The disaster response to those with disabilities during the Louisiana Floods of 2016 was significantly improved from the response during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

That’s according to Shari Myers, the National Disability Integration Coordinator for the American Red Cross. Previously, Myers was chief operating officer of Portlight Inclusive Disaster Strategies, a nonprofit focused on disaster relief for people with disabilities.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that I now have friends and colleagues with disabilities who are working in inclusive emergency management and disaster planning. Before now, disaster planning was always a lot of people planning for us, not with us,” says Myers.

Red Cross called last month’s flood in Louisiana, “the worse U.S. disaster since Hurricane Sandy,” and over 20 parishes were affected. Some even compare it to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the region in 2005.

Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana formed an Emergency Management Disability and Aging Coalition to make sure people with disabilities were thought of in disaster relief procedures and had equal access to emergency resources. As a result, Myers says better partnerships with community organizations were forged and resources they could only dream about during Hurricane Katrina have been donated or purchased for Louisiana flood shelters.

But not everything ran smoothly. For example, though more shelters were accessible at their entrances than during Katrina, only about 10 to 15 percent of the portable commode trailers surveyed had roll-in showers or toilets.

“The state chooses the facility and we’re working with those facilities that missed the mark to let them know they need to have accessible washroom and shower trailers at those locations during future disasters,” says Myers.

Myers says to keep in mind that ensuring shelter accessibility isn’t the first concern of emergency management when a disaster hits. “It may have taken a day or two for accessible trailers to be brought in, but emergency responders at the state shelters were relatively on top of things once the initial chaos died down,” says Myers. “In almost all cases, people only had to stay in safe, but inaccessible locations for a few hours before being taken to an accessible state shelter.”

Has the response been perfect? Of course not. “But of the eight deployments I’ve been on this is the best,” says Myers.