On the morning of Sunday August 28, 2005—just 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall—my husband and I attended a very sparsely attended service at our church in the 7th Ward of New Orleans. I had been very nervous about the storm and wanted to leave on Saturday the 27th. We had agreed that we would leave, but my husband really wanted to attend the service on Sunday. On that Sunday morning, we participated in an abbreviated service with about 15 other people—a significantly lower number than the hundred or so who usually attended. At the end of the service, as we hugged everyone good bye, we asked around about evacuation plans. Some people—like ourselves—knew they were leaving and knew where they were going. Several others, however, shrugged their shoulders saying they still weren’t sure if they were leaving or not. I was concerned about the lack of plans for several people, but wasn’t sure what to do. We had a regular-sized car that was already nearly full, and it wasn’t clear what we would do with others who didn’t have a specific place to go. Would they simply tag along with us wherever we went?

Fast-forward to January 2006. We’re back in New Orleans after several months of exile in New York City. The church we had attended before the storm has been ruined by flooding. We begin to attend a new church not too far from our home that was spared damage. As we get to know people there, we discover that a large group of church staff had traveled with local church families to Arkansas during Hurricane Katrina. These families were unable to evacuate on their own, so the church organized itself to get them out. Then, the staff stayed with them in Arkansas, helping them to settle in. Now, the same staff has returned to New Orleans, but they continue to assist those left in Arkansas, helping them to put together a plan to return to New Orleans. As I look back to our pre-Katrina church days, I wish we had all been more proactive about finding a way to help the least advantaged evacuate in the case of a potentially catastrophic hurricane.

Now, as June 1st rapidly approaches, we face once again the anxious waiting and watching for storms making their way into the Gulf. And it’s taken 8 months, but Mayor Ray Nagin has finally announced a new evacuation plan for the city. Under the new plan, there will be a mandatory evacuation for any storm that is Category 2 or higher. The plan relies on using public buses and Amtrak trains to get an estimated 10,000 people with no reliable transportation out of the city.

The kinks of this new plan are still being worked out, just three weeks before hurricane season begins. While I’d like to be optimistic, given the track record of the city, state, and federal governments over the past few months, I am still concerned about how well evacuation will go for the poor and the most vulnerable. While I do believe that the city should take the lead in providing transportation and arranging for shelters, I also think there’s great potential in recruiting churches to partner with the city and state to arrange for evacuation and sheltering. The possibility of doing this is mentioned briefly toward the end of a Times-Picayune article on May 3rd, where it is mentioned that the New Orleans chapter of the Red Cross is working on “Operation Brother’s Keeper” to get church groups to help evacuate those who need help doing so.

But I believe that partnership with churches is something that the city and state should also incorporate into their evacuation and sheltering plans. Churches are in a good position to know who is vulnerable and to know how to contact them and urge them to leave. Many churches are also part of larger church networks in other parts of the state or outside of Louisiana. New Orleans-based churches can easily contact others in their network and work out in advance a plan to shelter a certain number of evacuees. This would take care of one of the glitches in the city’s current evacuation plan. Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, notes that even though buses may be available to transport evacuees, “it can be difficult to know whether a specific shelter will be open because shelters might fill while the evacuee is on the road”. But if individual churches have planned in advance to work with other churches in their network, they will have a very good idea about how many shelter spaces will be available at the destination shelter(s). Destination shelters might include areas within church buildings or spaces within the homes of church volunteers.

Churches that agree to help their local members and neighbors evacuate should be eligible for some kind of assistance or reimbursement from the state for the role they play in evacuating those in need.

We have 21 days left...I pray that our new evacuation plans won’t be tested before they can reasonably succeed.