Post-evacuation IDs await online system
By Meghan Gordon
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Business owners who want to jump-start their companies after mass evacuations will likely have to wait until next hurricane season to test a regional system of identification cards, said Jefferson Parish’s emergency director.
Deano Bonano told the Harvey Canal Industrial Association at its September board meeting that an online registration system is still in the works for the re-entry placards. Bonano has worked for the past four months with emergency directors from Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes to develop identification cards that would eliminate the haphazard checkpoint enforcement that was common in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.
Bonano initially had tried to make the IDs available before the end of this hurricane season in November, but he said businesses shouldn’t expect to use them until next year.
The three-tiered system would allow first responders and emergency contractors into the four parishes immediately after a hurricane. Bonano said businesses’ small disaster-response teams would be given access as soon as major roads are cleared of trees and power lines to get their gas stations, groceries, banks and other basic necessities ready for the general public to enter the parishes in the final wave of return from evacuation.
Bonano said that once the computer system is ready, business owners may apply for a unique registration number, which will appear on an embossed seal on each employee’s card. All employees, including any subcontractors registered by the business, must carry letters verifying their status as emergency responders for the company.
Also during his Sept. 7 address at the Four Columns, Bonano ran through a host of improvements the parish has made to its emergency protocol and equipment. Jefferson has spent millions since Katrina on safe houses for pump station and water treatment operators, a 700-MHz public safety spectrum radio system, and new antennas and repeaters that will be sheltered during storms and installed afterward to ensure they aren’t rendered inoperable by high winds and flying debris.
The parish is also developing a system to communicate directly with citizens. By next year, Bonano said residents would be asked to register their cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses into an online database, allowing the parish to send out mass text messages, Blackberry notes and e-mails with specific information on flooding and other damage in each ZIP code.
Deputy Chief Newell Normand of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office gave the group his own list of hurricane preparations made by the police department since Katrina. Normand called staffing one of his biggest concerns, even after issuing two pay raises.
“We’re in a wage war,” he said. “We lose as many as five people in a week and gain two.”