Disaster official at NY symposium

Newsday reported Emergency officials who prepared Louisiana's plan for responding to a major hurricane never guessed that one of their duties would be to protect aid workers from gunmen, one of the state's senior disaster officials said Monday. Speaking at a symposium in New York, Arthur Jones, chief of disaster recovery for Louisiana's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness,

What is the chief of disaster recovery for Louisiana doing at a symposium in New York. Why is he not back in Louisiana working with everyone else?

said he was caught off guard by the violence in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. No disaster planner, he said, predicted that people would loot gun stores after the storm and shoot at police, rescue officials and helicopters. Jones said the flow of aid to the city was delayed because officials were not able to guarantee the safety of American Red Cross workers and other volunteers. "That's never been in any plan," Jones said in an interview following his speech to the emergency response officials at the symposium. "Unfortunately, in the future, it will have a place at the table."

Another thing that should be on the table is when the President has troops ready to send in, and the Governor refuses to allow it, and only calls up a few of her National Guard, that something needs to be done to get the Governor's attention.

Jones took time off from his disaster recovery duties Monday to participate in the symposium on emergency preparedness sponsored by New York Downtown Hospital. The event was planned months before Katrina hit.

And he wanted a vacation.

Jones initially was scheduled to lecture on lessons learned by studying a simulated storm, dubbed Hurricane Pam. The analysis of the fictitious storm was still under way when Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The projections from the simulated hurricane proved strikingly accurate, Jones said. Planners had anticipated that the storm would cause a catastrophic flood that would leave much of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for months. Jones said planners learned better lessons from Katrina, including the need to have more satellite phones for rescuers and better funding for flood protections throughout the Mississippi delta.

That is a good idea. Cell phones went out when the cell towers were flooded and power went out.

He also said the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans could have been lessened if more people had heeded orders to leave the city as Hurricane Katrina approached. Jones complained that a mandatory evacuation order issued by New Orleans' mayor the day before the storm went "essentially unheeded" by tens of thousands of people. Many of those people later sought refuge in the Superdome, which Jones said hadn't been stocked with food or water because it was only supposed to have been used as a shelter of last resort.

Are people who go to a "shelter of last resort" not expected to be hungry or thirsty? Is that why the Red Cross was not allowed to bring them food and water? If you did not want them to stay there, which was the Mayor's excuse for not letting the Red Cross in, then why did he not move the buses to the Superdome so they could get people out as soon as they arrived.

"Should the people have gotten out? Should have," Jones said. "What does `mandatory' mean to everyone in here? If someone tells you it is mandatory to get out of this room right now, what are you going to do? I'm headed for the exit."