Until the emergency plan is finished, Governor Carcieri says, cities and towns can guide any necessary evacuations.

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 27, 2005

BY PETER B. LORD and AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writers

As Hurricane Rita swooped toward the Gulf Coast, millions of people in Texas fled its path -- and were stuck in nightmarish traffic jams that turned evacuation routes into parking lots. And Texas had an evacuation plan.

There is no state plan here in Rhode Island, where traffic snarls on an average beach day and at rush hour can bring the highways to a standstill. If a hurricane comes roaring up the East Coast, people will have a matter of hours to get out of its way.

They'll be left following old hurricane evacuation signs that point traffic away from coastal and flood-plain areas, but don't send them anywhere specific. Some direct people right into the path of heavy evacuation traffic.

Many of the signs are meant to send people to emergency shelters, but some of those shelters are no longer being used, while others are not yet shown on the maps.

Nearly a year ago, Governor Carcieri ordered the state Emergency Management Agency to come up with a cohesive statewide evacuation plan. But it has not been completed.

State and local emergency officials assert that the plan will be completed in time for the 2006 hurricane season.

That has left local emergency officials stuck in a transition in the middle of the current hurricane reason. This year, they didn't even hold their traditional annual hurricane-preparedness seminars.

Carcieri's spokesman said yesterday that progress is being made on the state's emergency-preparedness plan, and that the cities and towns could, if necessary, inform the public about how to evacuate.

"The governor believes if we had to respond to a hurricane this year, we could do so," said Jeff Neal, the spokesman.

However, after last week's state EMA Advisory Council meeting uncovered slow progress and conflicting answers on Rhode Island's preparedness, the chairman, Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty, asked state emergency officials to come up with some immediate solutions.

Fogarty sent a letter on Friday to acting Adjutant General John L. Enright and new state EMA Executive Director Robert J. Warren, urging them to hold a meeting on hurricane preparedness and also to find a way to let the public know about evacuation routes and shelters.

"Watching what has taken place across the country in the last few weeks has made it clear that Rhode Island needs to have the best coordination possible between local and state officials as well as the federal government," Fogarty wrote.

But Warren said yesterday that the state evacuation plan won't be completed until January or February, after the hurricane season. There were also no plans for the handouts that Fogarty suggested could quickly give people information about where they should go in an emergency.

WHILE TWO-THIRDS of the state's population lives in coastal cities and towns, by state EMA estimates only about 130,980 people would be vulnerable to a severe hurricane.

The 21 coastal cities and towns have all come up with their own evacuation plans, and the state EMA is still looking at them to determine whether the plans are feasible.

Pam Pogue, the state program manager for the national flood-insurance program at the state EMA, has been in charge of coordinating the evacuation plans. She did not return calls from The Journal last week and is in Washington, D.C., this week.

Pogue was unable to answer questions left with Warren about which towns have state-approved evacuation plans.

Fogarty blames the slow progress on the dearth of leadership at the state EMA since the former executive director, Albert Scappaticci, left last year. Fogarty criticized Carcieri for not appointing a new director for months.

Warren, the former Cranston fire chief and EMA director, stepped into the state director's job weeks ago.

Carcieri's spokesman defended the long process to select Warren. Neal said that the EMA did have leadership during the interim period under Maj. Gen. Reginald A. Centracchio, the state's adjutant general, after Scappaticci left. Centracchio retired this summer and has been succeeded in the interim by Enright.

Warren said his biggest worries are about low-lying communities such as Barrington, Warren and Newport.

"I tend to worry more about East Bay than West Bay," Warren said yesterday. "There are a lot of chokepoints like [Route] 114 and the Mount Hope Bridge and downtown Newport."

When it comes to evacuating people from the South County coastal communities, Warren says, there are more options -- more roads that can take people away from the water.

SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS could help an evacuation. For instance, the state Department of Transportation has erected a series of warning signs on major highways around the state, and it monitors traffic with cameras that feed images to a DOT Transportation Management Center.

Warren said the state could monitor traffic and announce alternative routes to motorists.

The DOT also has its new 511 telephone system, which transmits localized traffic information to those who call on the telephone.

One of the complaints during the exodus of Houston was that once the state ordered the evacuation, it did too little to manage the flood of cars that turned the 100-mile highway to Dallas into a parking lot.

Dozens of alternative routes could have taken motorists off the one jammed highway and let them go west away from the coastline. But according to one journalist who was trapped in the jam, no advice was transmitted.

Rhode Island would at least have the signs over the highways and five radio transmitters to pass on warnings and advice.

The system has a backup generator designed to keep it going if the power goes out, according to DOT spokeswoman Dana Nolfe.

"If we have the time, if we can get people moving 24 hours ahead of time, we should be all right," said Warren.

The disasters caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita -- and how they were handled by emergency responders -- will be "studied like a battle," Warren said.

Rhode Island officials are trying now to learn from the mistakes in other states, he said, including how to evacuate people quickly. At the governor's request, Warren met last week with representatives from nursing homes to discuss their evacuation plans.

For now, the state is still moving toward a better system. "We all know what can happen here," Warren said. "I don't think we know how bad it can happen here."