MOBILE, Ala. — The Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., with support from the Ford Foundation, is hosting a mini-conference this week about how to best respond to hurricanes striking the Gulf Coast. The session will begin at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, at The Cove in the Radisson Admiral Semmes Hotel in downtown Mobile. Admission is free and the public is invited. Space is limited, however, so seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Taking part in a panel discussion will be emergency management officials from Florida to Louisiana. They will discuss what they have learned about hurricane response, as well as explore how the Cuban government deals with a landfalling storm.

“We first had a conference in Kingston, Ontario (Canada) two years ago,” said Jay Higginbotham, chairman of the board of the Society Mobile-La Habana, the organization fostering the sister city relationship between the Port City and Havana, Cuba.

The informal gathering in 2006 gave birth to the first full U.S.-Cuba Hurricane Summit in Monterey, Mexico held last year, and led by Dr. Wayne Smith, a senior fellow at the policy center, as well as director of its Cuba program. Another was held in April 2008 at the Hotel Nacional in Havana.

Smith will lead the Mobile mini-conference, along with Higginbotham. Randy Poindexter of New Orleans is the Louisiana conference organizer.

But, unlike those held outside the country Cuban emergency management officials will not be allowed to attend. Many of the others taking part also participated in the conferences in Mexico and Cuba.

“Why didn’t Cuba and the United States get together on this because we could have prevented some of this, such as Galveston (Texas) in 2000,” Higginbotham questioned. Decrying the Bush administration’s unyielding policy against the Fidel Castro regime, he contends Cuban leaders have a much more established track record dealing with tropical systems and preventing widespread loss of life, and that we could learn much from their expertise.

“They’ll take away some knowledge of hurricanes, before and after they make landfall,” said Higginbotham, referring to what those attending the Mobile event will gain. “The Cubans say that (during Hurricane Katrina in 2005) the wrong people evacuated and the wrong people stayed. This time more people died on the highways. Not all of them needed to evacuate.”

Higginbotham said mandatory evacuations are costly for coastal residents, and they unnecessarily clog highways and burn fuel.

“You lose a lot when you evacuate,” he said. “Evacuation is not a 100 percent positive thing to do.”

According to Higginbotham, Cubans seek out stronger structures known to stand up to hurricane force winds and move to those buildings, but they don’t wait until the last minute. He added, “They teach about hurricanes from an early age — why you should be afraid, why you shouldn’t be afraid.”

Asked whether he had hopes either of the leading presidential candidates would, if elected, likely change policy enabling Cuban officials to attend future conferences here, Higginbotham said, “I think the Democrats have come up with a better plan that corresponds with what the Cubans want. They want to be treated like any other nation.

“Cuba has special problems. We’ve been trying to start a counter revolution for the last 40 years. There’s so much to gain by sharing our secrets and sharing our problems, and we could do that if we wanted.”

Higginbotham said Cuba was a dictatorship only from 1959 until 1976, when a new constitution was written, forming a democracy with free elections being established. Until Castro stepped aside as Cuban president in February, however, he was the lone candidate placed before the National Assembly each time. Castro appointed his brother, Raul, as his successor.