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Web posted Thursday, July
17, 2003
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Editorial: Sanford leaves communication out
of hurricane plan
Carolina Morning News
Gov.
Mark Sanford has not gotten a lot done during his
first term in office. Political analysts suggest
that is because Sanford, though he served three
terms as a congressman, never served in the
General Assembly or state government. He is, in
short, learning on the job.
A lot of people
in Beaufort County would say that he still has a
long way to go, especially concerning
communication.
Sanford was on Hilton Head
Island on Tuesday to announce his plan for
hurricane evacuations in the future. This is a
subject close to his heart, as he is from the
coast and his family has been caught in
evacuations that were poorly conducted. He has
some good ideas about traffic flow, including
using all four lanes of U.S. 278 and U.S. 21 to
move people inland, should the need
arise.
The problem is, his plans were
formulated without input from local officials,
specifically the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office.
They weren't even invited to Sanford's press
conference on Tuesday.
Why include local
folks in these plans? Because they know the local
road system and emergency needs better than
anyone, and they are the people who, with a bit of
help from the Highway Patrol, would be in charge
of instituting the lane reversals and working key
intersections in the event of an
evacuation.
Bear in mind, the evacuation
plan pitched by Sanford is one of several that
Sheriff P.J. Tanner and his deputies have heard
about in recent months. It would be easy to get
confused about which one is the real thing, and
confusion is the last thing anyone needs during a
mass exodus with a hurricane bearing
down.
The governor can devise good plans
all day long, but they will be worthless if no one
understands the details or how to implement them.
When it comes to hurricanes, the first people he
should have talked to were the local deputies who
will be on the front lines.
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