One of 17 “evacuspots” located around New Orleans for city-assisted evacuations, this one at the Sanchez Center in the Lower 9th Ward at 1616 Caffin Ave. (Michael Isaac Stein/Verite)
NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane season presents an annual test of the New Orleans area’s collective fight-or-flight response.
In the past, emergency managers tilted toward flight, leading evacuations that moved tens of thousands of people to safer ground before storms made landfall. But as climate change throws faster and stronger hurricanes at the Gulf Coast, local leaders say staying put and fighting through whatever comes may be the more realistic option.
“We’re having very rapid storms with very little notice,” said Collin Arnold, New Orleans’ emergency preparedness director. “Our [evacuation] plans are terrific. They’re viable, workable plans. But, like with Hurricane Ida, we’re not being given the ideal timeline.”
This year’s hurricane season will be nothing close to ideal, if forecasts play out. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting its most active Atlantic hurricane season ever, with 17 to 25 named storms forecast along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Between eight and 13 of these storms may reach hurricane strength and up to seven could be major hurricanes, according to NOAA.
Global warming is heating oceans, moistening the atmosphere, and reducing wind shear – all ingredients for supercharged storms.
“We’re on the front lines of climate that has already changed,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said during the city’s annual hurricane season press conference this week.
The 2024 hurricane season, which begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30, may produce several storms that intensify faster than most cities can evacuate, said Lauren Nash, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in New Orleans.
“We likely won’t have days to decide whether to go,” she said.
Your neighbors really are your first responders.
– New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell
Ida, the last major hurricane to strike southeast Louisiana, leaped from Category 1 status to Category 4 overnight and left no time for mandatory evacuations, Arnold said.
The region’s main tool for city-sized evacuations involved reversing inbound highway lanes to flow out of New Orleans and other heavily populated areas. But this process, known as contraflow, hasn’t been used since Hurricane Gustav nearly 16 years ago.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng doubts future hurricanes will give the three-day heads-up needed to initiate and manage contraflow.
“I just don’t see how contraflow can happen again,” she said at a news conference earlier this month. “We need 72 hours for contraflow. It’s just not even an option for us with rapidly intensifying storms.”
Option 1: Flee the storm
Contraflow is a three-day process requiring a mandatory evacuation in New Orleans and coordination with several local and state authorities, including the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, which must manually change thousands of traffic signals and erect barricades at hundreds of intersections and on-ramps.
“You can’t go to Walmart and buy contraflow off the shelf,” DOTD spokesman Rodney Mallett said. “It takes a while to institute and we have to do it properly and safely.”
Contraflow was effective for slow-moving storms like Hurricane Katrina and Gustav, but several more recent storms, including Laura, Delta and Zeta, went from moderate to severe within hours. Ida became a serious hurricane just 30 hours before it struck the Louisiana coast. That’s less than half the time needed to put contraflow in motion.
Instead, many local leaders urge residents to leave before a mandatory evacuation is issued. For Lee Sheng’s family, that’s as soon as forecast maps show the New Orleans area in a hurricane’s probable track, an area known as the “cone of uncertainty.”
“If we’re in the cone, we’re leaving,” she said.
Mallett cautioned against an eastern or western exodus. Too many evacuees want to drive to Houston or pack their beach towels for a mini-vacation in Florida, he said. But mass movement to these destinations clogs Interstate 10 and can keep evacuees in harm’s way if a New Orleans-bound storm veers slightly east or west.
“During Ida, it was taking people 15 hours to get to Houston,” while the less-traveled route to Dallas took half as long, Mallett said.
A northbound evacuation route is by far the best choice, emergency managers say.
“It’d be a good idea to make friends up north in lovely Monroe or Ruston,” Mallett said.
Option 2: Hunker down
Not everyone can evacuate. Many New Orleans-area residents lack vehicles or can’t afford the expense of being away from home for several or even a few days.
Before Katrina struck, white and affluent residents in south Louisiana were 20% more likely to evacuate than Black and economically disadvantaged residents, researchers at Cornell University found. Similar trends have been documented after storms in Florida and Texas in recent years.
Fleeing a storm can cost a household an average of $177 per day for lodging, transportation, and other expenses, according to research by Texas A&M University surveying Texans who evacuated for Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
But staying can be deadly. Destructive winds and floods are the obvious dangers during a storm, but potentially more concerning are the long power outages that often follow, Arnold said.
“The big challenge for us right now is going to be power loss,” he predicted.
Of the 26 deaths the Louisiana Department of Health attributed to Ida, most happened after the hurricane. At least nine people died from excessive heat during the lengthy blackouts. Six people died from carbon monoxide poisoning while using gas-powered machines to generate electricity, and at least two people died after their portable oxygen tanks stopped working, according to state health department.
Ida’s lessons
Arnold said Ida offered “big lessons” on how to better cope with post-storm outages. Chief among them was the need to improve conditions at the 68 independent living apartments for seniors in New Orleans, he said.
During the blackouts, many of these apartments were abandoned by staff, forcing residents to fend for themselves in darkness and broiling heat.
After Ida, the city enacted a law requiring independent living facilities to obtain licenses, develop emergency plans and coordinate with the city during disasters.
More than two years after the law went into effect, about a quarter of the facilities have not yet applied for licenses, according to the New Orleans Health Department.
The city recently increased fines for out-of-compliance facilities to $100 per day during declared emergencies, a move that should spur change, said Howard Rodgers, executive director of the New Orleans Council on Aging.
The pace of compliance has been slow, Rodgers admits, but that’s to be expected in New Orleans.
“Given how things work in this city, getting to where there’s a quarter that have not complied is progress,” he said.
The city’s other post-Ida improvement efforts include establishing a central emergency supplies warehouse, which should be ready in a month, and setting a goal of doubling the number of “emergency resource centers” in park buildings, libraries and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Not all of the proposed 16 centers have been finalized, but each will have generator-powered air conditioners, phone charging stations and other amenities, Arnold said.
The New Orleans area’s levee and drainage system managers say they’re also nearly ready for hurricane season.
Kelli Chandler, regional director for the Flood Protection Authority East, said levees, floodwalls and floodgates are in working order, but four of the authority’s 17 pumps are undergoing repairs that she expects will be finished in early June.
The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board has all but 10 of its 99 major drainage pumps operating. One of the drainage system’s main turbines is down and awaiting parts that should arrive by the end of June, said Stephen Nelson, the board’s superintendent.
Arnold said the city and other government agencies can only do so much before and after a storm. Like it or not, much of the burden rests on individual residents to prepare for the challenges ahead. Food, gas, power and some police and other emergency services may be scarce for the first three days after a powerful storm.
“We say it a lot: The first 72 hours are on you,” Arnold said.
That’s why city leaders are urging residents to gather supplies, make evacuation arrangements and take ownership of their neighborhoods by clearing out storm drains and checking on neighbors who may need help.
“Your neighbors really are your first responders,” Cantrell said.
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This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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