Jefferson Parish emergency operations workers held an evacuation exercise Monday to make sure they're ready in the event of a hurricane.
The parish's assisted evacuation program exists to help people who don't have the means of evacuating on their own. During Hurricane Gustav, the parish put practices into place, evacuating nearly 8,000 people in Jefferson Parish.
Emergency management leaders said last year's evacuation was a good training tool, and they're tweaking some of their evacuation plans for this year. That's why they were practicing those modifications in a mock hurricane drill Monday.
The exercise aimed to teach local and state agencies what to expect if a mandatory evacuation is ordered and how to prepare for the unexpected.
"We learned we need to refine our processes to make it more efficient," said Deano Bonano, head of Jefferson Parish Emergency Management. "What you see here today, this is state agencies, federal agencies, and parish agencies. We're actually working to marry them up to create better communication."
Crews also practiced how to evacuate pets. During Gustav, they evacuated nearly 250 animals and had a 99 percent success rate of putting the animal and the owner back together.
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