Parish Emergency Management Officials and oil spill contractors have hammered out a hurricane evacuation plan for St. Bernard’s oil spill response effort. Officials say the plan is designed to cause minimal interference with the parish’s overall hurricane evacuation plan.

The scope of the evacuation depends on the size of the system in the gulf.

All work oil spill work sites will be evacuated 72 hours prior to tropical force winds hitting the Louisiana coast. A staging area is being secured inside of the levee system to permanently relocate all oil spill response resources for the parish. Resources will be transported to the appropriate work areas as needed, thereby negating the need to evacuate resources each time a weather event threatens the area. The decision to remove already deployed boom from the water will be made at the appropriate time depending upon the particular weather event the area is threatened by.

If the parish is affected by a major storm that pushes oily water into the areas outside of the levee protection system, that area will become a hot zone. Post-storm damage assessment teams of St. Bernard Parish Fire Department, Sheriffs Department, Public Works, Atmos, Entergy, DEQ, EPA, US Coast Guard and pollution investigation experts from BP will inspect the affected areas to determine the level of contamination. Once the inspection is complete, the necessary actions will be taken to clean up these areas. Residents will not be allowed into the affected areas until they have been declared safe, at which point residents may return to their homes and businesses.

To facilitate the most effective planning for both oil spill related and general parish evacuations, two separate command structures have been put into place. One dedicated for each evacuation.

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