| R emember what happened when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Tens of thousands of residents had no place or means to evacuate. According to the White House over 1,300 lives were lost, approximately 300,000 homes where uninhabitable and “of the 1.1 million people over the age of sixteen who evacuated in August 2005, approximately 500,000 of those evacuees had not returned home by late December.”
So where do you go if you don’t have family outside an evacuation area or can not stay with them for whatever reasons? Where do students and retirees, living on a tight budget go and how do they get out of harms way without having a car and without spending a small fortune?
| EvacuationHelp.com will give you the tools to find your Evacuation PartnerSM (EvacPartnerSM) and even form a car pool if you do not have transportation or need help with gas money.
Whether you live in upstate NY and are sick of Blizzards and weeklong power outages or you live in an area prone to hurricanes, you should have an EvacPartnerSM before a disaster strikes.
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Imagine finding your way out by partnering up with another person who is willing to shelter you during an emergency and vice versa.
There is no reason to ride out the storm or freeze to death if you have an EvacPartnerSM in place! Simply go to your EvacPartnerSM in Florida when you see a Blizzard coming and return a week later (with a tan) when the power is restored and the streets are cleared.
Some People Worry, Others Prepare!
Unfortunately we have more than “just” severe weather as there are residents evacuating almost on a daily basis, whether it is due to storms, earthquakes, wildfires, floods or even man made disasters!
EvacuationHelp.com is designed for everybody, even people with slow Internet connections and people who have no computer at all (everybody has access to the Internet via public libraries). We focus on functionality, speed, effectiveness, and user-friendliness!
Even if you have everything in place, take advantage of our free Emergency E-Mail Notification SystemSM (EENS) as phone circuits are usually overloaded during a state of emergency!
Please look around and set up a free account (it only takes 5 minutes) even if you think or hope you’ll never need it; maybe you will “just” be able to help a fellow citizen in need…
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Gulf Coast prepares for possible Gustav landing |
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Nothing written in Stone with Gustav 'til Weekend |
Gustav has weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall over Haiti on Tuesday afternoon.
However, the storm will intensify as it moves over the warm water of the Caribbean and is expected to be a Category 3 hurricane by the time in moves through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico. Gustav would become the first major hurricane in the Gulf since Wilma during the historic 2005 hurricane season.
"The long-term forecast in far from set in stone on this a lot things still have to fall into place," most meteorologists said this afternoon.
Gustav made landfall along the southern coast of Haiti yesterday afternoon as a hurricane, then weakened to a tropical storm overnight. The storm is creeping westward now, away from the rugged terrain of Haiti's southwestern peninsula, and is likely to restrengthen.
As of 5 p.m. EDT, the center of Gustav was located about 90 miles SE of Guantanamo, Cuba, or just north of the western tip of Haiti's southwest peninsula. The storm was edging toward the west-northwest at 3 mph, a track that should persist along with a slow increase in forward speed. Top sustained winds have decreased to 50 mph based on Air Force Reconnaissance information. However, the storm is forecast to intensify beginning tonight and may become a hurricane once again in the next 24 to 36 hours.
Sources told today EvacuationHelp.com that any shift in track of Gustav would most likely be to the east, bringing it closer to the Florida West Coast.
 Almost three years to the day after Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is telling Louisiana residents they need to prepare for the potential of evacuations.
The Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness has activated the Crisis Action Team and is monitoring Gustav.
In a statement on the agency website, Director Mark Cooper says, "As the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina lingers in the air we want to make sure that residents of Louisiana are better prepared for the next storm. Now is the time to make sure that you have an evacuation plan and know what to bring with you if Gustav threatens the coast of Louisiana."
On Tuesday, Gov. Jindal said the Louisiana National Guard has been put on alert. He emphasized that all the plans are tentative and that evacuation may not be necessary.
Assisted evacuations could begin as early as Friday, with evacuations from hospitals and medical care facilities beginning on Saturday. Evacuations by rail also could begin Saturday.
Rail evacuations and contra-flow, in which all lanes of major highways would direct traffic away from the impact area, could begin on Saturday or early on Sunday.
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