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disaster plans discriminate against people with disabilities

mark handler

mark handler

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Los Angeles’ disaster plans discriminate against people with disabilities, judge rules

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

For those of you who always think ’someone else should comply but me!’, or ‘i am okay because i can get a wheelchair physically into my store but everyone else is liable!’, take it seriously. The government is notorious for not taking its own rules seriously, but the law is the law. Not even the city gets away with this!

The city of Los Angeles is unprepared to meet the needs of the disabled in the case of a disaster and is discriminating against them by failing to include the disabled in its emergency preparedness plans, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Siding with disability-rights groups who sued the city on behalf of an estimated 800,000 disabled L.A. residents, U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall found that Los Angeles doesn’t have a plan to notify and evacuate the disabled or provide them with transportation and shelter in a disaster.

“Because of the city’s failure to address their unique needs, individuals with disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable to harm in the event of an emergency or disaster,” the judge wrote, noting that the city’s own Department on Disability reported in 2008 that disabled residents are “at-risk for suffering and death in disproportionate numbers

Follow this link for more

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-disabled-ruling-20110212,0,7903445.story
 
Oh my..........Really?

How in the he!! did mankind manage to make to the 21st century?

I'm short, and left handed to boot, are they going to make sure there are provisions for short, left handed citizens also? And my car might not start.......

Sorry, but where does it stop?
 
I worked for a number of years in a 7 story office building in the LA area. We hadn't done a fire drill for years. One time the fire alarms went off - -it was a very minor fire, but it was real. The stairwells were flooed with people, and I would say 25% of the occupants (including me) headed UPWARD to find the guy in the wheelchair that no one knew by name, but only knew that he worked on the 6th floor. The rest of the people were either asking about him or telling others that he was being taken care of already. He was carried down in his chair by 4 guys.

So, my comments:

1. It is human nature to reach out to strangers in an emergency, especially those who are vulnerable. The failure @ Katrina was an epic failure, wherein even the designated care providers were sensing their own lives were in imminent danger. Even the police were pulling back. If that is the case, no amount of court-ordered govenment plans will make an actual difference.

2. To some extent, I agree with the city of LA on this one: it is up to all of us to pre-plan what to do in an emergency. We can't rely on government programs, because by nature a "disaster" means that the situation is not normal - -you need plan B or plan C that doesn't involve a government system.
 
Exactly where will these 8,000 disabled people be when the disaster occurs. Will they all wear goverment issued GPS tracking devices so they can be located?
 
You can make all the plans in the world but society can never "handle" every disaster...there are not enough first responders...can you assure all of the city's assets make it through the disaster? Why is the government responsible for transportation.

Yet another ruling that does not make sense.
 
Also everyone needs to keep in mind some of the problems during Katrina were self made. A lot of people refused to leave or waited to see how bad it was really going to get before they tried to run. Granted the city and the state didn't do the best that could be expected, but everyone needs to be responsible for their own actions too.

After the last bus has left, its too late to get on it.
 
Hurricanes - Andrew, Katrina, Rita, etc., Earthquakes - Northridge, Loma Prieta, San Francisco, etc. Fires - Chicago, Peshtigo, San Francisco, etc. Tornadoes - etc.

A scientist invented Darwinism to explain the loss of life in challenging circumstances and adaptation. Dickens talked about reducing the "surplus population". Politicians talk about "human rights". Judges talk about injustice.

Every person I rescued, patched or carried as a fire fighter was incapable of taking care of themselves. Few were disabled in the common sense of the term.
 
FyrBldgGuy said:
Hurricanes - Andrew, Katrina, Rita, etc., Earthquakes - Northridge, Loma Prieta, San Francisco, etc. Fires - Chicago, Peshtigo, San Francisco, etc. Tornadoes - etc. A scientist invented Darwinism to explain the loss of life in challenging circumstances and adaptation. Dickens talked about reducing the "surplus population". Politicians talk about "human rights". Judges talk about injustice.

Every person I rescued, patched or carried as a fire fighter was incapable of taking care of themselves. Few were disabled in the common sense of the term.
Click to expand...
So you will leave your mother, grandmother, or child, in harms way, if they are disabled
 
Mark said:
So you will leave your mother, grandmother, or child, in harms way, if they are disabled
Click to expand...
No, I'm sure that Yikes would take care of his mother, grandmother, or child, that's his job, not a totalitarian government's job.
 
So you will leave your mother, grandmother, or child, in harms way, if they are disabled
Click to expand...
No I won't leave them and neither will you. You will not wait for somebody from the goverment with limited resources to come to their aid.

A hurricane is about the only event that you have a reasonable time to prepare and evacuate or move disabled people from the area all others have little or no warnings and the response is reactionary and the scenarios are endless.
 
I wear many hats as I live in a large, sparsely populated county with lots of folks who are seniors or disabled. As a member on the local (countywide) Disaster Council, I have visited various sites in the city with the Red Cross check list of requirements for a shelter. Myself and two others did this task a couple of years ago, just in case we had a real disaster. The list is lodged with the EOC, Red Cross, and Social Services. The EOC office has a list of the seniors and disabled that could possibly need evacuation in the event of a natural disaster.

What we found was that most of the sites that had been used traditionally did not meet Red Cross or ADA standards. A good example is the vets hall, building is accessible, bathrooms are not, no A/C, and a limited kitchen. We drew up a whole new list with all of the sites within the city limits that included available amenities, barriers, etc. We found out that one of the sites was designated for use by the hospital and SNF unit if they needed evacuation while doing the survey.

My take - We can plan but will never be able to cover every eventuality but lack of planning on your part does not absolve you from responsibility. The ADA regs have been around for quite a number of years and enforcement has been too.

Sue, where the west still lives
 
And where these buildings designed as Catagory IV to qualify as a shelter under the building code. I doubt it. Did the same thing when I was in Fl. None of the facities would meet the construction requiements because they where not designed that way from the begining.
 
If you do not have enough Category IV buildings I would go with the best you can. In this case I would identify backup sites if one of the buildings is not availible because it has suffered damage.
 
Yeah, my point was that I would not leave, mother, grandmother, child, nor would I (nor most of you) leave a total stranger in harm's way... but not because a government program is in place, but because basic human decency is in place.

A government program that was too specific may make matters worse. For example, if a person with disabilities was first evacuated by a private do-gooder, and a government responder later came to find them, how long would they have to search? Would an extended search put them in harm's way as a result?

Or is the person with disability supposed to refuse all private assistance in order nto to jeopardize the government worker?

What about when the disaster instantly causes disabilities - - how would a program account for such unknowns?

Secondly
 
It's easy to post a list of steps first responders need to take to rescue the disabled. It's a lot harder to pay for the amount of manpower to handle all that PLUS all the other things that first responders are faced with that aren't on that list PLUS they have to have vehicles, tools, personal protective equipment, etc, etc, etc. plus their pensions, plus plus plus.

In all my years on the fire department, we never ONCE taught anybody to discriminate against anyone. We taught them to deal with what they find and keep us posted so we could keep the help coming.
 
WOW!

Ok as a first responder I have never walked past one injured person to get to another. Would I save any member of my family, absolutely!

IF I was in New Orleans during Katrina I would have sent my family away before the storm hit. Then I would have stayed until I was done. My family knows this.

Can the government protect everyone? NO. They do a lousy job at protecting anyone. FEMA is a joke. It has one purpose and that is to hand out money after a disaster. They can not and do not know how to manage a disaster until 3 years after the event.

Everyone thinks they have rights to something. Government was not created to give people rights. Government was created to handle things for the common good not the individual good.
 
"Advocates said the need for a plan encompassing the disabled was highlighted during Hurricane Katrina, when mortality rates among the disabled and seniors were drastically higher than for the general population."

Mortality rates among the elderly and disabled are higher than for the general population all of time under all conditions. Any additional stress will disproportionately impact them.

Residential fire fatality rates are much higher in these groups.

Normal deaths are higher in these groups.

See this table the probability of dying in the next year goes down till age 10 up from there with a small temporary decline in the mid 20s for males.

It gets really bad once you get over 80.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

If the ship is sinking or the floodwaters are rising it is time to put women and children first.

If you have never had to walk past one injured person to get to another more serious case as a first responder you are lucky. I have had to triage who gets help first too many times.
 
In Los Angeles, the most likely disaster scenario is an earthquake. The city has told everyone that they need to plan to be completely on their own for 3 days.

So in theory, "equivalent facilitation" under ADA would mean that persons with disabilites are on their own for 3 days, just like everyone else.

Other than that, Alias / Sue probably has the most reasonable approach, which is to make sure your pre-designated emergency shelters have accessibility.

Sue, I didn't see The Salvation Army on your list. Do you coordinate with them? Out here in LA, they have huge warehouses of equipment for disaster preparedness: food clothes, cots, generators, even coloring books for kid's therapy.
 
I have done triage, but in order to triage I had to at least give a quick examination. But then triage also means having to determine when no help is to be given. AND yes I have made the decision not to provide assistance to a victim because it was not likely to be successful and others still had a chance. My point was simple, as a responder I help the people I can help. At the point of a disaster almost everyone can be considered to some degree disabled. A person in a wheelchair and a person with broken legs both have issues with movement. A healthy person who does not evacuate before a disaster event is inviting trouble. I remember Harry Truman, you know the guy that was not going to evacuate before a volcanic eruption.
 
Look at the WTC on 9-11 ... several able-bodied people couldn't get out.. you may recall the stories (that the History Channel shows from time to time.. thankfully.. kind of refocuses why we are still in a war on 2 fronts... but I digress)... we all hope disasters don't happen, but when it does - it doesn't matter about the type of construction, travel distance, areas of refuge.. it becomes self preservation.

Except for the really courageous fire fighters.. I always tip my hat to them.. the whole going into a burning building and trying to get occupants out thing.

A job I wouldn't/couldn't do...
 
We hadn't done a fire drill for years. One time the fire alarms went off - -it was a very minor fire, but it was real. The stairwells were flooed with people, and I would say 25% of the occupants (including me) headed UPWARD to find the guy in the wheelchair that no one knew by name, but only knew that he worked on the 6th floor...
 
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