The Galveston Model
The Southwestern Regional Meeting of the NCORP Advisory Council was held in Galveston, Texas on January 18, 2007 hosted by NCORP and Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas and City Council of the City of Galveston. Co-hosts included Galveston County, the Galveston Economic Development Partnership, the University of Texas Medical Branch, the Port of Galveston and the Galveston Chamber of Commerce. This Southwestern Regional meeting was attended by members of the business community, responders, academicians, faith-based and relief-based organizations and city & county elected leaders to highlight the Galveston "Readiness for Recovery" model. To read more, click here... and each headline below. Opening Remarks – the Honorable Lyda Ann Thomas, Mayor of Galveston I often welcome groups to Galveston and generally can say it’s a beautiful day on Paradise Island. But can’t do that today (rain/ice). This is an opportunity for me, Governor, with great pride, to welcome you and your team to our island.The following contains presentations, and abstracts of the key points within these presentations, outlining the evacuation and community coordination models that are foundational to the success of Galveston's community approach to preparedness, response and recovery. This does not reflect the complete emergency planning and coordination schema in place for Galveston, but is intended as a template for other communities to study and adapt for their own use. Well, thank you, Jim (Frierson). I really appreciate the opportunity to present this to everyone here and to the nation. And to be a part of the drafting of a Blueprint for response. And just to start off I want to say that I’m quite proud of Galveston. I’m quite proud of our team and certainly as the Mayor said, she couldn’t do it without all of us. And I certainly couldn’t do it without all of you. Following is a point-by-point summary of the Galveston Evacuation model and the best practices required to develop, train and execute the model. Thank you. It really is a pleasure to be here this morning to talk about UTMB’s successful evacuation of its patients. First I want to thank the Governor for giving us the opportunity to be recognized as a city who responded flawlessly almost. And the Mayor who gave us that opportunity locally to be recognized across the world that we knew how to take care of people. And I’m here then to talk about how UTMB served its patients and its employees well during this time. Following is an abstract of UTMB’s evacuation of its patients during Hurricane Rita as presented by Dr. Karen H. Sexton: Earlier the Mayor mentioned, and I think Steve did, that we had town hall meetings at various places in our community after Hurricane Katrina and before we had our Rita evacuation. At the end of one of the meetings there was a young woman who asked a question. And she said, "Well, can't we have a fire drill?" And everyone in there nearly broke up laughing about that. But you know, she was right on. We had a fire drill last year. And we learned so much from it. It was amazing. I think we can proudly say that we passed the fire drill test. Following is an abstract of the presentation by Sharon Strain, Executive Director of the Galveston Housing Authority, given during the Southwestern Regional Meeting on January 18, 2007 on the Galveston evacuation and recovery model. Blazyk: Thank you. Jim and I are going to share the podium. And basically we've divided our remarks this morning into two segments. First we're going to go back over actually the events that occurred at the time of the Rita evacuation. Because it's really a very remarkable story. And I think it in itself has some lessons that would be applicable to other cities. Following is an abstract of the resentation by Stan Blazyk and Jim Hale, Co-Chairs of the Mayor’s Citizen Response Team for Special Needs Evacuees, given at the Southeastern Regional Meeting: Readiness for Recovery highlighting the Galveston Evacuation Model, January 18, 2007 Yarbrough: Thank you. I don’t know if it was by accident that they put Sjostrom on one side of the room and me on the other. Kind of a balance (laughter). If I’d known I was going to be on the screen, I’d of done something better with my hair. But anyway I do appreciate very much the opportunity to be a part of this afternoon’s luncheon discussion. You know, the success that the City of Galveston and that Galveston County enjoyed during the Rita environment absolutely comes as no surprise. I would expect nothing less. In this particular cycle of events the City of Galveston and the Mayor stepped up and provided the leadership and did what it took to take care of the people they serve. Had the event happened in Texas City or League City or Friendswood or Santa Fe, I am equally confident that the leadership in those communities would have done the same thing. Following is an abstract of the presentation by the Honorable James J. Yarbrough, County Judge, County of Galveston, given during the Southwestern Regional Meeting on January 18, 2007 on the Galveston evacuation and recovery model. Cernak: Thank you. I’m going to start with some basic comments. It’s true I’m here to talk about what the role of the Port of Galveston was in a potential recovery effort. But there were some lessons learned during the Rita evacuation and bringing the Port back online. And, but before I go there, some basic comments are in order. Following is an abstract of the presentation by Steven M. Cernak, Director of the Port of Galveston, given during the Southwestern Regional Meeting on January 18, 2007 on the Galveston evacuation and recovery model. Richardson: Well, I guess that I'll always be known for all of my life as the person who was in Paris during Hurricane Rita. How many of you are from Galveston? So a lot of you are not from Galveston. Well, let me tell you just a little bit about UTMB. Because what I want to do is talk about emergency preparedness from the medical standpoint. And I want to do it from the perspective of UTMB. Following are abstracts of the presentation by Dr. Joan Richardson of UTMB during the Southeastern Regional Meeting in Galveston to hightlight how county and community sector leaders have developed a preparedness and response plan, including a mass evacuation of the UTMB hospital requiring establishing agreements between institutions, governments and the private sector. Kempner: Jeff and I together could not fit at the same podium. So we’ll do it one at a time. I’m told that what we’re doing is quite unusual. You just heard it from Jim. So a little bit about how we got there. It really sort of began in the fall of 2005(sic) when we were all inundated by pictures and stories of the ongoing problems of Katrina; that Katrina caused and Rita caused in Louisiana and in Mississippi. And we were quivering here and remembering 1900 because of our near miss from Rita. Following is an abstract of the joint presentation of Harris L. Kempner, Jr., President of Kempner Capital Management Ltd, and Jeffrey G. Sjostrom, President of the Galveston Economic Development Partnership during the Southwestern Regional meeting on January 18, 2007 in Galveston, Texas. January 19 '07: Participating members of the public and private sectors as well as community response leaders gathered in Galveston, Texas this week to laud the city's efforts at emergency preparedness. Specifically, the National Council on Readiness and Preparedness presented a Best Practices Award for disaster planning to the city's Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas the Houston Chronicle reported. The Galveston Working Group working document is in draft form, created as notes during the presentations. These notes will be reviewed and compiled with the actual transcript in order to capture all key elements. The Galveston, Tx. county emergency management center is the first in the nation to combine a National Weather Service office with an emergency management department of local government. The 23,500-square-foot building has been designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane (winds in excess of 155 mph) and will house the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management, the National Weather Service, Galveston County 9-1-1 District and members of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
Copyright ©2007 TheBreakingNews.com. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction in part or full without prior written permission.
Copyright ©2007 TheBreakingNews.com. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction in part or full without prior written permission.
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