Preparation plan receives high marks, with just a few glitches
By Terri Langford
Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2007 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
HOUSTON — From all sides, Hurricane Dean was a nasty bully, a Category 4 storm packing 145 mph winds with no signs of backing down, its roving eye set on a showdown in the Gulf of Mexico as it zoomed through the Caribbean.
Texas officials, bruised from the logistical nightmare that was Hurricane Rita, were not about to be caught short this time.
After months of statewide disaster drills and planning, it was showtime for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Division of Emergency Management during the agency’s first big test since Rita came barreling through in 2005.
The effort was impressive.
Nearly a week before a ceiling of warm air locked Dean on a path to Mexico, more than 1,300 buses swarmed to San Antonio, then pressed on to Brownsville and McAllen. Another 1,600 were on standby throughout the state. Twenty-four gasoline providers pushed 4 million gallons of fuel into service stations along Texas’ coastline as the state’s electronic highway signs directed residents to “KEEP YOUR GAS TANKS FULL.” More than 5,000 Texas National Guardsmen were activated and sent to the Texas border to assist along with more than 1,100 paramedics, police officers and firefighters.
At least 25,000 people were involved in the mobilization effort.
Not everything went as planned, but as vehicles and emergency personnel returned home this past week officials already were fine-tuning how to respond next time.
“Did we learn something? You bet we did,” Texas Emergency Management Chief Jack Colley said.
First, things that went right. A week before Dean arrived, the state activated its emergency center in Austin and officials from state agencies, the fuel and grocery industries were summoned. Subsequent command centers opened in Laredo, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley, Houston and Corpus Christi.
In San Antonio, the Alamodome transformed itself overnight into a transit outpost, the last gas and maintenance gateway for more than 300 rescue vehicles and buses, which were all federally inspected and outfitted with electronic tracking devices. Federal and state aircraft were located and stripped down quickly to accommodate medical litters.
“From my perspective they (state officials) have put in an enormous amount of time and effort in this,” said Dr. David McIntyre, the director of Texas A&M University’s Integrative Center for Homeland Security. “I was very impressed with the level of detail.”
Cities large and small stepped up quickly and without debate. Dallas County Schools, the transportation arm of the Dallas school district, not only sent 100 school buses but equipped them with water and ice, toys for children, pet food and animal carriers. In tiny Elgin, just outside Austin, the school district set up an impromptu mini bus-driving school for 500 Texas National Guardsmen sent, along with 5,500 other soldiers, to the Rio Grande Valley.
“I could go on and on, however, my point is we don’t need the federal government’s permission to take care of Texans,” Colley said.
When TxDOT’s highway signs began flashing by Friday, urging coastal residents to fill up, the response was immediate, according to Martin Padilla, the state’s fuel coordinator and regional response manager for Shell Oil Corp.
Consumer demand in the Houston and Galveston areas spiked by 50 percent the Friday and Saturday before Dean hit the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday.
Texas transportation officials and Padilla’s fuel team controlled gas inventories better, flooding the Texas coastline with gas five days before the storm hit, then moving it along evacuation routes.
Another 200,000 gallons of gas were trucked into the Valley to assist the evacuation.
The lack of this type of orchestration two years ago left Houston without gas for nearly a week as panicked residents drained every service station pump and gas trucks became entangled in the resulting evacuation traffic.
Valley poses challenges
Once fuel needs were met, officials moved onto the next challenge, moving evacuation vehicles to the Texas-Mexico border.
The Rio Grande Valley, at least five hours drive time by car from San Antonio, presents a unique challenge.
“You have to treat the Valley different than any other evacuation zone,” said Steve McCraw, Texas Homeland Security director. “You need more time.”
Knowing that, calls began going out to a commercial bus provider and state school districts. President Bush’s pre-landfall disaster declaration on Saturday, Aug. 18, allowed the state to incur evacuation costs that later could be reimbursed by the federal government.
The evacuation buses were routed through San Antonio, where federal bus inspectors checked for any problems to head off a repeat of the tragic bus fire that occurred during the Rita evacuation. On Sept. 23, 2005, a bus carrying 23 senior citizens from Bellaire to Dallas caught fire, killing all 23. An investigation revealed a series of maintenance problems led to the fire.
The extra check paid off. At least 71 commercial buses failed inspections.
But instead of sending the buses back from where they came, crews immediately fixed the deficiencies — mostly windshield wiper, lights or air conditioning problems — on 41 of the buses and put them back on the road to Brownsville.
Not only is the Valley remote, it is one of the poorest regions in the state and many of its residents are without vehicles.
By Colley’s count, Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties have 133,500 frail, disabled, elderly or car-less people who would not have been able to evacuate themselves. About 80,000 of those “special needs” residents live in colonias, poor, unincorporated subdivisions lining the border with little or no access to drinkable water or sewers.
Colonias, for the most part, are in the flood plain. If Dean had hit, evacuating this population, along with many of the more than 1 million in those three counties alone, would have been an arduous task.
Considering this, the idea that so many buses and rescue equipment, personnel and volunteers were sent and sent early, doesn’t seem like wasted time or expense, according to Colley and other experts.
“I will gladly pay this and have nothing happen than having to pay 10 times or 20 times more when the storm hit,” Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos said. “It’s an investment that we’re going to have to incur.”
The glitches, fixes
Disaster drills paid off according to officials across the state.
As Dean loomed, Houston officials had several daily conference calls within the region and with Colley’s team from Friday through Sunday when it became apparent that Dean was headed farther south.
“It actually turned out to be a very good exercise,” Dennis Storemski, Houston’s Public Safety and Homeland Security director said of Dean. “What we learned is all the work that we’ve done since Rita, will work.”
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett reported more people registered with the state’s 2-1-1 system, which records residents who believe they will need help evacuating.
After Rita, about 6,000 Houston-area residents had their names put on the list. Post-Dean, there are now 19,000.
Most of the problems for coastal cities were minor. Things such as out-of-date e-mail addresses and phone numbers, said John Simsen, Galveston County emergency management coordinator. Some Galveston County workers had to navigate their way through new software without any training.
But as Dean passed over central Mexico, officials already were noting ways to improve.
Room for improvement
In Brownsville, sandbag distribution became uneven quickly and that needs to be fixed before the next storm.
“Every city was doing their own thing,” Cascos said of the Valley’s response. When one city ran out of sandbags, residents would go to the county precinct offices and take all they had. The result was that some cities ran out quicker than others.
“That’s something that can be fixed rather quickly,” Cascos said.
Cascos also hopes to find a better way of disseminating information through the media.
McCraw and Colley are writing down their own suggested improvements.
Although Elgin’s quick-thinking efforts to train guardsmen to be bus drivers garnered praise from Colley and McCraw, it made them both realize that such training is needed in the winter or spring months, before hurricane season begins.
And though the school buses are a great asset, state and regional officials were lucky school had not begun.
Colley and McCraw are reviewing ways to increase the state’s access to federal aircraft during an emergency.
Overall, Colley said he was overwhelmed by selflessness of residents who quickly offered help once Dean appeared.
“I would hope that every community in Texas knows that when horror comes to their door, and it will, that all of Texas will be there with them,” Colley said.
Staff writers Harvey Rice, reporting from Galveston, and Carolyn Feibel, reporting from Houston, contributed to this report.