Disaster Planning U.S.A. - Get In Your Car And Go!

State and local evacuation plans the United States assume that people own a car! Few if any of these plans make any provision for providing transportation in the case of a "mandatory evacuation" to people who have no car, no truck, no SUV to wisk them away on the interstate to a safe haven away from whatever disaster is about to visit their city.

This was not a secret before the Katrina, we simply choose to ignore the implications. In September 2004, a full year before his city flooded New Orleans mayor Rick Nagin stated that he could not order a mandatory evacuation in advance of Hurricane Ivan because he had no way of evacuating people without cars.

There are 11 million households in the United States that have no motor vehicles. That means as many as 30 million people are left out of the evacuation plan on file with FEMA for their city or region. Thats more people than California, our largest state!

My own state is prone to Hurricanes and its citizens have often been advised to evacuate. Florida's Department of Emergency Management's website, has a chart walking people through the decision of whether they should stay put or evacuate in an emergency, advises citizens in either case to fill their cars with gas. No mention of what to do if you have no vehicle, as is the case for 8.1 percent of Florida households.

How can we make real our promises to each other? We say that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We say that "we the people" form a government to provide for the common defense, we include an equal protection clause in that constitution. How can we leave the poor, the elderly. the frugal, the ecologically aware, and sight limited behind?

Thanks to Allison Stein Wellner, a writing on Alternet for bringing this to my attention.