New Orleans '06 evacuation plan: More buses, no Superdome shelter

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters.

"There will be no shelter of last resort in the event of a major hurricane coming our way," Nagin declared.

The mayor, facing a runoff election May 20, has been widely criticized for failing to get the city's most vulnerable residents out of town as Hurricane Katrina approached.

In the future, Nagin said, the Convention Center will be a staging point for evacuations, not a shelter.

"There will be a mandatory evacuation and I would be shocked if people did not abide by it," Nagin said. "We're dealing with adults, so if you decide to disobey a mandatory evacuation, you are confining yourself to your home in an emergency."

Federal Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had cleared the way for the use of Amtrak passenger trains, Nagin said.

The mayor said the plan will take effect for any storms stronger than a Category 2, which have sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or higher. An alternate plan for smaller storms, relying on temporary shelters set up inside the city, is being devised for those now living in FEMA trailers on front lawns or driveways of their flood-damaged homes, or in small temporary trailer cities. Most trailers become unstable once wind speeds surpass 45 miles per hour, which would be a weak tropical storm.

The major hurricane plan addresses specific problems that arose during Katrina, such as tourists being stranded in hotels and property being further damaged after the storm by looters.

"By default, whether we like it or not, we are the most experienced in this in the United States," New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert said.

Ebbert said the emergency plan calls for a central hotel guest processing center with the aim of ensuring those with return plane tickets can rebook earlier departures.

Last year, many tourists who wanted to leave could not because there were not enough flights or rental cars. Ebbert said federal officials were working with the airlines on a plan to increase the number of departures from commercial and private airports, if necessary, about 36 hours before a storm is expected to strike.

While that plan will be in place for tourists, those with special medical needs and the elderly would be picked up by city, school and church buses and taken to the train station. Those evacuated by bus or train would be brought to shelters set up by the state to the north.

City bus drivers would be considered essential personnel, under orders to work until winds reached dangerous speeds, at which time they would be housed in secure locations, Nagin said.

Similarly, 3,000 national guard troops will be stationed with local police throughout the city prior to a storm, Police Superintendent Warren Riley said. They would go to secure locations during high winds and redeploy as soon as winds died down.

"It will be an overwhelming force," Riley said. "When citizens leave, they will have no doubt their property is protected. Obviously, it is far beyond what we have done in the past."

A dusk-to-dawn curfew will be in place once the evacuation is over. Anyone on the streets after dark will be arrested, Riley said, until the mayor lifts the curfew sometime after the storm.

Nagin added that the city's communications infrastructure is being beefed up and that contingencies for communication failures had been developed. Meanwhile, city fire and rescue personnel have been training with state fish and wildlife officers and the U.S. Coast Guard to better respond to those trapped in flooded or wind-damaged structures.

The new plan also touches on a heart-wrenching decision evacuees faced ahead of Katrina: To board the buses, they had to leave their pets, and some refused to go without them. In the future, evacuees will be allowed to bring pets with them as long as they have some type of cage to safely put them in.

In the day before Katrina, about a million people drove out of the area on interstate highways as authorities converted all lanes coming toward New Orleans into outbound traffic. But many of the city's poor either had no transportation or couldn't afford to leave.

The storm killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana and Mississippi, adding to a devastating hurricane season considered the most destructive in recorded history. About 458 people remained Tuesday on a state list of those who went missing since Katrina, but that figure has dropped steadily as relatives have made contact, even dropping by 500 in the past month.

The new plan applies to a city that now has a vastly diminished population, less than half its pre-storm number of about 455,000. The poor neighborhoods where many became stranded amid Katrina's flooding are largely empty.

To help the recovery in New Orleans and other hard-hit regions, Gov. Kathleen Blanco has proposed a $7.5 billion rebuilding and buyout program. A state House committee approved it Tuesday, and the governor's allies hope to have full Legislative approval by early next week.

Ebbert estimated that no more than 10,000 people at this time would need help evacuating, although that figure could rise as rebuilding continues. Nagin added that the current local population, compressed into the largely middle and upper class neighborhoods that initially survived the storm intact, is "much more mobile."

And the city and state were launching a public information campaign about hurricane preparedness, Nagin said.

"We want everybody to take on their own responsibility for having their own hurricane evacuation plan," he said.

The next Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1 and runs through November, and forecasters are predicting at least nine hurricanes, five of them intense.

First, however, Nagin faces an election runoff. His challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the son of former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu, got 29 percent to Nagin's 38 percent in the April election.