Area Disaster Planning Gets More Muscle

"We don't want people to pre-assume" how a disaster would be handled, she said, explaining that officials might not use all shelters or evacuation routes in every emergency. Emergency preparedness experts said such secrecy could backfire.

"The idea you can wait until a disaster strikes [and] then tell people what to do flies in the face of everything we know about how to get successful responses in disasters," said Kathleen J. Tierney, director of the National Hazards Center at the University of Colorado.

Although crisis plans are rarely followed to the letter, she said, "at least people know there's a plan to improvise from."

Further complicating the region's planning efforts is the uncertain nature of the threats it could face. The D.C. area isn't as vulnerable to hurricanes as other parts of the country, for example, and terrorist attacks could take almost any shape -- warranting a full evacuation, a partial evacuation or none at all.

Officials say they're trying to keep plans flexible to cope with any situation.

"I can't tell you, 'If you live on North Oxford Street, you're going to go to this location' " in a disaster, said Robert P. Griffin Jr., Arlington County's emergency management director. He said that the county's plan will identify shelters that could be opened, depending on the location and nature of the event.

Foresman, the former federal official, said that worst-case disaster planning is important for cities and states because it can help them deal with smaller crises. He said that Homeland Security realized in its study last year that many governments had done little planning and training for catastrophes despite receiving millions of dollars from the agency in recent years.

"There was not sufficient attention being paid to what is arguably much less sexy than a new command post or bomb vehicle but equally as important: overall command-and-control, public alert and warning, decision-making mechanisms," said Foresman, who is a consultant.

But just having a plan is not enough. The U.S. Capitol Police had a long-standing evacuation plan Sept. 11, 2001, but it was not implemented.

Rehearsing a plan is "extremely important. And they have to be realistic practices," said Tierney, at the University of Colorado.

The District has practiced moving crowds along evacuation routes after July 4th fireworks celebrations at the Mall in recent years. But even Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said that most people wouldn't recognize the city's evacuation designation -- a D.C. flag on certain street signs.

Many local officials say that the planning will help but that problems are inevitable in a mass evacuation, especially given the already crowded roads and mass transit.

"Human nature being what it is, we recognize this isn't going to be clean," Griffin said. "It's not going to be an orderly process."

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.