5/5/09: Report Release On 22 Southern Louisiana Parish Emergency Plans
May 5, 2009
Contact: Ben Smilowitz, 314-761-7631
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Disaster Accountability Project Releases Report On 22 Southern Louisiana Parish Emergency Plans
Group Calls For Immediate Intervention To Ensure Parish Plans Are Updated And Available To Public Before Hurricane Season
In March 2009, the Disaster Accountability Project requested and/or reviewed the emergency plans of 22 parishes across South Louisiana to gauge the region’s disaster preparedness and planning readiness in advance of the 2009 Hurricane Season. After a number of destructive hurricane seasons, updated State and Federal disaster plans, frameworks, and annexes, and hopefully many lessons learned, the Disaster Accountability Project assessed plan availability, modernity, and comprehensiveness. A copy of the report was hand-delivered to FEMA Administrator Nominee Craig Fugate at his confirmation hearing on April 22 and emailed to Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness on April 23.
Full Text of Report:
http://blog.disasteraccountability.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/emerg_plan_full_041709a.pdf
Report Findings
11 parish plans were reviewed.
Online and Up-to-date: One parish had a plan posted online and DAP could also verify the plan as updated (East Baton Rouge)
Online: Three parishes had their emergency plans posted online (East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Lafourche)
Up-to-date: At least Two parishes had their plans updated within 6 months of a state plan update* (East Baton Rouge, St. Bernard)
(* Jefferson Parish plan updated in 2008 but specific update date not included in plan. West Baton Rouge update date unknown.)
Comprehensive: Three parishes were 78% fully compliant with the reviewing criteria. (St. Charles, Assumption, Iberville)
Eight parishes were at least 78% fully or partially compliant with the reviewing criteria.
11 Parishes either refused, were evasive, or unresponsive.
2 Parishes that cooperated in January 2009 refused our request in March 2009 (Orleans and Iberia)
(January’s review results were not included in the March report but are available upon request)
Observations
“I’m not sure what’s worse, the failure of numerous parishes to provide their emergency plans upon request, that some parish plans were dated before Hurricane Katrina, or a combination of the two. Billions of federal tax dollars have been spent on preparedness, relief, response, and recovery in Southern Louisiana and these results point to a failure of initiative on all levels,” said Ben Smilowitz, Executive Director of the Disaster Accountability Project.
“Publicly available plans allow all stake-holders to learn their roles, identify and address gaps in planning, and they enable parish residents to better understand what they can and cannot expect from their parish governments,” said Smilowitz. “The Federal government should provide state and local governments with the resources necessary to develop comprehensive and publicly accessible emergency plans and the Governor’s Office should regularly review parish emergency plans and enforce related state laws.”
Report Observations
Despite lessons learned after Katrina, and over three years to fix broken and out-dated systems, many parishes are still ill-prepared, lack public accountability and transparency, and fail to comply with state laws that require their cooperation with disaster preparedness efforts.
Residents of Louisiana parishes hit by Hurricanes Katrina, Gustav, and Ike are still suffering from past storms, and many of these region’s parishes do not have updated or accessible plans as the new hurricane season arrives.
The fact that some Southern Louisiana parish plans are dated before Hurricane Katrina indicates a dangerous inadequacy of oversight. This lack of oversight, coupled with out-dated plans and a widespread absence of initiative on all levels, sets the region on a crash-course toward the same breakdowns in management, inter-government operability, and communications realized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Report Conclusions
The Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness should regularly request and evaluate the comprehensiveness and accessibility of parish emergency plans and end the dangerous practice of only providing technical assistance when it is requested by local emergency managers.
The State of Louisiana and FEMA must work more diligently to ensure parish emergency plans are well maintained, and the State must address communication breakdowns that have led some parishes wrongly to expect and wait for state approval of their emergency plans.
FEMA should attach conditions to its preparedness grants and require the development of comprehensive emergency plans that account for best practices.
Citizens must be engaged to demand increased transparency and accountability in parishes, Louisiana state government, FEMA, and all other aspects of the disaster management system.
The State of Louisiana and FEMA should send teams of specialists to parishes across Louisiana to provide support for local emergency plan development. In fact, state law already requires parish cooperation. DAP hopes that future results of this exercise will not remain so worrisome.
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The Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to the improvement of the United States disaster management systems through public accountability, citizen oversight and empowerment, whistle-blower engagement, and policy research and advocacy. The Disaster Accountability Project’s website is https://disasteraccountability.org.
A toll-free hotline (866-9-TIP-DAP) is available as a public service for disaster survivors, workers and volunteers to report critical gaps in disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery services or planning. The group is recruiting a national network of Disaster Accountability Monitors and Bloggers to help report, verify, and publicize gaps in disaster services or planning.
Disaster Accountability Project is a 2008 Echoing Green Fellowship Organization.
For more information: http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/ben-smilowitz
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