Okay, this is a rant... [rant]
I was really identifying with the people of Galveston and NOLA, and thinking to myself, "What if I had to evacuate from my home? Where would I get information on what to do, where to go, what to pack?" So I decided I'd meme a webpage with a list of Evacuation Instructions. And that's where I started a descent into hell. First of all, there are very few "webpages" out there with such info. Mostly they just link to PDFs, which are useless to anyone without the plugins. And even then, the stuff out there is often appalling. For example, this Louisiana Government page: http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/evacinfo/stateevacrtes.htm Now, it's already annoying because of the PDFs. But it adds insult to injury, since the PDF files are enormous 7 Megabyte clunkers *per page*. And to add the cherry on top, the diagrams require non-standard paper, 11x17! I made an attempt to download the PDF, and was further horrified by how unwieldy it was. It was huge, it was slow, it was displayed sideways, and was so large and zoomed out that my system kept trying to redraw it every time I tried to read it. I finally just gave up in disgust. And keep in mind, this is a situation where I'm sitting here safely in St. Louis, in a nice comfy office with a high-end computer and plenty of bandwidth. For someone who's in an emergency situation, with a low-end computer and a slow dial-up, those files would be completely inaccessible and useless. I kept looking, and there is *some* useful information out there, but it's difficult to find, and often in a very rough format. For example, this PDF (again, with the PDFs!) from the Houston Red Cross. It has a packing checklist, along with some solid advice about dealing with an emergency situation such as a hurricane or tornado. But it still has typos, gives conflicting information (like about how much water to store), and doesn't have any specific advice like *where* to go or how to find transportation. Even at the FEMA site, it just says, "Contact the local red cross for evacuation information," but without saying *how* to contact them. And www.houstonredcross.org has got nothing on their main page about Rita. My ranting aside, what is my "constructive criticism" advice?
- Some of our government resources *must* be devoted to providing basic and easily-accessible emergency information on the web.
- This information needs to be searchable by common-sense terms such as "evacuation information" or "How to evacuate".
- The information needs to be available in *non-PDF* format, like a straightforward quick-to-load HTML page with a checklist of what to pack, locatio... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ] Evacuation Instructions (or lack thereof) |
