Ordering the evacuation of residents during a disaster can be one of the most formidable decisions a leader is faced with during an emergency of any size, as displacing citizens can have a profound impact on their lives. Large-scale evacuations can potentially affect hundreds of thousands of individuals. In addition to the impact on the general public, an emergency requiring widespread evacuation generally involves numerous jurisdictions moving individuals from an affected area to a host area, and thus requires meticulous coordination.
The metropolitan Atlanta region, vulnerable to both natural and man-made disasters, has a history of successful, multijurisdictional collaboration on a wide range of emergency preparedness issues, and took that collaboration a step further with its Regional Evacuation Coordination Plan (RECP).
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who was instrumental in developing the plan, said, “Atlanta is the economic engine of the region, home to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport, several Fortune 500 companies, and a population of nearly 500,000, which makes it highly vulnerable. Having a coordinated regional emergency evacuation plan is critical as the city and the region work to enhance their ability to effectively respond to human-caused and natural disasters.”
The Beginning
In April 2008, the Atlanta Regional Commission, Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) and Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency collectively sought to develop a regional evacuation plan that would guide elected officials, emergency managers and other supporting organizations from the 10 contiguous counties in the metropolitan Atlanta region in coordinating a safe and effective regional evacuation. The RECP, which would be built on existing state and local emergency operations and coordination processes, would not supersede any existing emergency operations plan. Rather, it would supplement the all-hazards concept of operations described in the GEMA Emergency Operations Plan and each of the 10 counties’ emergency operations plans.
At the project’s inception, a Planning Advisory Committee was formed, comprised of emergency managers from all 10 counties in the metropolitan Atlanta region — Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale — as well as the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Urban Area Security Initiative, the city of Atlanta and GEMA. The Planning Advisory Committee concluded that a sound RECP would provide sufficient answers to the following three questions:
- Can we evacuate the Atlanta region?
- Where will people go?
- What is the regional coordination process to evacuate?
Plan Construction: A Three-Phase Approach
To answer these pressing questions, development of the RECP followed a three-phased approach: a workshop, a series of planning analyses, and plan development. The first two phases were critical to creating an informed, executable plan.
Phase one featured an evacuation workshop to bring together the most critical stakeholders to the creation and implementation of the RECP. The workshop was intended to provide an opportunity for these stakeholders to discuss roles and responsibilities in preparation and response during an evacuation; brainstorm about critical success factors for an effective evacuation; discover existing capabilities and resources; determine shortfalls in capabilities and resources; and build consensus for developing an executable plan. The workshop involved more than 80 participants from more than 50 organizations, including officials from the emergency management, transportation, special needs, utilities, public safety and communication sectors. During the workshop, these stakeholders and local experts exchanged ideas, advice and experiences, which served as the foundation for the RECP.
Phase two included the planning analysis, which was the most complex phase of the project. Analyses were conducted in seven areas of concern, and the results served as the planning assumptions on which the overall RECP was built. The analyses were as follows:
- The planning analysis consisted of the review of existing plans and procedures to identify current planning assumptions, emergency operations procedures and capabilities as they relate to evacuation.
- The hazard analysis consisted of the review of existing hazard identification and risk assessments, including local hazard mitigation plans to identify the likely scenarios or hazards that may necessitate an evacuation response.
- The vulnerability analysis identified the areas, populations, and critical facilities and infrastructure with vulnerabilities to identified hazards.
- The behavioral analysis included the completion of a survey with a representative portion of the general population to ascertain the potential response and evacuation needs of the Atlanta metropolitan residents. The survey also captured information regarding the number of individuals requiring assistance and the number of individuals that would require shelter.
- The evacuation zone analysis identified evacuation zones based on transportation corridors.
- The transportation analysis evaluated current roadway networks, including capacity, modes of transportation and traffic management strategies to identify potential clearance times.
- The shelter analysis analyzed specific county and regional host shelter capabilities including persons with special needs requirements for sheltering and transportation.
The third phase, the plan development phase, combined the results of the phase two planning analyses to create an executable Atlanta regional evacuation coordination plan. Throughout the entire RECP development process, stakeholders from numerous areas including county, city, state, federal, private and nonprofit organizations were interviewed and consulted on their roles, responsibilities and capabilities to assist with an evacuation.
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