Twenty years ago today, Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,400 people dead. A large number of the people who died were trapped in houses in the parts of the city that flooded. Since then, the city government has worked to improve its hurricane evacuation plan.
That plan continues to evolve to meet new demands created by tropical systems, especially when it comes to evacuations. New Orleans emergency prep director Collin Arnold says he expects 90 percent of the city's residents will evaucate if an order were issued in the event of a hurricane.
The other 10 percent, he says, would be unable to because of health and mobility issues, financial constraints, or other hardships.
"I think evacuation is the safest means of protecting our community," Arnold said. "We really have to, as a city, be aware of where they're at what we can possibly do to help them."
According to Arnold, the city's has more and better means to communicate with residents in the event of a hurricane, including traditional broadcast channels and newer technologies such as text messaging and social media. Arnold says his office is refining its evacuation plan to move more quickly in the face of rapidly intensifying storms.
"I think that's the biggest challenge and the biggest priority moving forward is to continue to refine plans and adapt plans towards faster timelines on storms that are coming to us a lot faster and stronger," Arnold said. "What we've noticed is the storms that we built a lot of the plans post-Katrina on were storms that were Katrina-like: Katrina, Gustav, (and) storms that were very intense but didn't rapidly intensify. They came over as Atlantic hurricanes into the Gulf from the Caribbean."
That, Arnold says, means the city has to change its hurricane game plan.
"It's something we've been working on, I think, really, for the last five years," Arnold said. "The model there was, and you've probably heard this a lot, is 72 hours' advanced notice before the storm. What's next for us is an adaptation of those plans that really speed up that timeline more towards the 36-hour point."
Arnold says if the city ever has to issue an evacuation order, residents should not to wait until the last minute to get out of town.