METRO's Hurricane Planning Helps Saves Lives
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 5:24 PM
"If somebody doesn't pick me up, and I die, it's on your head!"
Desperate pleas for help like this were common hours before Ike slammed into Houston - and for many of METRO's planning and operations staff, the stress of judging whether someone were eligible for help and of matching resources to needs was exhausting.
METRO and the city of Houston staff worked 24 consecutive hours last Thursday, transporting residents in evacuation zones.
"It is one of the most mentally and emotionally grueling experiences anyone can go through," said Jim Archer, METRO's manager of ridership analysis/service evaluation. "The stewardship of trying to help people in truly life-or-death situations is extremely stressful."
METRO's role before the storm involved four aspects:
- Verification of people who called in to be evacuated - were they eligible, did they still need and want a ride?
- Deployment of limited resources - was a bus necessary to evacuate multiple people, or was Yellow Cab sufficient, or METROLift necessary?
- METROLift vehicle - providing a route for drivers to follow
- Dispatch - sending the vehicles to rescue locations
"It was not uncommon for people to call on behalf of another person. Someone calls from zip code 77057 on behalf of someone in the storm-surge area, say 77520. We had to make sure someone was at 77520. Not everybody had a telephone," said Archer.
Some callers phoned in to register for future storms, thus clogging up the phone lines. Others, not in evacuation zones, were elderly and lived alone and called to make sure they would be OK during Ike.
"You're trying to calm people down. They needed someone to listen to their concerns and to be told to stay put. That takes time," said Archer.
Harold King, METRO's service evaluation manager, said this time around went much smoother after the experience fielding rescue calls from Hurricane Rita three years ago.
"We had an idea of what we would be doing. You come away with the feeling that you did provide quality customer service, and you did provide a valuable service," said King.
METRO has evacuated about 2,300 people to date - including those who needed transit immediately after the storm.
