready?" The question is, "will you follow your plan?"