Texas prepares for Hurricane Laura and evacuates residents in high-risk areas in a socially distanced manner and far from evacuation centers.
Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news briefing on Tuesday that Texas is responding to Hurricane Laura by evacuating people early. They are encouraged to self-isolate in hotels instead of potentially crowded evacuation centers. The state also provides protective equipment, such as masks and coronavirus testing services at shelter locations.
“We are responding to Hurricane Laura while also responding to a pandemic,” Abbott said. “And we are not taking our eye off of what needs to be done to adequately respond to the pandemic, so several things are being done as we assist those who are evacuating that’s different from what has been done in the past.”
Texas residents were told to evacuate the cities of Galveston and Port Arthur, according to Abbott. Jefferson, Jasper, Newton and Orange counties are also asked to evacuate. Other people were asked to leave parts of southwestern Louisiana, which authorities expect to be hit by the hurricane.
The storm is predicted to reach a Category 3 hurricane before it makes landfall, Abbott said. He added that “it could increase to be a Category 4 hurricane.”
He also said that officials are implementing measures to curb the spread of coronavirus among evacuees during the storm. The coronavirus spread across Texas, especially the Houston area in summer.
According to the state’s department of health, the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 580,300 people and led to the deaths of at least 11,300 people.
But the state has made substantial progress in bringing the outbreak under control with newly diagnosed cases per day down from an average of about 10,400 on July 22 to about 5,500, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
“Bottom line is this, and that is the state and local governments are fully aware that they are dealing with a pandemic while they’re responding to Hurricane Laura, and they’re taking all necessary protocols to make sure that they reduce the spread of Covid-19,” he said.
“Just because a hurricane is coming to Texas does not mean Covid-19 either has or is going to leave Texas. Covid-19 is going to be in Texas throughout the course of the hurricane," he said.
According to Abbott, the state has 200 buses with another 200 ordered that will be used to assist evacuees. He added that the state ordered “so many buses” so that evacuees can properly distance from one another.
Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, noted that the buses will have disinfectant equipment.
Kidd said that protective equipment and Covid-19 testing teams will be given to sheltering locations “as soon as practical.” However, he stressed that staying in a hotel or motel room is the “safest place for families to be.”
When Hurricane Isaias hit the coast of Florida earlier in August, the state postponed coronavirus testing in some communities, according to Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. She said that aimed to reduce monitoring of the coronavirus in some communities and the state had difficulty to return testing to pre-hurricane levels.
She noted that when people are evacuating, people are concerned about “their critical needs and not necessarily going to have Covid foremost in your mind.”
“We worry, of course, about people evacuating into group settings, trying to keep them safe if they’re having to go to a shelter,” she said. “I know that there’s been a lot of time to encourage people to go to hotels instead, but that’s not always very easy or feasible.”
