Area Disaster Planning Gets More Muscle

Officials Respond to Criticism of Evacuation Preparedness

Under pressure from the federal government, the District and its suburbs are developing their most extensive evacuation plans since the Cold War -- mapping escape routes, stockpiling bedding for shelters and designating pickup points for people who don't have cars.

The area's preparations for major disasters were deemed "not sufficient" last year in a nationwide study by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency identified problems in coordinating response, evacuation, medical care and the release of information to the public during a terrorist attack or other emergency.

Since then, the capital and suburbs have engaged in a frenzy of planning. Officials are spending $1.4 million in federal grant money to create a regional evacuation plan, due out this fall. Northern Virginia recently drew up a detailed blueprint. The D.C. area has spent about $3 million in the past year on blankets, cots and prepared meals.

And the region's leaders are talking to West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other nearby states about how they could shelter Washington area residents during a crisis. Congress is expected to give the region millions of dollars in coming months for such planning.

"Not since the Cold War era . . . have you seen this level of aggressive focus" on catastrophic planning in the D.C. region, said George Foresman, who recently resigned as Homeland Security's undersecretary for preparedness.

But officials say that the region could face enormous problems in coping with a disaster. Local evacuation plans differ markedly. The District and Northern Virginia are working on scripts for a possible large-scale flight, but Prince George's County wants its residents to stay put. The District's plan is public, but Fairfax County won't release its version.

Many fear that the already strained highways and Metro system could be overwhelmed by a significant exodus. And, with 13 state and local governments in the region -- not to mention a host of federal agencies -- there are questions about who would decide what to tell panicky residents.

"There's no one really in charge," said David Snyder, a Falls Church City Council member who serves on the region's Emergency Preparedness Council. "To some extent, those evacuation plans are better than they've ever been. What's lacking is an overall decisional framework."

The D.C. region has struggled with planning for a catastrophe since the Soviet missile threat a half-century ago, alternatively drawing up evacuation plans and rejecting a mass exodus as impractical.

In 1955, about 15,000 government employees evacuated from Washington in an atomic bomb drill. But the exercise assumed a three-hour warning and 100,000 dead in the District.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Washington again drew up a hefty evacuation plan, which would turn 19 roads into one-way arteries out of town. But the plan focuses on flushing out the city center, not what would happen when people travel into Maryland or Virginia, said Edward D. Reiskin, the District's former deputy mayor in charge of public safety.

There was also little thought of evacuating the suburbs.