Texas Reshapes Disaster Plan After Hurricanes

A task force formed to review Texas’ disaster plan in light of the chaotic response as Hurricane Rita approached recommended Monday that the governor direct future mass evacuations.

When a major hurricane threatens multiple counties, task force Chairman Jack Little said, “We believe that for the most efficient management of the evacuation process, you need a single voice that has authority for command, control and communication.”

In September, as Rita roared in the Gulf of Mexico, millions tried to flee but were stuck in traffic jams on major evacuation routes. Hundreds of vehicles ran out of gas, stranding motorists without water or relief from the broiling sun.

About 60 people, including 23 nursing home residents whose bus caught fire on a freeway near Dallas, died during the evacuation. The remainder died from heat exhaustion, heart attacks and traffic accidents.

At a news conference Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the task force’s recommendations would help prevent a repeat of last year’s misery by improving planning and coordination whenever “lives hang in the balance and every second counts.”

The 14-member panel held hearings in six cities and made recommendations in five areas: command, control and communication; evacuation of people with special needs; fuel availability; flow of traffic; and public awareness.

Traffic in Houston on a normal workday is bad, “let alone when a couple million people or more head for the highways within a few hours of each other,” Perry said.

To ease congestion, the task force recommended that more contra-flow lanes be opened on major evacuation routes and that one-lane highways that bottlenecked last year -- causing backups as far as the eye could see -- be widened to accommodate more cars.

The plan also calls for locating fuel and first aid stations along evacuation routes, part of a previous evacuation plan that has not been fulfilled by state authorities, Houston Mayor Bill White has said.

In the small Gulf Coast community of Bayou Vista, Texas, Mayor Bill Jackson opposed putting the governor in charge of evacuations.

“Someone sitting in Austin should not be given explicit authority to order a multi-jurisdiction evacuation, because he doesn’t know what’s going on,” Jackson said. “I don’t see how it can possibly work with Austin calling the shots. When it comes to mandatory evacuation of this town, I’m the one who should be making the decision.”

Jackson predicted that residents of many Gulf Coast towns would resist the recommendations. “I know they’re not going to agree to that,” he said.

But if the Legislature votes to give Perry the power to order evacuations, Little said, local authorities will “have to accept it. It will be law.”