Lessons learned from previous natural disasters like Hurricanes Gustav and Ike help us prepare for future disasters. | Photo: NOAA

Editor’s Note: While this piece was about Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in the Gulf Coast four years ago, relevant lessons are learned from every major disaster to prepare for the next one, such as Hurricane Sandy.

We had our plan for Hurricane Gustav. We had been here before with Katrina. Schedules were set. Evacuation of coastal parishes was going well. Coastal pet owners and their pets (large and small) were settling in to shelters. Most horse owners knew they needed to move quickly before mandatory contraflow (government routing of evacuation traffic outward on all roads from major cities) from our 12 most vulnerable parishes. Thousands of horses were located just north of I-10 and, we hoped, out of harm’s way. Only a handful of farms had made the decision to “ride it out,” but we knew where they were this time.

The morning of Sept. 1 winds picked up to about 40 mph in Baton Rouge and limbs fell in the backyard. Within minutes weather announcers warned of increasing winds, and the eye of Gustav was moving right over our community. By afternoon 90 mph winds and storm conditions knocked out electricity to nearly a million people, downed and uprooted large trees, and destroyed structures. And Baton Rouge is more than 100 miles inland from the coast! Two people in a nearby neighborhood were crushed when a tree fell onto their daughter’s home–they had evacuated from New Orleans only to meet their death in the previously safe haven of Baton Rouge