Hurricane Katrina's impact on disaster preparedness in New Orleans: Where are we now? City-assisted evacuation

City-Assisted Evacuation assists those in Orleans Parish who cannot self-evacuate during a mandatory City-wide evacuation. City Assisted Evacuation provides transportation from designated City evacuation pick-up points to a central facility for outbound evacuation to State or Federal shelters. The City Assisted Evacuation Plan was first brought into place in 2006. The plan was successfully implemented in 2008 prior to Hurricane Gustav, when over 20,000 residents and animals were evacuated from the city. Today, the same 17 designated evacuation pick-up points have become part of the city, located in various neighborhoods across New Orleans where citizens can go during a mandatory evacuation. City Officials have worked to actively engage and empower citizens through community outreach so that all New Orleanians are able to safely evacuate the city when needed. Ultimately, the CAEP mitigates injury and loss of life and allows first responders and emergency workers the ability to focus on other critical response and recovery tasks.