The best way to visualize the emergency management bureaucracy is to think of it as an hourglass where lots of top level pie in the sky planning for disasters takes place. This planning apparently takes place with little contact with state and local emergency planning at the bottom of the hourglass. Hurricane evacuation planning cannot be one size fits all. Besides New Orleans other special areas are Galveston and Key West.

The neck of the Hourglass represents the juncture between the state and federal authorities that can virtually kill the necessary planning between the State, federal and county governments. In the Katrina disaster arguments over jurisdiction between state and federal authorities held up relief efforts for at least a day. All this means is that there was no hurricane evacuation plan for New Orleans. The last minute decision to move people to the Super Dome was a mistake trapping thousands surrounded by flood waters without electricity, bath rooms, food and water. Others who couldn’t get out were trapped in their homes and on freeways.

Here is what should be done. All disaster planning begins by determining the threats and the needs at the local county level. There should be several plans that depend on threat level besides different kinds of disasters. For hurricanes the force level of the hurricane could determine who should be evacuated and how the emergency should be responded to.

Local needs are communicated directly to the state and to the Federal government for their resources and the completion of the plan. Note that there are three parties to emergency planning. Local county governments drive the plan and are ultimately responsible for the plan they are the stakeholders. They bring their demographics to the state for assistance in completing how the resources of the state should be made available. Then the combined local and state plan is merged with the required federal resources and the county plan is finalized. The final step is publicizing the plan so that the public knows how they are to be evacuated. This is bottom up planning, where top down planning is either wasteful or inadequate. When an impending disaster is seen all that is needed is agreement by state, local and Federal governments on which plan to use.

Now lets talk about Katrina and what could have been done. First knowing that a category 5 hurricane was heading directly at New Orleans on Friday should have initiated the evacuation of the entire city because the levies were built to withstand only a category 3 hurricane. As it turned out the levies held at the category 4 level but several breaks occurred in canals within the city and it was flooded. Within a few hours cell phone communication was lost when cell phone relay tower batteries failed. All cell phone towers should have 48-hour backup and the in case of selected areas such as New Orleans they should be backed up with generators. Cell phones could have been used to bring aid to trapped families.

If there had been a plan the Governor on Friday before the disaster struck on Monday could have activated the National Guard and started the evacuation of one third of the state of Louisiana including the entire city of New Orleans. All the school buses in the state could have been commandeered and used to evacuate the city. One lane of the interstate could have been reserved for buses and emergency vehicles going into the city and three lanes going out of the city.

The plan on the Friday before the disaster would also have triggered federal government emergency authorities to start loading trucks with food and water to be sent to where the most likely areas where the hurricane will make landfall. They simply need to follow the needs as determined in each affected county’s plan. Emergency vehicles and supply trucks should arrive just as the storm passes.