By Erik N. Nelson
Inside Bay Area (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
All Rights Reserved
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In many disaster scenarios, public transit is in the middle: Terrorists blow up buses and trains. An earthquake shakes loose BARTs Transbay Tube.
But bus, subway and ferry operators are learning that buses, subways and ferries can be invaluable tools in dealing with the aftermath of terror attacks or natural disasters.
As Bay Area residents witnessed after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a rail system like BART — which survived when the Bay Bridge failed — can become a vital emergency link when others fail.
Buses, key to evacuating New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, also can be used as ambulances or even shelter. Mississippi was so adamant about mobilizing public transit after Katrina that transportation authorities commandeered gasoline tankers that were deemed off-limits by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Although he coyly deflected questions about his involvement in the gas-tanker incident, Charles Carr, the manager of the Mississippi transportation departments transit division, had an important lesson for rep-resentatives of BART, AC Transit and other California agencies gathered for disaster training Tuesday.
Besides local public transit systems, school systems, public service agencies, all those systems have rolling stock, and whether the need is evacuating people from the path of wildfires or bringing injured to medical care, those vehicles can and should be pressed into service.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, federal emergency managers in Mississippi, which suffered the worst direct storm damage, gave little consideration to this resource and instead hired contractors to bring vehicles from the Midwest and East.
It did not dawn on them that they should use the existing resources, Carr said, adding that after power outages idled, gasoline pumps and tanker trucks were seized by federal authorities. The transit community was not given priority.
This prompted state authorities to take the law, and gasoline, into their own hands in order to help evacuate the battered Gulf Coast.
Carr and other officials and experts in disaster planning and transportation shared their knowledge in Rancho Cordova on Monday and Tuesday at the Caltrans Response & Recovery Conference for police, fire and rescue and transportation managers.
The event, which was also held for Southern California agencies in Diamond Bar last week, is part of a statewide effort to standardize disaster planning and preparation among hundreds of local, state and federal agencies.
Rather than make haphazard use of transit as was done during Hurricane Katrina, state and federal emergency management officials are including transit agencies in their disaster planning, said Gary Gleason, a former FEMA spokesman whose Colorado-based company, Communique USA, was contracted to run the conference.
What we get out of this is working and meeting with other agencies, said Roy Aguilera, who runs BARTs Control Center and attended the conference. We dont want to go into an incident not knowing what other agencies are capable of doing.
Transit agencies will need to coordinate plans with local rescue and police agencies, explained Scott Vail, deputy chief of administration for the Fire and Rescue Branch of the Governors Office of Emergency Services.
What are you going to do when theres a dirty bomb? What are you going to do when theres an avian flu outbreak? Smallpox outbreak? Chemical release? You are going to want to move people out of the area.
If residents all jump into their cars, as Vail witnessed during 2003 wildfires in San Diego County, it can lead to gridlock.
When people are fleeing their neighborhood, (getting stuck in traffic) and parking their cars and running away, the people behind them cant get out and the fire trucks cant get in, a nightmare scenario that a well-coordinated, quick response by transit might head off, Vail said.
Another role that transit operators can play is not just as a first responder,like police, fire and rescue services, but also as a first preventer.
Buses are constantly on patrol in populated areas, and bus drivers and other transit operators often notice suspicious activity or when something is out of place, Gleason said.
A bus driver in Colorado once saw a column holding up a roadway before a fatal collapse, but with no coordination between the transit agency and authorities, no warning was ever communicated.