Montgomery County Evacuation Plan
Thursday, January 21st, 2010Norristown, PA — Residents of Montgomery County and surrounding counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey will be asked Thursday to participate in a comprehensive Regional Evacuation Survey.
The survey will conducted through phone interviews on a limited basis on January 7th and 8th, with the full survey implementation to begin on Saturday, January 9. It will take approximately two to three months to complete all the phone interviews.
Nearly 3,500 residents in the region will be randomly selected and asked to participate in a telephone survey to evaluate their evacuation needs and to assess their decision-making process as to whether or not to evacuate should officials give an Evacuation Order.
“This is the first-ever evacuation behavior study conducted in Southeastern Pennsylvania and in parts of South Jersey,” said Montgomery County Public Safety Director Tom Sullivan.
“We encourage Montgomery County residents who are called to participate in the survey. Your experiences and opinions count and will help us fine-tune evacuation plans based on the needs of our residents.”
Typical questions residents will be asked include: whether or not they have had to evacuate in the past, why they needed to evacuate, where they would go if they have to evacuate in the future, the mode of transportation they would use to evacuate. They will also be asked whether they have developed a family emergency plan and prepared a family emergency kit, how they would most likely hear about an emergency and how they would plan to stay informed during an emergency.
Residents will also be asked if they ever chose not to evacuate when an evacuation order was given and why.
Residents will not need to identify themselves during the survey and their answers will remain confidential.
The $150,000 survey is being funded by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force through U. S. Department of Homeland Security funds on behalf of the ten county emergency management coordinators. The phone interviews will be conducted by Kerr and Downs Research (KDR) for the Task Force.
