The Ocean State's storm evacuation plan is a work in progress. Escape routes are confusing at best, and the Red Cross says nine shelters is not enough in the event of a major hurricane.

09:11 AM EST on Tuesday, December 20, 2005

BY AMANDA MILKOVITS
Journal Staff Writer

Hurricane Katrina taught a stark, deadly lesson that an evacuation plan and shelters to sustain evacuees are critical. But Rhode Island has no statewide evacuation plan.

Some coastal communities have signs marking evacuation routes, others don't, and existing signs are often confusing. If an evacuation were to occur, there aren't enough hurricane shelters to hold all of the people who would need them.

When Governor Carcieri began asking in the summer of 2004 about the state's evacuation plans, the answers he got were "squishy."

Carcieri ordered the state Emergency Management Agency to put together an evacuation plan for the state, with evacuation routes, ways to inform the public and strategies for sheltering evacuees.

When Katrina hit New Orleans, he asked again, "Where are we?" A month later Carcieri sent out letters to the 21 cities and towns that could be inundated in a severe hurricane. He wanted details: How many evacuees would they have during a Category 4 hurricane? How adequate was their system to notify people? What shelters were easily accessible? Did they have the resources to carry out their plans?

Some communities responded right away. Some have taken months to reply. And their answers have varied. A few towns just gave cursory responses. Some went on at length, identifying shelters, estimating evacuees and outlining their plans. Five communities hadn't replied as of Friday: Bristol, Newport, Middletown, Block Island and Jamestown.

The governor wanted to know if the local plans meshed with the state's 2004 emergency operations plan. The 400-plus page document that sits on a shelf in the office of Robert J. Warren, executive director of the state Emergency Management Agency, gives basic outlines of protocols and chain of command for handling all kinds of disasters. While most local directors said their plans were consistent with the state's plan, others weren't sure.

There was never money behind the governor's demands. Just two people in state government -- Pamela Pogue at the EMA and Stephen A. Kut at the Department of Transportation -- were assigned to work with all 21 communities on statewide evacuations for hurricanes. Neither was assigned to do this work exclusively.

"If I'd been on this thing one hundred percent of the time, I could have gotten this done in four months," Pogue said. "But I'm split in eight different ways."

Off and on, for about a year and a half, Pogue and Kut have met with police, fire and emergency management officials in the 21 communities to map out routes, decide where to place evacuation signs and to locate shelters.

Some communities already had evacuation routes written out, Kut said. The problem was that many towns didn't take into account where neighboring communities planned to send motorists. Some of the routes clashed, with towns sending motorists back and forth.

The statewide evacuation routes are still unfinished. Last week, Pogue was meeting with more towns about the routes.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Norman Menard, deputy director of disaster services for the Rhode Island chapter of the American Red Cross, checks on cots stored in a trailer in Central Falls.

The Journal has requested copies of the evacuation maps for months, without success. Pogue and Kut won't release the maps, saying they're waiting for leaders in each community to formally approve the routes. However, some municipal officials say they have already approved them.

Now there's pressure on the state coming from the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security is asking all 50 states and 75 major urban areas for their plans to evacuate and shelter people in the event of a catastrophe similar to Hurricane Katrina. A team of former state and local emergency management and homeland security officials will visit afterward to determine how good the plans are and what needs to be improved.

The deadline for the self-assessment is Jan. 17. The federal homeland security funds for 2006 could be held up.

TRYING TO FOLLOW the existing evacuation signs presents a challenge.

In Westerly and Warwick, the problem is trying to find any of the blue "Emergency Evacuation Route" signs.

Charlestown has signs directing motorists from the beaches to Route 1 north. But a few miles up the road, another sign has an arrow pointing motorists to Route 1 south.

Narragansett has two kinds of signs: one for evacuation routes and one for a shelter at Pier Middle School. The shelter signs clearly mark the route to the school, and the evacuation signs guide drivers out of town north on Route 1.

South Kingstown's evacuation signs are clear and well-spaced at every major intersection. They lead from the beaches into Wakefield and to South Kingstown High School, where there is a red "Evacuation Shelter" sign at the entrance. But this is the first clue that motorists are being directed to a shelter rather than out of town.

Evacuation routes work for people with vehicles. But not everyone has a way to get out. A few communities have agreements or contracts with bus companies to help evacuate people.

How do they tell people they must leave now? A hurricane brewing in the Bahamas can fly up the coast and be in downtown Providence the next day, so there's not much time to spare.

Cumberland, Central Falls and Pawtucket have a reverse 911 system to notify people of emergencies. Providence is negotiating a $50,000 contract with Verizon for the same system, said city EMA director Leo Messier. He is also registering the city's elderly with the EMA so he'll know who will need assistance in leaving, he said. East Greenwich is building a new police headquarters, which will include a phone, fax and cell phone notification system, to be ready within 24 months, according to police Capt. William Higgins, the town's emergency management director.

Meanwhile, all of the communities will continue to rely on the old-fashioned method: police officers going door-to-door or driving around and yelling through loudspeakers.

The personal touch works. John Aucott was the emergency management director for Narragansett when Hurricane Gloria hit in 1985. He paired Town Council members with police officers to go door-to-door to persuade reluctant residents to leave. If that didn't work, the police asked the residents for their next of kin.

"Nine out of 10 times, they left," said Aucott, who is now the state's homeland security director.

A 1995 STUDY estimated that 131,000 people in Rhode Island's coastal or low-lying areas could be vulnerable in a severe hurricane.

Emergency officials are banking on their past experience with evacuations -- that most people tend to stay with friends and relatives rather than go to shelters.

Just as well, because now that the national American Red Cross has tightened its rules for certifying hurricane shelters, there are only nine hurricane shelters in the state.

"That's not enough," said Nick Logothets, disaster services manager for the American Red Cross of Rhode Island. "If we get clobbered like New Orleans, we're in trouble."

Hurricane shelters can't be in flood plains or in areas that would be surrounded by water from a storm. The buildings must be able to withstand wind speeds of 120 mph. They may be near an area that is at risk, but not in it, and certainly nowhere near hazardous materials. The communities must provide at least one police officer and one firefighter for each shelter. The buildings must have kitchen facilities and, ideally, showers and generators.

There are no Red Cross-certified shelters in Jamestown, Newport or Barrington or on Block Island. Barrington may outfit one of the schools with an emergency generator; otherwise, residents have to leave town for shelter. Newport will send its evacuees to the two shelters in Middletown. People in Jamestown will have to get over the bridges quickly, before they're closed because of high winds; people on Block Island have only ferry service or airplanes to evacuate. Otherwise, both communities have to open their own shelters, without the resources of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross will truck in food and water, currently stored at the Adult Correctional Institutions and other locations, along with blankets and cots to shelters well ahead of the hurricane, Logothets said. Some communities already have blankets and cots stashed. Thanks to a massive recruitment several years ago, the number of Red Cross volunteers has increased from 50 to 1,250 around the state, Logothets said. Most cities and towns have also trained some of their residents as Community Emergency Response Team volunteers, with money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those volunteers can open shelters as well as act as first responders with experience in triage, fire safety, and light search and rescue techniques.

Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

A signpost in Narragansett pointing one way to an evacuation route and another way to a shelter.

With all of these volunteers, the Red Cross can open a designated shelter in less than an hour, Logothets said. The shelters aren't equipped to handle medical issues. And they won't accept pets -- a major reason why some people may not want to go to a shelter..

But evacuees will get the basics to ride out the storm. "If they have to come to a shelter, they're going to be safe, they're going to be warm," Logothets said.

PLANNING and preparation can only go so far. Those involved in emergency management agree: if a hurricane with the force of Katrina smacks into Rhode Island, it's going to hurt us. A lot. If people in some coastal communities don't evacuate, they could die. Buildings would be destroyed and the coastline and rivers would flood. Power could be knocked out in some areas for weeks. The cleanup could take much longer.

But, officials say, next year Rhode Island will be better prepared.

Several communities are working hard to upgrade buildings to be hurricane shelters, Logothets said. He predicts that there will be two dozen hurricane shelters next year, up from the nine ready this year.

The state DOT plans to use computer modeling for the new statewide hurricane evacuation routes, to determine where traffic will jam, possible alternative routes, and the amount of congestion on the roads. The DOT also plans to work with the University of Rhode Island to study people's behavior during evacuations. What they learn may tell them how to get people to leave ahead of danger. There's no timetable for either study.

Local EMA directors want new signs that clearly and consistently mark hurricane evacuation routes and shelters. In South Kingstown, the shelter signs are red. In Narragansett, they are white. Some communities don't have any shelter signs at all.

A committee is studying the design of the signs. Another committee of chamber of commerce representatives, police, and health care officials is looking at ways to inform the public. The committee may consider posting evacuation routes on the Internet, sticking them in fliers, even inserting the maps in telephone books, state EMA director Warren said, but nothing is concrete until the routes are finished.

Warren is hiring an outside consulting firm to work with the local communities on developing thorough hurricane plans, from evacuating people to cleaning up debris left from the storm.

The governor promises the hurricane evacuation plan he wanted will be ready by spring.

"I'm really pushing to make sure we have this stuff done and in place," Carcieri said in his office last week. "I don't want to go into the next season without these in place."

Amanda Milkovits can be reached by e-mail at amilkovi@projo.com

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FIND maps for all of Rhode Island's coastal regions, browse previous parts of this series, and take a survey asking how prepared you are, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2005/disaster/