01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 17, 2006

BY PETER B. LORD
Journal Environment Writer

The state completed a hurricane response plan just in time for this year's hurricane season, which began on June 1. But it failed to meet its next most important goal -- informing the public.

Governor Carcieri said in May that he wanted it done -- fast. He wanted preparedness tips and maps of the evacuation routes mailed to every house in a coastal flood zone.

Robert Warren, director of the state's Emergency Management Agency, said he planned to launch the publicity campaign by mid-June.

Neither goal has been met.

Right now the state is trying to heighten public awareness using a few thousand copies of an old brochure that depicts a hurricane on the cover with a happy face.

An early version included an old Internet address for the state's EMA Web site that no longer exists.

Armand Randolph, the EMA's public information officer, said last week he is doing the best he can in the time available. Randolph has been working on a public outreach campaign since the evacuation maps were published online in February.

One problem, he said, is that he can't figure out how to get addresses just for homes in the flood zones.

Randolph said he has prepared a new booklet targeting vacationers, but he had no copy available. He said he expects 20,000 copies from the printer soon.

Meanwhile, Steve Kass, administration communications director, said last week that the state plans to make a much larger distribution of booklets containing the maps and tips requested by Carcieri. But he says it will take a few more weeks.

Kass said he became involved in the public outreach effort about a month ago when he realized the campaign wasn't going as quickly as the governor wanted. But he said he may have caused some additional delays by trying to research educational materials used in Florida, which has much more experience with hurricanes. But the Florida materials were not readily convertible for use in Rhode Island.

Kass said Carcieri was upset last week that that campaign was behind schedule.

On Friday, Kass said the state would probably award a contact on Monday to a printer for 275,000 new brochures that will be localized with evacuation maps for each town.

The brochures will cost about $135,000, Kass said, and he is not certain how the state will pay for them. It is looking for corporate sponsors.

He expects that they will be delivered within 12 days, and then the state will begin mailing them to every household in all coastal communities rather than just to those in flood zones. Kass said he wasn't sure how the state would pay for the mailing.

Word is getting out in other ways to encourage Rhode Islanders to get prepared:

RIEMA officials have done several radio and television presentations, according to Randolph. The agency has also distributed the old brochures through local insurance companies and is assisting in community meetings.

RIEMA also helped The Journal prepare maps showing flood zones, evacuation routes and shelters. Those maps will be published tomorrow and Wednesday in the Journal's local editions.

Communities have stepped forward to educate their residents. Newport used $7,500 in donations from the Rhode Island State Firemen's League and other sources to produce its own brochures and recruited 50 American Red Cross volunteers to distribute them a week ago. Cranston used a contribution from Sovereign Bank to print its own evacuation maps, and Mayor Stephen P. Laffey delivered many door to door. Warren Fire Chief Alexander Galinelli is urging his town officials to mail evacuation maps in residents' tax bills.

The Rhode Island Chapter of the American Red Cross has made a major commitment to sponsoring community meetings and presenting its "Together We Prepare" program.

Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee spent nearly his entire $50,000 annual allotment for mass mailings to send fliers to 340,000 Rhode households. One side touts his efforts to improve hurricane preparations in Rhode Island; the other urges families to take nine steps to prepare -- including designating emergency contact people, teaching children to dial 911 and setting aside a first-aid kit, water, food and other supplies.

"Clearly it's frustrating that we're not further along than we are," says Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty, who is in the unusual position of chairing the state's Emergency Management Advisory Council, which works with the EMA and advises the governor, while he is running this fall against Carcieri, who is in charge of the EMA.

Fogarty said the EMA has done a better job in the last year with Warren at the helm, particularly when compared with the previous year, when the agency's top post went unfilled. But he said more must be done.

"We clearly don't want to panic people," Fogarty said last week. "But as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go. The public information campaign needs to be improved."

It's tough to get people to pay attention because hurricanes in New England are "low frequency but high impact," says David Vallee, the local hurricane expert for the National Weather Service.

Angie Moncada, communications director for the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Red Cross, says she's convinced the best course is to distribute information locally, with different approaches in each community.

Moncada did communications work in New Orleans after Katrina. She has worked with other professional public relations specialists who volunteer with the Red Cross. And she served on national panels of public relations professionals.

All that work tells her that people have to see hurricane warnings "over and over again" if the message is to sink in, she said.

Moncada said she sees a rising awareness of the need for hurricane preparations. But a recent telephone survey for the Red Cross convinced her that much more needs to be done.

Some 74 percent of the people said they were prepared for a hurricane, but as the surveyors went down a checklist, they found the people weren't as prepared as they thought.

About one-third had first-aid kits and extra food and water, but only 15 percent had an evacuation plan, and only 5 percent knew the location of the nearest shelter.

People were not prepared, the survey found, either because they didn't care or didn't realize the potential dangers, or were overconfident or fatalistic.

Residents of Bristol and Washington counties were more prepared, the survey found, probably because of their proximity to water.

Newport County was least prepared, and that was surprising because most of its households are within 5 miles of the coast.

To improve public awareness, Moncada has met with local emergency management agencies and volunteered to do presentations for residents. She's working on further publicity over the Cox cable system. And Steve Issa, the local chief executive officer for Sovereign Bank, said Friday that the trial program in Cranston was successful and the bank is very interested in co-sponsoring similar campaigns with the Red Cross in more Rhode Island communities.

Moncada works closely with Randolph at the state's EMA and sometimes makes appearances with Vallee from the National Weather Service.

Fogarty said the really critical part of the summer -- when hurricanes are known to form -- is just a few weeks away.

"If a hurricane hits and things don't go as planned," he said, "people won't accept that there wasn't a good mailing list or the right brochures."

plord@projo.com / (401) 277-8036