States agree to cooperate on D.C. evacuation plans

Homeland security advisers from West Virginia and other states likely to receive refugees from a disaster in the Washington, D.C., area have agreed to work together on regional evacuation plans, state Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary James Spears tells The Associated Press.
The agreement came during a two-day conference on evacuating potentially 7 million people from the Washington-Baltimore area because of a terrorist attack. Public safety officials from the District of Columbia, West Virginia and six other states participated in discussions about providing food, fuel, medical attention and other necessities during an evacuation.
Ohio Public Safety Director Kenneth Morckel said the conference underscored the enormity of the potential problem for his state. He and Spears presume many refugees would pass through West Virginia on their way to metro areas in Ohio and Kentucky, which offer more services.
“It gave me a scope to the problem,” he told the news service. “You’re talking millions of people, hundreds of thousands at least. This could dwarf what we saw at (Hurricane) Katrina.”
The solution, Morckel and Spears said, is regional cooperation and planning. That’s the reasoning behind the creation of a task force of Homeland security directors that will operate under the umbrella of the National Governors Association, they said.
The conference, which was hosted by West Virginia, was set up as a starting point for developing a regional disaster plan. Representatives of West Virginia, the District of Columbia, Virginia, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and federal agencies attended the conference.
A recent poll of 800 suburban Washington, D.C., residents, conducted by West Virginia University, suggests a widespread exodus is likely if there is a terror attack in the nation’s capital. The survey also corroborated a University of Virginia study from last year that found most residents of the region would follow government orders to “shelter in place.” However, the WVU survey, which was conducted this summer, found that people would ignore such an order under certain circumstances, such as a nuclear attack, WVU Professor of Medicine Alan Ducatman says.