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While no public announcements of this strategy have yet been made, reports have surfaced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has at the ready plans to evacuate a number of Gulf Coast cities from Corpus Christi all the way to Key West should conditions require it.
A report on Examiner.com states that evacuation plans for the Tampa Bay area are already in place. Earlier stories reported that plans were being developed for several other cities, including Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Sarasota-Bradenton, and Naples.
The plans would be implemented if winds carry toxic fumes across populated areas or if controlled burns of oil on the surface of the Gulf threaten to blanket such areas with smoke. The emphasis in the Tampa Bay area would be on first evacuating people with respiratory problems before any controlled burn began. Florida's west coast in general, and the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area in particular, contain large populations of senior citizens and retirees who could be affected by the smoke generated by controlled burns.
While some news reports place these plans in the context of alleged conspiracies to conceal the extent and magnitude of the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, such plans are only prudent for areas vulnerable to a natural disaster. As hurricanes are a regular occurrence across this region, it is quite likely that all FEMA needed to do was modify existing hurricane evacuation plans for contingencies resulting from the spill.
BP, owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling site, has used controlled burns on numerous occasions to date to remove some of the oil contaminating the Gulf of Mexico. Thus far, the burns have taken place far enough away from populated areas to keep smoke pollution from becoming a serious issue.
Written by Sandy Smith
For HULIQ.com
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