It's time to start holding regular evacuation drills along our coasts.

[Barack_America]

As devastating as Sandy was, she was a mere slap to the face compared to what Mother Nature can (and likely will) deliver in the age of climate change.

What we're seeing in Staten Island highlights that citizens, and local officials, haven't taken these storms seriously enough and are not prepared. People obviously did not have a hurricane plan in place, did not heed evacuation warnings and did not prepare themselves. Local officials appear to not have done enough to enforce evacuations and coordinate the logistics of evacuation and disaster relief. The front-line defense of getting people out obviously failed. FEMA and the Red Cross are well-practiced and will get people help, but it's a shame that they are being relied upon so heavily. I remain concerned that local officials are not adequately prepared and informed about the needs of their own electorate to successfully direct these resources.

It's time to get people along our coastlines from Maine to Texas and back over to Washington state to start actively drilling their responses to future costal disasters. When you've got the families of first responders ignoring evacuation warnings in flood zones, your citizenry and government is obviously not ready.

[LiberalLoner]

1. That sounds like a good idea, except I'm not sure there are enough roads for some cities.

To give an example, I once made the mistake of trying to drive out of NoVa on the day before Thanksgiving. We drove for ten hours that day and only made it to Pennsylvania.

Imagine how much worse it would be if there were some emergency where everyone HAD to get out of town all at once. Just impossible, there are not enough roads.

I'm guessing it must be about the same in NYC. Probably worse even. And not everyone in NYC owns and drives a car, so would there be enough buses for everyone?

I think there might not be any easy solutions to this problem of how to evacuate densely populated areas in a timely manner. I wish there were but I can't think of any.

Edited to add: It's not that your idea isn't great, I mean we do need to do something to make sure people are safe, but I'm just thinking of how bad the traffic gets in DC even on regular days and I just don't know how to make it happen, how to get people out of town quickly.

[Barack_America]

5. That's for city officials to figure out and coordinate.

Generally, evacuations are timed, so that one area evacuates and then another. Those who can't go are directed to shelters. A list is made of those who refuse to leave. I don't see that any of that happened in NYC.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. Oregon has already started doing drills on the coast..I agree every locality in such

zones should do so as well. Here is a story about one drill, in Newport Oregon.
http://oregoncoastdailynews.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/tsunami-evacuation-drill-successful/

[Barack_America]

7. I read about that. Very smart. Japan obviously practiced Tsunami drills for decades.

Which saved many, many lives.

[tessar]

3. National Job program: bury power lines; retrofit coastal cities n/t

[Lionessa]

4. Ridiculous. No one would participate, they'd instead go to work, or to school, or

whatever they normally do. Evacuating a city for a drill, particularly one with any actual population (sorry Oregonian above, you're coastal cities are tiny), would never work nor be in anyway accurate to any actual comparison to a truly needy time.

Besides as far as I can tel from reportsl, very little of what is going on after Sandy passed through had much to do with evacuations, but instead with infrastructure, primarily electricity and other utilities.

[Barack_America]

6. Actually leaving the city is not necessary. They don't actually crash planes full of people...

...to practice that either.

It's simulated. The people pretend to leave (i.e. work through their evacuation plan) and the officials work through a simulation of how to get them out and solve problems that could arise.

[Lionessa]

8. Little bit different than drills to evacuate a city, which actually takes participation.

It didn't seem as though it had anything to do with first responders not being prepared in the case of Sandy. So you're type of preparedness drills don't appear required as you suggest.

Evacuation was simply not the problem this time, nor were first responders. You're pointing to the wrong things entirely. Instead it would make more sense to shore up the infrastructure to withstand these things than to have bogus emergency drills beyond what they already do.

[Barack_America]

10. How tall are your seawalls going to be?

To keep homes along the waterfront from flooding?

Infrastructure can't solve some problems, people have to be prepared to get out. On Staten Island, many people on the water stayed, and officials don't seem to know who stayed and who went. Officials don't seem to have a count of how many people were left in order to gauge how much of what supplies were needed and where. That is a failure. FEMA, National Guard, Red Cross, etc. are supposed to act as an extension to local government, they are not meant to comprise the whole of the response, as they appear to be doing on Staten Island.

[Lionessa]

12. So you're problem isn't with a ability to evacuate, it is with the fact some choose not to.

Good luck with drills helping that aspect at all.

If people stay regardless of evacuation notices, then they are SOL and it still isn't something drills would help.

You're so stuck on the idea that more than what they already do in the way of drills and consideration is required and yet cannot really give a valid reason why. Or you're oblivious to how your suggestion won't help what's going on in the aftermath.

Oh, well, good day.

[Barack_America]

14. Nope. My problem is local officials have no idea who stayed and who went.

No idea where people are and what they might need. The media is currently playing this role, which is why FEMA and the Red Cross are responding to news reports, rather than information from local officials. Local officials were not prepared and coordinated for this storm. That is my point and the point of this entire thread.

Individuals citizens, particularly those on the water, need to be encouraged to make an evacuation plan (I assure you they will not support the erection of a 20 foot wall between their property and the water). Local officials need to know what these plans are so they can get a sense of how many people they will need to shelter. When a storm hits, individuals enact their plans and local officials need to keep a list of who stayed and who went, that they can then hand over to the National Guard, etc. The fact that they were not prepared to do this is disappointing and frightening given that this city experienced the worst terrorist attack in our country's history and were given ridiculous amounts of DHS $$ to make these plans.

[PD Turk]

9. Time to build some seawalls

We'll need to build seawalls, levees and whatever else works to help lessen the damage from these storms. We can't just move away from the coasts, we need to operate the seaports and other shipping infrastructure and people need to live there to do it. It might just be time for the next great public works project in this country, we all rely on the seaports.

[MrYikes]

11. If I lived there, my family would have its own plan.

[Barack_America]

13. As you should. And city officials should have a list of who lives where...

...who went, who stayed, etc. They do this in areas like Florida, time to expand that effort to coincide with the expansion of our oceans.

That's all I'm saying here. But, for some reason people think a better plan is to build 20 ft seawalls between beachfront property and the water? I'm sure homeowners are going to go for that!