Mass. reworks disaster plan

State and local officials, alarmed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and failed relief efforts, say they are revamping plans for evacuation, training, and temporary shelters in Boston and Massachusetts if a similar disaster struck close to home.

The officials, having dramatically stepped up terrorism-prevention efforts after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and during last year's Democratic National Convention, said in interviews last week that the deadly hurricane has prompted them to reevaluate their ability to handle a catastrophe.

Boston is redrawing its plan to evacuate and relocate people. The state will create a task force to prepare for a Category 5 hurricane. And the chief emergency official in Massachusetts said the state must train for disasters more than it does now.

''You're crazy if you don't go back and revisit your assumptions," said state Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn.

State and local leaders said Massachusetts is generally well-prepared for a terrorist attack or natural disaster, but they acknowledged that they must improve preparations for a large-scale disaster. They say they have no firm plans to house thousands of evacuees; there is spotty police radio coverage deep in the subways; there are few outreach plans to help the poor leave the city; and there are many deficient dams across the state that might fail to prevent serious flooding.

Boston police mapped out and rehearsed escape plans for 1 million residents and commuters in its ''Operation Exodus," written before the Democratic National Convention last summer. But that blueprint -- which calls for all lanes of the Massachusetts Turnpike to channel drivers out of Boston -- relies largely on people leaving willingly and getting out on their own.

After seeing what happened in New Orleans, where many people had no means to leave, officials are rethinking that assumption, realizing they have to find ways to help people evacuate -- or find a safe place to accommodate those who are left behind.

''Let's say there was an incident today and we couldn't get out of the city, and we had to get people out of different neighborhoods. What would we do right now? It would be problematic," said Carlo A. Boccia, Boston's director of homeland security, whom Mayor Thomas M. Menino has asked to overhaul the plan.

Boccia, who oversees homeland security for the city and eight other area communities, said Boston has not identified facilities to accommodate the thousands of evacuees who, as demonstrated in New Orleans, may not be able to leave on their own. The city, he said, does not have agreements with arenas and other facilities, inside or outside the city, that could shelter large numbers of people.

''Let me tell you something -- we'd be in the same shape," Boccia said in an interview with the Globe. ''I hate to say that, but we would have some problems, too."

Boccia said he hopes that within two months, Boston will have such plans. The city is also considering stockpiling medical equipment, food, and water in those locations.

''It would be wonderful if we could take 10,000 people to a place and have prepositioned medical care," Boccia said.

In the event of a disaster in the city, the emergency management plans call for Boston to take the lead role in handling the response. The public would be alerted to an evacuation plan via radio and television, Boccia said, and perhaps eventually through messages to cellphones or PDAs.

Boston's reassessment of its emergency plan is part of a broader look by government officials at how to be better prepared for a catastrophe. While a tragedy on the scale of Sept. 11 or Katrina is very unlikely, they said, they have to prepare for the worst.

''Every one of those opportunities gives us an opportunity to examine our plan," said Cristine McCombs, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, which would help coordinate the response to any disaster in the state.

''I always say to the team here that plans are living documents. They are not meant to be created and put on the shelf," said McCombs, who has been with the agency since 1991 and took over a month before the Democratic convention last year.

In addition to convening the task force to prepare the state for severe hurricanes, McCombs said she wants to have a more rigorous training schedule, so local, state, and federal agencies conduct regular exercises. MEMA, for example, recently did a run-through of an emergency traffic plan for Cape Cod that would kick in if a hurricane struck.

A greater focus on training, McCombs said, would require more money and a willingness among everyone involved to be honest about what needs to be fixed.

Though specialists believe Boston is more likely to face a terrorist attack than the kind of destruction wrought by Katrina, the region has seen several hurricanes.

A 2002 report by the state Office of Coastal Zone Management said 41 hurricanes and tropical storms have affected Southern New England since 1900. One of the worst was the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, which killed hundreds. More recently, Hurricane Bob in 1991 killed several people and caused more than $1 billion worth of damage in Massachusetts.

Even before Katrina hit, Massachusetts was assessing its emergency readiness as part of a first-of-its-kind effort by a Washington nonprofit to evaluate every state's capability to handle disasters. The Emergency Management Accreditation Program, in an effort funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, judges states' preparedness based on nearly 60 standards.

So far, said its executive director, Emily Bentley, 39 jurisdictions have been studied and just four have passed the test: Arizona, the District of Columbia, Florida, and North Dakota. Once Massachusetts completes its self-assessment, inspectors from the program will visit this fall to judge the state.

Gregory Shaw, senior research scientist at George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, said local and state governments need to constantly study, practice, and update their disaster plans.

For example, with the plan to have people evacuate on all lanes of the turnpike, Shaw asks: Do drivers know that?

''Hopefully someone is looking at these different threats, looking at these scenarios," Shaw said. ''But just having the plans and having them on the shelf doesn't mean a darn thing."

State Senator Richard T. Moore, an Uxbridge Democrat who was an associate director of FEMA from 1994 to 1996, said Massachusetts needs to educate the public about what to do in an emergency. He recalled the traffic jams on Sept. 11, 2001, as people fled Boston.

''I don't see that we've solved that problem yet, and if we have, no one's told anybody," Moore said, who also asked, ''Is there a plan to get people out without cars? Has anyone ever tried it?"

As for communication systems, the MBTA is now installing a radio system that will allow more police and emergency responders to share radio communications underground. Currently, State Police and Boston EMTs radios do not work in the subways. And Boston firefighters responding to a subway emergency can communicate only with their fellow firefighters -- not with transit police or train personnel.

Governor Mitt Romney said Massachusetts has made many strides since Sept. 11 in updating its emergency communications systems and seeing disasters from a regional perspective. But he said there is ''more to learn" about disaster preparedness, especially when it comes to how to rapidly evacuate a city.

Romney, a Republican, faulted Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, for what he said was her state's failure to conduct a competent relief and rescue effort.

Romney and McCombs said the ability of Massachusetts to quickly put together a plan last weekend to take in hurricane evacuees showed that the emergency management program works. But the effort also revealed some lack of communication: For several hours, the state and the City of Boston were devising separate plans to take people in.

Katie Ford, a spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety, cautions about drawing too close a comparison between Massachusetts and Louisiana, because they are in such different circumstances. Thus, she said, Massachusetts should spend its time and money on preparing for more probable catastrophes. Ford noted as an example a recent drill at Logan Airport of a hijacking of a Paris-to-Boston flight.

Moore, who serves as co-chairman of a homeland security task force for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said one concern is that Massachusetts has focused on terrorism at the expense of natural-disaster planning.

''We've forgotten about the everyday terror that a natural disaster can present us with," he said.

State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, a Cambridge Democrat who chairs the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said 40 of the state's dams -- many of which are essential in preventing flooding -- are considered to be structurally deficient.

''We hear a lot about preventive efforts in the context of terrorism," Barrios said. ''That same zeal for prevention doesn't prevail when you talk about natural disasters. It certainly didn't in Louisiana."

But many public safety officials said that in many ways, preparing is preparing, no matter what the disaster.

Massachusetts will receive $66 million in federal homeland security funds this year. Some of the training and equipment the money will buy can help the state prepare for man-made or natural disasters, said Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a regional planning organization that helps distribute the money.

''I think we are much more prepared than we were four years ago," Draisen said. ''But we still have a long way to go."