The Garden as our Superdome?

WBUR had an interesting interview this morning with Carlo Boccia, Boston's homeland-security director (the interview requires RealPlayer).

Boccia says the city's current plan for a Katrina-like diaster is called "Exodus," and basically involves trying to move everybody out of the city. The exodus would be speeded up by making major thoroughfares one way out of town, jiggering traffic-light cycles (I admit it: I snorted at that) and by working with the MBTA to get as many people out as fast as possible. But he added Katrina made city officials realize they also had to prepare to take care of large numbers of people who, for whatever reasons, did not leave in time.

The city already has "a network of hotels and residences" (darn, Oakes did not ask him where) ready for this, but he's looking at a system in which equipment and supplies would be ready to house in-city evacuees for long periods of time - from stocking up on food to having spare dialysis machines in place: basically, turning them into "embellished bomb shelters of the '50s."

Wrong, wrong wrong, says David Stephenson, our very own private-sector homeland-security consultant:

Boston or other cities might be able to do this better (but I think that's extremely unlikely: there are simply too many imponderables, such as damage to the structure itself, inability of trucks to get through to refuel the emergency generators, etc., etc. -- if any one element fails, the whole thing unravels). However, it's the fundamental idea of congregating large numbers of people in a confined area that won't work. Concentrate that many people who are already stressed out in a given area, especially a group with a disproportionate percentage of psychological issues to start with and I'll guarantee there will be serious problems. ...

We don't need large-scale evacuations to a single behemoth facility, but decentralized ones. There's no easy way out of this situation. ...

Note: As mentioned above, I'm curious which hotels and residences would become home to possibly thousands of Bostonians in a diaster. Alas, access to the city's homeland-security Metro Boston Regional Plan is password protected. I've written to the person listed on the page for access - or the reason it's not considered a public document.

Earlier:
What if it happened here?