NO Hurricane Improvements

Dear President Bush,

Mayor Nagin just announced City of New Orleans (NO) hurricane improvements for the upcoming 2006 season. He cited plans to evacuate citizens without transportation via a system of buses and trains. The Mayor thanked Sec. Chertoff for his assistance with Amtrak train capacity to move 10,000 special needs persons, the elderly some with medical conditions.

Absent from the news report is any information on how hospital and nursing home patients will be evacuated, both pre and post storm. The City of New Orleans joins the White House in not making specific plans to provide for the most vulnerable in acute and long term care facilities.

Your Lessons Learned report provided no real evaluation of what happened post Katrina as it failed to identify those responsible for those evacuations and passed on assessing their performance. It left out that the Louisiana Hospital Association, a trade and lobbying group, did the job of emergency management experts in arranging and facilitating the transfer of trapped hospital patients and staffers. It also left out 24 patient deaths in a LifeCare facility post storm, purchased just weeks before by the Carlyle Group. When did your father last work for Carlyle?

I did note that plans are being made for travelers. Having tried to comply with a voluntary evacuation order in Miami Beach last September as Hurricane Rita neared South Florida, I am most familiar with the business or tourist traveler’s challenge of flying out just prior to a storm’s landfall. I would characterize the airlines response as “You can go if you’ve got the dough!” We did get on the last plane to DFW before Rita swiped the Keys. (While there I did note specially equipped military C-130’s evacuating hospital and nursing home patients from the Keys prior to the storm. Does Mayor Nagin know about that?)

I am curious how Sec. Chertoff is going to get airlines to fly more planes into a soon to be hurricane zone, risking their gear and their staff? And how will he get them to serve passengers already with a ticket without that surcharge? We paid American an extra $1,000 for 3 seats showing Rita in our rear view mirror. Not happy in the least about paying the surcharge, I took what I viewed as extortion as “the price people with resources pay to evacuate before a hurricane.” Once again, I wondered what people without did?

How will Sec. Chertoff incentivize airlines to haul ticketed passengers out early for free or a low charge? Do I smell more corporate welfare cooking? Write me back, I want to know, especially about the hospital patients and plans for next time.