We learned some truly horrible lessons from Hurricane Katrina. But a major piece of that story has never gotten the coverage it deserved - we were terribly unprepared to meet the needs of people with disabilities. 

Emergency shelters were inaccessible. People were forced to leave behind service animals. How to lift someone in a power wheelchair into a helicopter from a flooded house? How do you ensure people have medications, personal assistance?  

The list goes on and on. Many, many crucial, unmet needs.
In New Orleans, people died. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is dealing with this. They have established the Office of Disability Integration and Coordination, headed by Marcie Roth.

Marcie has been a colleague and friend of mine since my time on the board and as newspaper editor for the National Spinal Cord Injury Association. She was the executive director at the time, and when Katrina hit she provided truly incredible leadership, doing all she could to put her fingers in the dike as it became so clear that people with disabilities were terribly left without proper services. Now she's at FEMA, making it happen on a national policy level. Way to go, Marcie!!

A recent White House blog put it this way:

...for years the needs of people with disabilities were more of an afterthought during disasters. Not enough was done to make sure that shelters planned for the access and functional needs of individuals. Residents who were blind or deaf, and those with intellectual disabilities didn't have access to critical information about evacuation routes or other warnings. And in some cases, accessible transportation for people with disabilities just wasn't factored into planning at all.

 

These issues need to be addressed on a local level. I live in Northern California, so face the prospect of earthquakes. I grew up in Michigan with blizzards and the risk of tornadoes. Heat waves. Hurricanes. Volcanic eruptions. Wherever you are, there is some way that the earth can make a mess of things.

 

What are your local authorities doing to address emergency preparedness for people with disabilities?