It is now hurricane season. New Orleans officials are reviewing plans for both before and after a storm hits.
The city of New Orleans is set to join with state and federal partners to get people out of the city before a storm makes landfall -- but New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Colin Arnold says that coordination with RTA buses, charter motorcoaches, Amtrak, and the airlines, takes time to put into action.
"That all starts around 96 hours," said Arnold.
"We have not had that type of notice, pre-notice on a storm in quite some time. We're just not seeing that with storms, particularly the ones in the Caribbean and the Gulf."
Arnold said they have to make the call to evacuate with no less than two-and-a-half days to go before landfall.
"Realistically, we would need to make a call for a mandatory evacuation at about H-minus 66 hours," he said.
As we saw with Ida, the forecast sometimes doesn't leave them that much time... so a lot of effort is also going into post-storm efforts on things like power restoration, and protecting the elderly and other vulnerable populations that could not voluntarily evacuate.
