EDITORIAL: Shelters Must Be Planned
News Star (excerpt)

As hurricane season draws near, so do memories of desperate residents streaming up from the coast seeking shelter. Time and again, through Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav, they've fled the whipping winds and walls of water. Yet the state of Louisiana still lacks a concrete plan for where they should stop. Again.

Worse still, now additional spots in neighboring states could be closing their doors as well.

The Department of Social Services, which oversees emergency sheltering and mass care in the state, estimates that as many as 50,000 Louisiana residents will need transportation assistance should an evacuation order come down. Kristy Nichols, the DSS secretary, estimated during a joint meeting of the legislative homeland security committees that another 4,000 of our neighbors have special medical needs.

State- and parish-run facilities fall far short of that capacity: Just 11,400 spots for residents with transportation needs, and another 2,550 for those with special medical needs.

Mix them in with waves of other residents fleeing north and the problem is obvious: Some 37,000 people evacuated to state-run shelters last year in advance of Gustav.

Louisiana has been forced to look to the American Red Cross and to adjacent states for help.

It's clear we won't be ready. Again. If nothing else, that ought to provide a very real impetus for extended planning.

How long can we simply keep our fingers crossed? Instead, the state should follow the model of Florida, another Gulf Coast state that has seen its share of devastating hurricanes.