Houston has the same type of program. Elderly and disabled people can add themselves to "The List" so that the next time there's an evacuation someone will come for them. They used to have bilingual billboards about it up all over town, though I don't recall seeing any lately...

-Blast

One thing that was pointed out to me is that often when there are numbers of people in an emergency there is a failure to use the assets at hand.

The 6'4" 320 pounds of pure muscle could easily carry a child or someone from a wheelchair down stairs. The problem is that nobody goes to him, explains the situation, asks him to help out and coordinates. Too often people are too intimidated by his size to ask. Quite often the big guys want either never even consider helping, but will if asked, or they want to help but are afraid people will take any attempt to help as an attack.

In my experience most people love to be given something meaningful to do in an emergency. Beats idleness, feeling useless and boredom. They are just waiting for someone to tell them what needs to be done and to delegate some small measure of authority to them before they get involved and put themselves on the line.

Survival is often dependent on your ability to efficiently use resources. People are resources.

Spend some time in a wheelchair and you quickly learn not to try to judge how cooperative the guy is but whether there is a wife with him, or better yet a girlfriend, or best of all a date. No matter how unenthusiastic he is he'll help as soon as he extracts her elbow from his pancreas...

In all honesty I've learned to wait for guys with dates to open doors etc even when it's awkward & inconvenient: you can tell at a glance if they want to score a cheap brownie-point with the girl. It sounds silly but it happens a couple of times a month.

I've used a wheelchair for the past 35 years. Mostly, I don't even think about - nor do my wife and son; it's just there ... how I get around. However, I do think about it in terms of being prepared. It could really be a pain in an evacuation. Thus, I plan on bugging in rather than out but if I need to bug out both my van and my wife's are stocked up to help us deal with most situations.

That said, my experiences in various situations with first responders, other professionals, and the general public has been very reassuring. People are ready, willing, and mostly able to make sure I'm alright (they might need some friendly guidance to avoid killing me with kindness). Over the years this has included getting and accepting friendly offers of help from some pretty unsavory and frankly scary looking individuals. All but the seriously unstable bad guys are, IMO, willing to help someone who they percieve is unable to help themselves. Yes, I know some people are dangerous ... I work on being smart about it and have the means to protect myself and others, but here's my point - - Virtually everybody goes out of their way to ensure that disabled people have what they need. The problems are: (1) some people are going to get passed by in truly bad/high stress situations and (2) you're not gonna get any help if nobody knows you need it.

One last thing - as I've written here before - there are times when triage kicks in and saving a bunch of people versus saving one disabled person becomes a real life decision. I can't think of a tougher call but trained professionals will suck it up and make the right decision.

Geez. A government study could screw up a beach party.

Men are stupid that way. We will to do just about anything if we think it will impress the ladies.

Talking and hanging around with a friend who is a paraplegic I learned that he isn't all that disabled. In many cases he can jump curbs and climb or descend stairs about as well as anyone else. Often better.

The second thing is that he is quite proud of being able to get along without help. One of his pet peeves is people who assume he is more disabled than he is. People who try to pick him up and put him into his car without asking if he needs/wants help. He is quite capable of getting in on his own and stowing his wheelchair.

It is about all he can do to keep from smacking people who assume that because he is in a wheelchair they need to talk loudly and slowly. He has a master degree. You also don't want to get smacked by him. He is incredibly strong and tough.

I know personally that Connecticut and Florida are very active in planning for both elderly and formerly-known-as "special needs" individuals. Since everyone falls on the continuums of normal to clinically insane, and able-bodied to bed-ridden, a new term has been coined: universal access. Just because they are able-bodied and appear normal doesn't mean they don't have a "special need". There is a report out there that details the extended definition of disabled, which could include mild cases of ADHD and paranoia's, including being afraid of the dark or spiders.