The best laid plans ...

I was flying Southwest Airlines, and the flight attendant was having fun with the preflight announcements. "In the event of the sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead bins. Stop screaming, try to free yourself from the grasp of the person next to you, and place the mask tightly over your nose and mouth ..."

We laughed, but also realized that this comic relief contained a grain of truth. When a true emergency strikes, things happen fast. Events overtake the most carefully laid plans, people react in unpredictable ways, and things fall apart. I've been reading the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan, part of the state's Emergency Operations Plan. In cool and concise language, the plan notes the unique risk that a hurricane poses to the 13 parishes in that part of the state. It notes that the tidal surge of a category 3 or higher storm could create 20-foot flooding, that evacuation routes and emergency shelter facilities could be flooded, that available resources could be overwhelmed. It assumes that parishes will work together during the emergency, that many people will voluntarily evacuate high-risk areas, that public shelters will be available outside the risk zone, that state and local officials will perform their jobs according to plan. It provides step-by-step procedures for voluntary evacuation, for recommended evacuation, and ultimately for mandatory evacuation.

It's a good plan, as plans go. What happened? It doesn't consider some very human factors. It doesn't include assumptions about fear, stubborness, pride, uncertainty, ignorance, and all the other things that throw us off when the winds howl and the water rises. It predicts the effect of the storm surge, but not the surge of people to unprepared last-resort shelters or highway overpasses. It establishes that hospitals and nursing homes will have approved evacuation plans, but not whether they will implement them.

Maybe we need to add another element to our emergency planning from now on. In addition to assessing the capabilities of authority at all levels, we need to include a realistic assessment of how ordinary people will react to extradordinary risk, and build in a cushion of overprotection for those least able or likely to take care of themselves.