When a storm is upgraded to a hurricane, Mateo must evacuate to a shelter with his sister Lucia. But his dog Izzy is missing-how can he leave without her?

Public health officials have the traditional responsibilities of protecting the food supply, safeguarding against communicable disease, and ensuring safe and healthful conditions for the population. Beyond this, public health today is challenged in a way that it has never been before. Starting with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, public health officers have had to spend significant amounts of time addressing the threat of terrorism to human health. Hurricane Katrina was an unprecedented disaster for the United States. During the first weeks, the enormity of the event and the sheer response needs for public health became apparent. The tragic loss of human life overshadowed the ongoing social and economic disruption in a region that was already economically depressed. Hurricane Katrina reemphasized to the public and to policy makers the importance of addressing long-term needs after a disaster. On October 20, 2005, the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine held a workshop which convened members of the scientific community to highlight the status of the recovery effort, consider the ongoing challenges in the midst of a disaster, and facilitate scientific dialogue about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on people's health. Environmental Public Health Impacts of Disasters: Hurricane Katrina is the summary of this workshop. This report will inform the public health, first responder, and scientific communities on how the affected community can be helped in both the midterm and the near future. In addition, the report can provide guidance on how to use the information gathered about environmental health during a disaster to prepare for future events.

When government officials become aware of an impending disaster, they may take steps to protect citizens before the incident occurs. Evacuation of the geographic area that may be affected is one option to ensure public safety. If implemented properly, evacuation can be an effective strategy for saving lives. Decisions to evacuate may require officials to balance potentially costly, hazardous, or unnecessary evacuations against the possibility of loss of life due to a delayed order to evacuate. Contents: (1) Intro.; (2) Examples of Fed. Evacuation Policy; (3) Evacuations: Lessons Learned from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; (4) Congressional Issues; (5) Pending Legislation in the 111th Congress. Appendix: Statutory Authority for Evacuations. Illus.

Large-Scale Evacuation introduces the reader to the steps involved in evacuation modelling for towns and cities, from understanding the hazards that can require large-scale evacuations, through understanding how local officials decide to issue evacuation advisories and households decide whether to comply, to transportation simulation and traffic management strategies. The author team has been recognized internationally for their research and consulting experience in the field of evacuations. Collectively, they have 125 years of experience in evacuation, including more than 140 projects for federal and state agencies. The text explains how to model evacuations that use the road transportation network by combining perspectives from social scientists and transportation engineers, fields that have commonly approached evacuation modelling from distinctly different perspectives. In doing so, it offers a step-by-step guide through the key questions needed to model an evacuation and its impacts to the evacuation route system as well as evacuation management strategies for influencing demand and expanding capacity. The authors also demonstrate how to simulate the resulting traffic and evacuation management strategies that can be used to facilitate evacuee movement and reduce unnecessary demand. Case studies, which identify key points to analyze in an evacuation plan, discuss evacuation termination and re-entry, and highlight challenges that someone developing an evacuation plan or model should expect, are also included. This textbook will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and advanced students.

In September 2005, the threat of Hurricane Rita to the Houston-Galveston region resulted in the evacuation of more than one million persons from the Texas coastal and urban areas. This concentration of evacuees overloaded all routes leaving the Houston area, resulting in traffic queues on freeways as long as 36-hours. While traffic and emergency management personnel had access to real-time traffic information in the urban areas, no such information was available in rural areas where the roadways had restricted capacity. There was clearly a need to expand video and traffic monitoring capabilities beyond the urban areas to allow for better traffic management in response to evacuations as well as normal traffic operations. HURREVAC is a restricted-use Internet based computer program used by government emergency managers to track hurricanes and assist in evacuation-related decision making. The program includes an ETIS (Environment Transport Integrated planning System) module included which allows for inclusion and access to real-time traffic information by emergency managers. This report documents attempts to complete the integration of the module with traffic data for Texas coastal regions. It also provides for general equipment and installation guidelines for deployment of video and sensor detection stations along hurricane evacuation routes. In addition, a list of recommended additional deployments of such monitoring equipment to allow for improved monitoring and managing of traffic during evacuation events in Texas.