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Galveston to register those needing a ride during hurricane evacuation

Houston Chronicle:

Taking a lesson from Hurricane Katrina's strike at New Orleans, officials in this island city are launching a new effort to identify people who need help getting out of town if a deadly storm threatens.

Under consideration as a means of locating people who have no transportation is a plan to ask election precinct workers to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods to register those who would need to ride evacuation buses, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said Tuesday.

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Hoping to avoid a similar scenario if a storm hits Galveston, Thomas has called a town meeting for tonight to try to get out the word that the city wants to provide transportation to anyone who needs it during a hurricane evacuation. Thomas also called on nursing homes and other groups required by law to have evacuation plans to submit copies of the documents to City Hall by Sept. 30.

"I want to know that they have plans," Thomas said.

Thomas said the city also plans to have rubber identification bracelets made for children and elderly people. This will allow shelter workers who take in evacuees to know their names and locate relatives from whom the evacuees may have been separated.

The mayor issued a call for volunteers to serve on a Citizens Response Team that will lead efforts to register people for evacuation assistance and help update plans for the city's hurricane response.

They should have already have done this. Other coastal counties have. More than 6,000 were killed in a hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900. The city has never really recovered, despite buiding a sea wall and raising the level of the island. Much of the dirt used to raise the island came from dredging the Houston Ship Channel in Galveston Bay. Houston quickly replaced Galvestonas the largest port in Texas. It is now one of the top three port in the US.