Evo said:
I am absolutely amazed that the city of New Orleans didn't have better plans for evacuation and supplies ready for a storm like this. What the hell were they thinking? This was not the Federal government's responsibility.
Per pattylou's link "APPROXIMATELY 30,000 EVACUEES GATHER AT SUPERDOME WITH ROUGHLY 36 HOURS WORTH OF FOOD". Was the Superdome the plan the mayor had for storm evacuation? If it was, why wasn't it properly supplied? Is anyone calling for the head of that mayor? They should be.
What was the state's disaster plan? Has anyone posted that?
I find it hard to believe that there could be a good plan for evacuating an entire city the size of New Orleans - especially for a hurricane. The plan for evacuation was unrealistic to begin with, but stated on paper that 72 hours would be required for evacuation. For Katrina, New Orleans had 66 hours, at best, and it would have required a commitment to evacuate in spite of the fact that the hurricane could shift it's track significantly in 66 hours. The plan called for mass transit evacuation of those without the capability to evacuate on their own. You could say that an attempt at evacuating residents would have saved some lives and human suffering, but it would have been a pretty meager effort in the big picture.
Bus drivers aren't exactly emergency response workers. A coworker of mine retorted "The mayor could pay them overtime", but I'm not sure a lot of them would have told their family, "Hey, honey, I'm going to work. You got the home front. Pack up our kids and belongings and get out of town. See you in a couple days or so." Even if a large portion of the drivers showed up, the first ones out of town still wouldn't have had a destination.
Even including an evacuation plan for the poor of New Orleans was bureaucratic pretentiousness - "Hey, we have to say we'll do something". It was pretty telling that the idea of mass transit evacuation was the first part of the plan tossed out the window when the reality of a Cat 4 hurricane set in.
As for the Superdome, the city's plan was for the hurricane to be a Cat 3 so everyone could leave the Superdome and go home after the storm. A Cat 4 is simply beyond the capability of a city.
The decision on the number of hurricane deaths per century was made when the levee system was built to withstand a Cat 3 hurricane. Deaths per century is the key part of the decision - no one could decide they'll accept 10,000 dead in their city next week or next year - the date of the disaster has to be ambiguously in the future.
A Cat 4 hurricane in a town like New Orleans is just too big a disaster for any city to be capable of responding to. In fact, it's too big for even a state the size of Louisiana to respond to. A disaster that big would be hard for a state the size of California or New York to respond to. You have to have a federal response to a disaster as big as Katrina.
In fairness to FEMA, though, it looks like they did have huge amounts of water and supplies available before the storm, so claims they did nothing aren't exactly true. Unfortunately, the vast majority of it was deployed to Alabama and aid slowly spread from East to West, with the biggest disaster happening to be on the Western end of the supply chain. FEMA was there, but the response was slow and it seemed impossible to make the system react flexibly towards the areas of greatest need. Alabama received good support, Mississippi not as good, but about so-so, and Louisiana's support was inadequate.
I really hope he is sincere and follows through.
