Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Lt. governor urges R.I. residents to prepare for natural disasters
By Simmi Aujla
Brown Daily Herald (Brown U.)
02/13/2006

(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty stressed Friday the need for Rhode Island residents to prepare themselves for a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, adding that "it is wrong to assume that the government will take care of everything" should such an event occur.

"We don't want everyone to think the government will rush in like cavalry," Fogarty said in an interview with The Herald following his speech, which took place Friday afternoon in Faunce House's Leung Gallery as part of the Sixth Annual Thomas Anton/Fred Lippitt Urban Affairs Conference, sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy.

In a lecture that outlined Rhode Island's current level of emergency preparedness, Fogarty reiterated several times the need for local residents to take potential disasters seriously.

"Hurricane Floyd was treated as some sort of show on TV," he said, referring to a 1999 hurricane that affected Rhode Island but caused greater damage in states like North Carolina and Virginia. "People were saying to each other, 'Let's go down and look at the waves.'"

"The most important thing for people to know is that it is their own responsibility to be as prepared as possible," Fogarty said.

When introducing Fogarty, Marion Orr, professor of political science, cited a Taubman Center poll released last week that revealed the majority of Rhode Island residents are not familiar with efficient evacuation routes and do not own disaster kits. Only 10 percent of those polled said they were very confident in the ability of the government to respond effectively to a natural disaster, Orr said.

Fogarty said Rhode Island has a better "coordination plan" than Louisiana did prior to Hurricane Katrina. However, lack of funding prevents the state from being as prepared as it should be, he said.

"Quite frankly, EMA hasn't been enough of a priority here in Rhode Island," he said in reference to the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, which he said received only $540,000 for operations in the past year.

The lieutenant governor said he expects federal funding for Rhode Island's disaster preparedness programs to be cut in the coming years. He said one of the state's most pressing problems involves maintaining preparedness programs with an increasingly smaller budget.

"How well prepared we are can't be determined by the fiscal condition of the government at that moment," he said. "We can't let our guard down."

Fogarty said it is difficult to gauge the state's current level of preparedness because it has not recently been tested by a disaster. The last major hurricane in Rhode Island was Hurricane Carol, which in 1954 hit the state with 135 mph winds, destroying 200 homes and killing 60 people.

Rhode Island's small size forces the government to take extra care in planning its response to a natural disaster. Officials must coordinate evacuation routes with the Connecticut and Massachusetts state governments. The state's dense population must also be taken into consideration, Fogarty said.

The weekend's conference also included speeches by professors from Rutgers University, the University of New Orleans and the University of Delaware representing national perspectives on emergency preparedness.

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