Before a Storm, Rethinking the Evacuee Issue

Biloxi, Miss.—He hopes nothing like Hurricane Katrina ever happens again.

But if it does, Darrell Smith, general manager of McComb, Miss.-based Magnolia Electric Power Association, would like to see improvements in the way evacuees are handled.

“When you have a Category 3 or 4 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, you don’t need to stop 100 miles north of the Gulf. You need to go farther,” Smith told Electric Co-op Today.

“If the state would, in its plan, help the evacuees move further north, out of the affected areas, and give us room to work, that would be a great help,” he added.

The storm knocked out all of the co-op’s substations and left 1,500 poles on the ground.

Smith also recalled spending hours trying to prove to officials that Magnolia Electric was an emergency operation.

“I hope that they are prepared in the future to allow electric cooperatives and other emergency operations to proceed without having to jump through so many hoops.”

Source: Michael W. Kahn, Electric Co-op Today

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