Evacuation gaps

THE MENINO administration's updated emergency evacuation plan for Boston fills in gaps in an earlier effort, especially in the city's outlying residential neighborhoods. But the plan released this week also suffers from a lack of specificity regarding how downtown commuters and residents might cope with a natural or man-made disaster.

The centerpiece of the new plan is the identification of 74 neighborhood emergency centers, mostly schools and community centers, where people lacking transportation or resources could find shelter or special buses for mass evacuation. Other additions, including clearly marked evacuation routes and brochures to be mailed to 280,000 homes, address earlier criticism that Bostonians were in the dark regarding what to do in the event of a disaster. An innovative feature of the new plan will be the ability to alert Bostonians of trouble and provide instructions via an automated telephone recording capable of reaching 60,000 households per minute. Residents in much of Boston should feel more confident than before about the city's preparedness.

Not every neighborhood, however, should share in this sense of confidence. The evacuation plan seems to assume that all parts of the city are at equal risk for disaster. But the potential for tragedy in a terror-related incident is obviously greater in the crowded downtown district than it would be in the city's residential neighborhoods. Police and fire officials in Boston have expressed concerns about the vulnerability of liquefied natural gas tankers as they pass through the inner harbor bound for the depot in Everett. That creates special concerns in Boston's harborside neighborhoods like Charlestown and East Boston. Yet the plan as presented provides no special instructions for such areas. The report is also Boston-centric despite an avowed regional approach to homeland security. Officials in the city of Chelsea directly north of Boston, for example, are coordinating evacuation routes with their Boston counterparts. But there are no brochures or similar informational materials now available to Chelsea residents.

Boston Police Superintendent Robert Dunford, a disaster planning expert, says that public safety officials are working extensively with downtown businesses, civic groups, and universities to coordinate emergency and evacuation plans. He also stresses that the Red Cross maintains an extensive network of out-of-town shelters to accommodate evacuees. In fact, 300 sites are available for the purpose, according to a local Red Cross official. Yet readers of the published plan would be clueless about where they might end up if the need to evacuate the city arises. Safety rests in more and better information.