Ok, as I said. I am willing to give Houston and Texas officials the benefit of the doubt, but this last quote by Houston Mayor Bill White taken from the Washington Post just seems idiotic:
"We are not encouraging the general public to go into the streets looking for shelter," White said Friday morning at a televised news conference. Later in the day, he emphasized that the Astrodome and the convention center here "are not shelters." The mayor also said that "most folks are better off in their homes."
The mayor even declined to name a shelter where people might go, saying that the police and emergency people will open shelters "without announcements to the general public."
(Emphasis mine).
Talk about fighting the last disaster. I understand that you don't want to use shelters as the primary means of protection, but a public leader has to trust the public enough to convey that information honestly and openly. If the shelters are that dangerous, and they wouldn't be if public safety officials were present and a post storm evacuation plan was in place, why have them, at all?
I am especially interested, since I am a student of Emergency Management, to understand exactly WHY this policy of not annoucing shelter locations is appropriate. What is the rationale for this?
Posted by: Cate | September 25, 2005 at 08:07 PM