Kiefer and Montjoy (2006) contend that the development of a disaster management network in Louisiana began in the months following the events in September 2001, with the development of the National Response Plan (Kiefer and Montjoy 2006:124). As part of this program, local governments are expected to “form plans, submit them to state agencies for approval and consolidation, and then submit them to [the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)] for review and approval” (Ibid). For Louisiana, this network of disaster management was composed of the Office of Homeland Security, the Army, and the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) in New Orleans. Following the creation of the original network, the arrangement was …show more content…
The initial Contraflow Plan was first tested during Hurricane Ivan in 2004; at the time, however, the system was largely considered to be a failure of communication and control (Kiefer and Montjoy 2006). Following that evacuation process, the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, ordered the DOTD to form a new task force in an effort to revise the existing Contraflow Plan. Over the course of the next year, the state police force, the DOTD, the American Red Cross, and the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness developed a new traffic plan for the evacuation of New Orleans. This improved plan recommended a phased evacuation process that emphasized greater coordination between parishes, and additionally funded the creation of several new entrance ramps in order to assist the continuous flow of traffic over the course of the evacuation process (Kiefer and Montjoy …show more content…
At four o’clock in the evening on Saturday August 27, the New Orleans police department activated the Contraflow Plan for the city of New Orleans. Once activated, the plan would “involve the collaboration among two states, eight parishes, and multiple law enforcement agencies, emergency planning offices, the local media, and volunteer organizations” (Kiefer and Montjoy 2006:126). Initially, the evacuation for the city of New Orleans was voluntary, and was intended to begin almost thirty hours prior to the expected landfall of the storm. The initially voluntary nature of the evacuation process was a result of the Evacuation Plan developed by the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering organization, which stated that parishes have the ability to begin voluntary removal prior to the declaration of a mandatory evacuation (Farber and Chen 2006). The Louisiana Disaster Act, however, established as part of the state’s disaster management network, specifically “empowers the Governor, upon the declaration of an emergency or disaster, to ‘direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area within the state if he…deems this action necessary for the preservation of life or other disaster mitigation, response, or recovery’” (Ibid:80). In turn, after much