New Orleans preps for potential hurricane evacuation during COVID pandemic
1st June 2020 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
As hurricane season officially begins (June 1), the City of New Orleans has plans in place to evacuate its residents safely if the need arises, emphasizing masks and social distancing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the number of coronavirus infections continue to mount, there has been much concern about the potential for COVID-19 spread amongst hurricane shelters. Maura Sullivan, an epidemiologist and advisor for One Concern, co-authored a May 21 report with Danielle Duran and Anand Sampat entitled, “The Impact of Hurricane Evacuation on COVID-19 Transmission,” advocating for higher numbers of smaller shelters, as well as enhanced social distancing and hygiene protocols within those shelters. (The report is available online at https://medium.com/@oneconcerninc/the-impact-of-hurricane-evacuation-on-covid-19-transmission-6030022c30d.)
Sullivan said American cities like New Orleans need to be careful about hurricane evacuations if they want to avoid what recently happened in Bangladesh with Cyclone Amphan. There, the positive COVID-19 test rate recently cleared 15 percent as over 2.4 million people evacuated from coastal areas to overcrowded shelters.
However, Collin Arnold, director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the city is prepared to meet these challenges. Since Hurricane Katrina, the city has made efforts to evacuate those who cannot self-evacuate from 17 evacuspots throughout the city. These locations are available to the public at ready.nola.gov/hurricane.
Residents with access or functional needs preventing them from physically getting to an evacuspot may be eligible to be picked from their homes by a paratransit vehicle through the New Orleans Health Department’s Special Needs Registry. Residents who have trouble walking, who are blind or deaf, are on dialysis, are on life support systems, or have mental health issues or intellectual disabilities should call 311 or go to specialneeds.nola.gov to sign up for the registry. Staff will assist these individuals in determining the best evacuation plan based on their specific needs.
In the past, these evacuees were taken on RTA buses to the Smoothie King Center and then moved to shelters outside of the danger zone. That policy will continue this year, but with some modifications to improve safety.
To mitigate the risk from these bus rides and the time spent in shelters, Arnold said the city will provide medical-grade N95 masks to evacuees. Passengers on the buses to the shelters will be social distanced as much as possible on the ride, as will people in the shelters. This means bus evacuations may start earlier so they can make more trips with fewer people. This also means more shelters will be employed throughout the state, including the possible use of hotels as shelters.
Arnold said there is a concern among city officials that people will be so scared of COVID-19 that they will not evacuate in the event of a potentially catastrophic hurricane. He said the city will only call for an evacuation if the possible loss of life from the hurricane exceeds the potential risk of COVID-19 transmission.
“If a mandatory evacuation is called for, people need to heed that,” Arnold said.
While the city will be doing everything possible to make shelters safe, Arnold said if you have relatives to stay with or can afford a hotel room, then you should take advantage of those options first. Shelters should only be a last resort.
Arnold said all residents should think in terms of evacuating earlier. He said if residents wait until contraflow is initiated 30 hours before expected landfall, that can result in massive traffic jams even with the contraflow. In the past, it has taken people several hours to simply reach Baton Rouge.
“Get on the road as soon as you can get your things together,” Arnold said.
For people evacuating to hotels, evacuees may have concerns about who stayed in the room before them. If you are worried about germs from the person who stayed in the room before you, Sullivan said you can bring wipes or bleach spray to clean surfaces, but the risk of infection there is low.
Arnold agreed that face masks, bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes or spray should be a part of every evacuee’s travel kit.
While New Orleans has done an impressive job of flattening the COVID-19 curve in recent weeks, Arnold warned New Orleanians to stay vigilant on that front. If more people get sick during hurricane season, that increases the likelihood that more first responders will get sick and increase the likelihood that fewer first responders will be available to serve the city in the event of a hurricane.
“The community’s health is directly correlated with the health of our first responders,” Arnold said.
This article originally published in the June 1, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
