As an alum of the graduate business school at Tulane, I followed the events in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Three years later, it’s not just the weather that seems to have improved. Last Thursday, Tulane cancelled classes for this week and ordered an evacuation of the campus on Saturday, with students who were unable to obtain a flight home from New Orleans being evacuated to Jackson State University in Mississippi. The Tulane website has included a daily announcement from President Scott Cowen entitled “The Scott Report“, a “New Wave” column that includes items such as photos of the facilities crew cleaning up the post-hurricane debris, and a daily live chat. Tulane’s executive team traveled to Nashville and has been in communication with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin throughout the crisis.
The press reports that since Katrina the levees haven’t been secured in New Orleans to survive a Category 3 Hurricane. Fortunately, Gustav’s landfall was west of New Orleans with winds down to the levels of a Category 2/Category 1 by the time of landing. Regardless of the levee situation, which I hope the Army Corps of Engineers is able to resolve, it appears that there have been some lessons learned from Katrina and communication and evacuation plans at the municipal, state, federal, and university levels worked well this time.
