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How good is county emergency plan?

Monday's meeting of city, county and sheriff's officials will look for holes in the 314-page document and how to plug them.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published September 17, 2005

TAMPA - Under Hillsborough County's emergency plan, people in south county who can't drive to safety will be expected to wave down school buses and hitch a ride.

The "wave down" plan for rural residents depends upon them knowing about it and being in the right place at the right time, which one critic says it could result in "pandemonium."

Then there are the roads.

If there was a large-scale evacuation of the Tampa Bay area, major highways will be converted to one-way routes, but some in law enforcement worry about this being impeded by all the road construction currently under way.

Also several hospitals and nursing homes will have to be emptied.

These are three procedures touched upon in the county's 314-page comprehensive emergency management plan, and three items law enforcement, county and Tampa officials will raise as concerns Monday during a hurricane preparedness meeting.

It couldn't have come at a better time.

"Our cities must have clear and up-to-date plans for responding to natural disasters and disease outbreaks, or a terrorist attack, for evacuating large numbers of people in an emergency, and for providing food and water and security," President Bush said Thursday.

He called emergency planning a national priority, which the Department of Homeland Security will soon review with every city.

The 2001 county comprehensive emergency management plan covers everything from the estimated 630,500 pets to enlisting an army of ham radio volunteers. An updated 2005 draft is under review but it remains, for the most part, similar to the 2001 version.

The county's emergency manager considers it largely sound. But Hurricane Katrina has made some people question parts of it, especially sections on evacuating poor residents.

The county's plan calls for HARTline buses to pick up people at bus stops or when buses are waved down in Tampa and Town 'N Country. When it comes to rural, southern Hillsborough areas peppered with migrant workers and impoverished seniors, the plan calls for school buses to drive down roads and stop for people who hail them.

Commissioner Kathy Castor, who represents south county, called the plan "inadequate" and said she told emergency officials this last year after community leaders didn't buy into it.

"I think it's going to be pandemonium unless you have people trained for this," said Alayne Unterberger, executive director and president of the Florida Institute for Community Studies, which works with southeast county Latinos. "Florida has a huge problem, because we have no transportation and it's worse than we think. How will people get out of here?"

Getting homebound, single seniors on the buses will be difficult, she said. It'll be a difficult sell for undocumented migrant workers, she added, because they distrust government and fear deportation.

Hillsborough emergency manager Larry Gispert said the county has met with the immigrant community, printed a hurricane guide in Spanish and updated Spanish media outlets on plans.

But it's hard to reach everyone.

"There are Hispanics who may be illegal and they normally run when authorities show up," he said. "I don't know if we can ever build trust with them."

He wondered what would be better? In dense cities, the poor can meet at nearby pickup locations. Not so in rural areas.

"In many cases, they're sprinkled out in mobile homes in the middle of nowhere," he said.

The only way to find them is to run buses by them.

Steve Ayers, the School Board pupil administrative services director, said the "wave down" plan isn't perfect. It relies on residents taking steps to be where the buses drive by once radio and TV broadcasts tell them where to go.

"We believe it's a sound plan," Ayers said, "but moving those people those distances is not going to be easy and not going to be quick. It's better than doing nothing."

Better bridges between emergency management officials and schools, neighborhood associations and churches would help matters, Castor said, especially to pinpoint where the disabled live.

She said more needs to be done to make sure they're evacuated, as well as hospitals and nursing homes. Five of 15 hospitals and four of 31 nursing homes sit in evacuation zones.

But Gispert said much of that responsibility lies with nursing homes and hospitals, which must file emergency plans with the county. The county will supply vehicles, he said, but facilities need to decide how to use them.

All hospitals and most nursing homes have filed plans, he said.

For a major evacuation, all lanes of major highways will become one-way. Sheriff David Gee said that plan needs to be updated with the help of the Florida Department of Transportation to reflect construction areas.

He will raise the issue Monday when the mayor of Tampa, county administrator, sheriff, three county commissioners and other officials meet to consider whether there are holes in the plan that need to be filled.

Most everything else, Gispert said, is in place.

"The federal government is welcome any day to come down and review our plans," he said.

He's getting tired of reporters and government officials calling for quick fixes as post-Katrina worrying has reached a fever pitch.

People need to "chill," he said.

"What I"m trying to tell people is that the Katrina thing is not over," he said. "They have not gone through an afteraction review. The only thing that we have is anecdotal evidence that you see on CNN and MSNBC, and I don't count on national TV."

Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 17, 2005, 02:15:31]