Seventy-three year old Beau Roberts has a bum leg he's oxygen dependent and lives alone in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. On August 27, 2005 when officials issued a mandatory evacuation order more than 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina blew in he couldn't drive out even if he wanted to.

New Orleans Backstreet Cultural Museum director Sylvester Francis carries a Mardi Gras Indian headdress. His city is making emergency plans for a very busy hurricane season.

Forecasters are calling for as many as eight hurricanes, giving the region's leaders little doubt that they will have to put their overhauled emergency plans to the test.

Their emergency message to residents is unchanged: Make a plan and get out early.

Post Katrina the message is ratcheted up:  Now you have help.

But before anything emergency managers are urging the entire population to take responsibility for what has become an annual threat.

People need to make their own advance evacuation plan. Those with a disability or medical condition should contact family, friends or caregivers to arrange safe passage to a shelter. "At the end of the day if that fails," says Jerry Sneed, New Orleans emergency preparedness director "there's a safety net. We'll pick you up."

Under revised emergency protocols residents like Beau Roberts with special medical needs will be picked up at their homes and evacuated before storms. People with limited mobility will also be picked up at their homes. They will be carried to special collection points and then transferred to buses for rides to shelters.

The city plans to work with the Department of Health and Hospitals and a contractor supplying wheelchairs and special vehicles to retrieve residents with verifiable medical needs. They will be transported to one of 13 pick up sites aboard one of 14 city-contracted ambulances or by law enforcement. But officials emphasize that the city can only offer the pick up service to the neediest residents.

"There's no way I can pick up 25,000 people at their doorstep," said Sneed.

One of the trickiest feats emergency managers could face is confirming shelter space in the days before an evacuation and adequately distributing the hundreds of buses as they merge with long lines of cars inching out of New Orleans.

Residents from New Orleans 9th and 8th Wards the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina welcomed the new emergency plan. Politicians and community groups have mounted a door-to-door campaign identifying and registering people who qualify for the assisted evacuation plan.

Officials stress the goal is to move residents to safety first. The new procedures eliminate one of the major reasons residents ignore evacuation orders: to guard against looters and burglars who take advantage of abandoned streets and homes. 

"No citizen should think he needs to stay here and protect his property," Sneed said.

"We will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of our citizens' property."

"We used to hear people say hurricanes are like Mardi Gras, they blow every year kick up a little dust and leave town. This is the Big Easy! Ride it out," recalled Meredith Maze, an evacuation planning official.  She says with Katrina in the forefront of people's minds an overwhelming number of the region's storm-weary residents probably don't need much prodding, but they can nevertheless count on hearing more about emergency evacuation than they ever want to know.

"It has to be on people's minds," said Sneed "Do we feel that we will have to evacuate this city sometime before the season ends in November? Yes we do. When Mother Nature calls, everybody's got to be ready."