Transportation for evacuations: The variation in planning between urban and rural cities

Abstract

A city’s emergency operation plan (EOP) establishes the framework for which all disaster-related activities will be administered. Seven communities’ EOPs were assessed to explore potential planning differences between urban and rural cities. Four urban and three rural communities were selected from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V, VII, and VIII. The EOPs of the selected cities were evaluated against a comprehensive list of questions that explored pre-evacuation planning, operations, roles and responsibilities, communication, and postevacuation return. Within each category, the questions probed for the roles of public transportation in disaster situations. The results yielded several parallels between urban and rural communities in general evacuation planning, and these differences were not based on the city size. From this information, six suggested best practices were developed regarding the role of public transportation in emergency management.