Emergency Evacuations

The newsletter of the National Association of Development Organizations (NADO) , Rural Transportation News, announces two reports relevant to emergency evacuations in rural areas. Both are available at www.evacuationandtransportation.org. The newsletter gives an in-depth summary of the reports. One examines the capacity of transit and school buses to provide transportation during emergency evacuations in places like the Gulf Coast, where many rural residents do not have cars and hurricanes are a fact of life, making evacuations a seasonal routine. The report also covers coordination and communications.

The other report looks into workforce, operating budget, and communication in rural evacuations. The evacuations discussed n this publication involve moving people from urban areas into rural ones.

From the Archives

Here are some emergency management resources from my old newsletter, with valuable input from Kelly Shawn of the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA).

National Resource Center for Human Service Transportation Coordination (NRC), housed at CTAA:
The NRC website has a page, Emergency Preparedness and Response, with many resources listed. These include materials about emergency evacuation, planning and reentry. Especially noteworthy is Evacuating Populations With Special Needs - Routes to Effective Evacuation Planning Primer Series and Transportation's Role in Emergency Evacuation and Reentry.

CTAA’s Emergency Management Resource Alert page has a wealth of resources listed that address specific vulnerable populations, coordination, rural areas, planning organizations, case studies and more. Also available from CTAA are the presentations from the 2008 Emergency Evacuation Conference.

Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities:
This council has a host of materials, including a couple of items we developed at the NRC, on its web site at http://www.dotcr.ost.dot.gov/asp/emergencyprep.asp.

House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee summary of a hearing, U.S. Mayors Speak Out: Addressing Disasters in Cities about H.R. 3377, the Disaster Response, Recovery, And Mitigation Enhancement Act of 2009. (This legislation has not yet moved forward in either the House or the Senate.)

Future resources

Due out next year is TRB’s A-33 – Communication with Vulnerable Populations: A Transportation and Emergency Management Toolkit.
September 2011 – TCRP A-33: Communication with Vulnerable Populations: A Transportation and Emergency Management Toolkit. Interim report due out in September 2010.
October 2011 - TCRP A-37 [RFP]: Paratransit Emergency Preparedness and Operations Handbook
September 2012 (approximately) – TCRP A-36 [RFP]: Command-Level Decision Making for Transit Emergency Managers