09.04.2006 - NEW ORLEANS — As flood waters rose at the sprawling Orleans Parish Prison complex following Hurricane Katrina, Sheriff Marlin Gusman tossed out his longstanding hurricane plan and faced evacuating 6,000 prisoners.
"We had a plan that we had used for the last 30 years, a vertical evacuation plan that had worked well in the past," Gusman said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "And it worked well in the storm until the water rose to a level that no one anticipated or imagined. "
The flood filled ground floors of the 12 cinderblock buildings, sending deputies scrambling to move prisoners to higher levels. The surging water then knocked out generators and other equipment.
Over the next three days Gusman and his deputies moved prisoners to a nearby overpass, then onto buses and finally to other prisons around the state.
Having learned hard lessons after Katrina, Gusman has a new plan, which he outlined in an interview prior to the Aug. 29 Katrina anniversary. It calls for prisoners to be evacuated 30 hours before any storm that reaches Category 2 strength or higher is predicted to make landfall. Buses, lined up through the Department of Corrections, will shuttle prisoners to jails outside the danger zone. Gusman expects it to take about 12 to 15 hours to evacuate the approximately 2,000 prisoners now in the jail.
In the chaotic Katrina evacuation, prisoner records were lost and that made it difficult to locate prisoners who had been moved to other jails. Gusman, who earned two degrees at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree at Loyola University, and graduated from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives, said that won't happen again.
Information on the prison population is now downloaded daily to the Department of Corrections, Gusman said. That way, the sheriff said, even if the Orleans Parish Prison computer system is unavailable, a master list of prisoners and their status will be available. "What we're doing is planning for all eventualities," Gusman said.
Reports about conditions in the jail during and after the hurricane circulated widely. There were rumors of more than 200 deaths, of prisoners rioting after spending days standing in waist-deep water, of deputies deserting their posts, of no food or water for inmates.
The American Civil Liberties Union compiled a report through interviews with prisoners, Orleans Parish Prison deputies and staff, and legal and public documents, backing some of the claims and called conditions at the jail "some of the worst horrors of Hurricane Katrina."
Last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Gusman's office of civil rights violations by failing to ensure the safety and proper care of inmates, while forcibly keeping them in the storm's path and resulting floodwatersbased on the Ka
Gusman's office declined comment on the Friday lawsuit. However, in the earlier interview, Gusman defended the prison staff's effort to evacuate prisoners, including women and juveniles, without a single death, in a far shorter time than it took to evacuate the Superdome or Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where citizens were stranded almost a week after Katrina struck last Aug. 29.
"We did a hell of a job here, a miraculous job, a job that ought to be praised." Gusman said.
Things may have been rough in the parish prison, Gusman acknowledged, but everyone survived. Eight inmates escaped during the evacuation, but all were recaptured, he said. New Orleans police superintndent Warren Riley confirmed no bodies were found at the jail after the storm.
"Was there anxiety? Sure there was," Gusman said. "It was unnerving to look out and see all this water. But we kept working, all through the night moving people out of the jail. That was one reason we were able to do this as safely and as well as we did it. We didn't stop."
But Gusman concedes it is important to ensure the situation never arises again.
"We're all a lot smarter now," Gusman said.
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