Evacuation Planning In Texas Before and After Hurricane Rita

How has evacuation planning changed in Texas since Hurricane Rita? Here, we look at a few of the state’s major considerations, and examine what work the state is doing to improve evacuations as well as what it still needs to do.

Planning and Coordination
As the hurricane approached, an estimated 3.7 million people evacuated the Houston area and Texas coast. Preliminary data indicates 118 deaths were connected to the hurricane, but the state has yet to determine if the storm itself, the evacuation, or other mitigating factors were responsible for those deaths. News reports, however, have linked at least 60 of those fatalities to the evacuation, including 23 residents of an assisted-living facility who perished in a bus fire.

In response, the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management (GDEM) has set up five regional evacuation plans. The state has also set up several command structures to organize evacuation and emergency response, but has not yet fully implemented a recent recommendation to set up a facility and group of people to comprise a regional unified hurricane evacuation command structure. Also, according to the GDEM, the state has had incident management teams in place for nearly a year. These groups of highly trained first responders can mobilize quickly to assist with emergency response in disaster areas.

Funding for a statewide radio system has been held up, largely because of an administrative reorganization. Officials, however, believe the state is on schedule to meet its goal of statewide Level 4 interoperability by the end of the year. Level 4 interoperability exists when firefighters, emergency medical personnel and law enforcement officers can have immediate radio communications with each other anywhere in the state using their own equipment on designated channels. Prior to the interoperability plan’s release, 21 of 24 regional councils of government were operating at Level 3, meaning that only radios on the same frequency band (VHF, for example) could communicate with each other. This will be alleviated with Level 4 interoperability. Once local jurisdictions receive funding, it will be up to them to determine whether they need to purchase new equipment or simply reprogram existing equipment.

Evacuation before Hurricane Rita’s landfall also highlighted a number of shortcomings in exit routes for residents that the state still needs to address. Essential needs, such as food and restrooms, were scarce along some evacuation routes and unattainable on highways along which local officials prohibited motorists from exiting. Recommendations to improve this include pre-staging portable toilets along the evacuation routes and making them easily accessible to evacuating residents.

Other coordination concerns focus on whether additional entities should be involved in regional and statewide evacuation plans. Many school districts were left out of evacuation planning, and animal shelters also recommended developing contingency plans for people who will not evacuate without their pets or, at a minimum, ensuring the safety of their animals.

And at least one post-Rita change has been difficult to implement because of lack of funding. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) was tasked with purchasing and installing real-time traffic counters along evacuation routes to measure the number of evacuees. While TxDOT identified 82 sites where it could install Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) units along evacuation routes, it does not have the $23 million to purchase the units. The department is estimating these units will not be in place until the 2007 hurricane season at the earliest.

Traffic and Mobility
Studies conducted prior to the 2004 hurricane season indicated the existing roads could handle the expected traffic surge. Those forecasts, however, did not take into account how many more people would feel compelled to evacuate after witnessing the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina – especially the problems faced by residents of New Orleans who had failed to leave early enough.

Another problem, the need for fuel, was exacerbated by long waits on the evacuation routes, during which many cars ran out of gas. Making matters worse, plans to use National Guard trucks to refuel stranded vehicles failed because the trucks were equipped with nozzles that could refuel jets but not cars. In addition, many evacuation routes in rural areas have very few gas stations. Once power went out at some stations, their fuel pumps became inoperable.

The staggered evacuation system also encountered serious problems due to the unprecedented number of evacuees. Residents in low-lying areas were first in line to leave, but this system broke down as residents in higher elevations – fearful of a Category 5 hurricane – fled before many low-lying residents had evacuated.

The heavy backlog of traffic leading away from the coast while highway lanes heading toward the storm were virtually empty. Texas Governor Rick Perry eventually ordered all lanes on two interstates to move traffic in one direction away from the storm, a tactic known as contraflow. But contraflow was not in state plans and it took the relevant agencies almost 12 hours to implement. Officials originally ruled out plans to use contraflow on busier highways because of the logistical problems and manpower needed to employ such a tactic.

The Texas Department of Transportation is developing a plan to adopt contraflow into the evacuation plans. In addition to the extra manpower needed to erect and enforce barricades, the Rita evacuation highlighted a number of other difficulties with contraflow. Many motorists were not allowed to exit the highways despite a variety of needs, ranging from medical assistance to picking up relatives or children from day-care. Additionally, fuel and other urgent supplies need to be positioned prior to employing contraflow, or efforts to supply aid to areas nearer the coast would slow evacuation efforts.

To address some of these issues, a 2005 state Office of Homeland Security report identified eight evacuation routes in need of improvements. TxDOT has already completed three of those improvements, and has scheduled work on at least two more.

Other mobility concerns focused on evacuation routes and host cities for citizens fleeing coastal communities. Under a mandatory evacuation, residents are ordered to use only identified major highways, but some officials are urging the use of alternate roads to ease congestion.

As for fuel availability, the state may need incentives for gas stations to obtain power generators by giving those stations priority when emergency fuel supplies reach an affected region. TxDOT has formed a work group to ensure fuel is available along evacuation routes and is currently identifying service stations that have the capacity to handle large numbers of vehicles without creating more traffic on the roads.

Special Needs Population
The evacuation of elderly, disabled and infirm residents revealed problems in communities across the coast. Nursing homes not licensed by the state, for example, are not required to have emergency evacuation plans. In other cases, arrangements made by nursing homes to shelter or transport their residents were compromised when state and federal officials took beds or vehicles the nursing homes planned to use. Additionally, several bus and private ambulance companies the nursing homes contracted did not fulfill their duties to transport residents, either because they were double-booked or because their drivers already had evacuated.

Because many elderly and disabled citizens do not live in specialized facilities, some counties are building databases of the names and addresses of residents who need special assistance during evacuations. Not all the coastal communities can follow this, however, chiefly due to privacy concerns connected with gathering residents’ personal information. The Florida Legislature has enacted legislation requiring all counties to maintain a special needs registry allowing people to voluntarily and confidentially sign up if they need assistance in an emergency. Residents can also authorize emergency personnel to enter their homes for search-and-rescue operations during an emergency. The program is available to special needs residents as well as those who do not have access to transportation.

Exercise and Evaluation
GDEM scheduled and ran traffic management tests in each of the five hurricane evacuation regions in June 2005. These tests focused on ensuring all emergency officials knew their roles and properly coordinated with one another. The tests were not designed as logistical examinations of road capacity. A state-wide evacuation exercise was held in early May 2006.

About the Author
This article was adapted from one that originally appeared on February 14, 2006 in the House Research Organization’s Interim News, Number 79-2. The House Research Organization is an independent, nonpartisan administrative department of House Research Organization that reports on legislation and issues considered by the Texas Legislature.