Relief effort has racial element?

[lancelot]

Did anyone see the news late last night (where they discuss the following days' newspaper headlines)?

The discussion intimated that there was a possible racial element to the relief effort in the south. The political correspondent for a paper (Independent?) suggested that if the hurricane had hit maryland or Beverly Hills the relief effort he imagined would have been a lot better implemented...

I cant help but wonder along the same lines but am undecided really..

Opinions?

[English assassin]

There does have to be a suspicion that things would have been different in Seattle, but maybe that's just because New Orleans is disorganised rather than the south is racist. I find it rather hard to imagine that any federal agencies were on Miller time just because it was blacks in the water.

What did strike me was the incredible class element. Here we have this mass of people too poor to own their own cars, pay for alternative accomodation, or any of those things, and no one seems to have planned a damn thing to do about them. (And that is a state and city matter) Some people even suggested it was their fault, overlooking the fact that they had no means of transport and nowhere to go.

This would never have happened in the so-called class divided UK.

[Petrus]

I do not think there is anything that can be qualified of racist in the mess that occured last week.

Rather, as stated by English Assassin, there is a huge social element.

Maybe the part of poor people is more important in states such as Louisiana, but it seems obvious that view a few exceptions, only the poor people were victims of this catastroph.

It looks like if those that could afford to flee did it and those that could not were let to themselves whatever the consequences : just like if they did not exist.

It makes think to a society where middle and upper class have a weight but lower classes simply do not count.

Yes, a very class divided country indeed.

[econ21]

Rather, as stated by English Assassin, there is a huge social element.

The other element - aside from class - that strikes me is health. Seeing the sick and the infirm trapped was particularly heart-wrenching. The image of a blanket covering a body in a wheelchair is a haunting one.

To be honest, though, I am not sure how well the UK would have handled this - unlike the Dutch case AdrianII mentioned, I don't think we have a precedent. Presumably, the institutionalised were evacuated in NO - it's those at home who were left. Making sure all the sick and infirm in city were taken out of their own homes would be an incredible administrative effort.

[GodsPetMonkey]

There does have to be a suspicion that things would have been different in Seattle, but maybe that's just because New Orleans is disorganised rather than the south is racist. I find it rather hard to imagine that any federal agencies were on Miller time just because it was blacks in the water.

I agree, the theoretical differences in response to such a disaster would depend a lot on where it hit... for instance, if it had hit California, I should think it would be quite a different scenario, not because of all those rich whites, but because (I hope) disaster planning is much more part of the 'norm'. An even better example would be Japan, but Japan seems to attract every sort of natural disaster possible.

What did strike me was the incredible class element. Here we have this mass of people too poor to own their own cars, pay for alternative accomodation, or any of those things, and no one seems to have planned a damn thing to do about them. (And that is a state and city matter) Some people even suggested it was their fault, overlooking the fact that they had no means of transport and nowhere to go.

This would never have happened in the so-called class divided UK.

Suggesting that it's their own fault because they are too poor is just wrong, but I don't think there is any sort of concerted effort to keep the poor down, the poor will always bear the brunt of a disaster, it's just the way it is. Just another side effect of very bad planning and a lacking response.

[Adrian II]

The other element - aside from class - that strikes me is health.

Sure, but what strikes me most is the absence of government from the local level all the way to the top. In my country a mayor would have been standing on top of that levee even if there was a huge risk that it would break. Happens all the time here when there is a risk of flooding. A mayor either evacuates his town and makes sure he is the last one out, or he stays there with everyone else to ride it out and be seen to ride it out. He is responsible for the maintenance of dykes and levees in his district, and if he runs he is fired on the spot by the Minister of the Interior. Of course said minister would not be vacationing on his ranch, nor would our Prime Minister chose to attend a fund raiser or the Foreign Secretary be shopping for shoes at the critical moment. Sorry for the rant, but I still find the whole thing over there surreal.

[KukriKhan]

New Orleans had a population just under 5 million. London is about 7.5 million, with (arguably) better public transport. Could you totally evacuate London in 24 hours?

Point taken on the apparent 'asleep at the wheel' -ness of some of our leadership.

[Devastatin Dave]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

This pretty much has all that i wanted to say. Why did the mayor wait so late for the mandatory evacuation and didn't move the buses to higher ground? Oh, he's black BTW. Why didn't Jesse Jackson and other poverty pimps go and help evacuate the people? There is no racial element here. Yes, I would say a economical issue, but still the MAYOR did not prepar HIS city. You should see the intervues with this clown. All he does is deflect any criticism. He' no Gulliani.
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4034.php
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.nagin/

Go down about halfway to read the intervue with Nagin...
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...05/ltm.01.html
I really like this part...
"He called me in that office after that. And he said, “Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor.” I said — and I don’t remember exactly what. There were two options. I was ready to move today. The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.

S. O’BRIEN: You’re telling me the president told you the governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision?

NAGIN: Yes.

S. O’BRIEN: Regarding what? Bringing troops in?

NAGIN: Whatever they had discussed. As far as what the — I was abdicating a clear chain of command, so that we could get resources flowing in the right places.

S. O’BRIEN: And the governor said no.

NAGIN: She said that she needed 24 hours to make a decision. It would have been great if we could of left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out. It didn’t happen, and more people died."

Here's an article on the "Welfare State" and its effects to the midnset of the victoms..
http://www.rightnation.us/forums/ind...howtopic=86931

And the last article, just for old times sake...
http://americandaily.com/article/9101

[Devastatin Dave]

Sure, but what strikes me most is the absence of government from the local level all the way to the top. In my country a mayor would have been standing on top of that levee even if there was a huge risk that it would break. Happens all the time here when there is a risk of flooding. A mayor either evacuates his town and makes sure he is the last one out, or he stays there with everyone else to ride it out and be seen to ride it out. He is responsible for the maintenance of dykes and levees in his district, and if he runs he is fired on the spot by the Minister of the Interior. Of course said minister would not be vacationing on his ranch, nor would our Prime Minister chose to attend a fund raiser or the Foreign Secretary be shopping for shoes at the critical moment. Sorry for the rant, but I still find the whole thing over there surreal.

Best post of the thread. This mayor is hollow...

[Adrian II]

New Orleans had a population just under 5 million.

Sorry, under 500.000. In any modern city they could have been evacuated in twelve hours time. So we don't know what might have been if that mayor would have got off his you-know-what in the first place.

Of course, if you don't have sufficient police and infrastructure, engineers, buses and whatnot, the task becomes daunting, but that is a sign of absent government as well.

When the city of Mumbai in India was flooded there was no looting, no break-down, a very low number of dead and no food shortage which is remarkable for India. In case you wonder, Mumbai has 20 million inhabitants.

This little baby is called Nabi, she landed just yesterday on the Chinese coast.



In Anhui province alone more than 100,000 people had to leave their homes. Almost 12,000 homes were damaged in the south-eastern coastal city of Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province. Accordig to Xinhua up to a million people were moved from low-lying coastal flood plains in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.

[English assassin]

New Orleans had a population just under 5 million. London is about 7.5 million, with (arguably) better public transport. Could you totally evacuate London in 24 hours?

Point taken on the apparent 'asleep at the wheel' -ness of some of our leadership.

Most internet sources seem to be putting the city population at about 0.5 million?

Point taken, its far from a trival undertaking. And I certainly don't mean to suggest an equivalent UK operation would not be incompetently executed. Very probably it would, and the US execution, when the US execution actually begins, will probably be more efficient.

But there would at least be a plan at the start that included the poor and the infirm.

Anyway, a further point, with my deconstruction hat on, whether or not the fiasco to date has been caused by a "racial element", it sure as hell has a racial element now, doesn't it? Rightly or (as I believe) wrongly. And, you know, the factoid that Bush cut short his holiday to sign emergency legislation for Terry Schiavo, but remained away from Washington for this...well, interesting. I guess Bush knows what pushes his supporters buttons. Maybe he thinks they care more about one right to life case than a few thousand starving blacks?

Just asking.

[Adrian II]

Best post of the thread. This mayor is hollow...

He is only a symptom. Looks like the real culprit here is hostility to government. Not contempt for blacks or the poor or the Army engineers, but contempt for government as a force for good. This ideology has prevailed in the U.S. for the past twenty-five years. Even after 9/11 it took a long time to wrench U.S. airport security out of the incompetent and cost-cutting hands of private companies. Go figure.

Oh, and we have our share of the same over here so this is no U.S. bashing. I am bashing an insane ideology that says everybody will be better off if we are all left to fend for ourselves.

[KukriKhan]

You're right, of course (mis-counted my zero's). My follow-up question was: "IF some where left behind in a 'total' evacuation, who would those folks likely be?", with the built-in answer being "Those least resourced for transportation", i.e. the poor.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no defender of any level of government in this debacle. I can sort of understand how they got caught flat-footed on recognizing the threat (with the storm going from Cat I to Cat V in 24 hours), but the failure to effectively coordinate ANY phase of response so far just has me baffled, more than a little embarrassed, and sometimes downright outraged.

[Adrian II]

Don't get me wrong; I'm no defender of any level of government in this debacle. I can sort of understand how they got caught flat-footed on recognizing the threat (with the storm going from Cat I to Cat V in 24 hours), but the failure to effectively coordinate ANY phase of response so far just has me baffled, more than a little embarrassed, and sometimes downright outraged.

I understand and agree. I would just add that apparently New Orleans had no plan, only a big sign that said 'Run!'

The reason why some of us non-Americans are hammering on these issues is that we are all human beings and when something like this happens you are outraged no matter where you live -- just like many American patrons here were outraged when the tsunami-aid for Sri Lanka and Indonesia was slow in coming.

Of course the usual suspects won't skip this great opportunity for some good old bashing..

[KukriKhan]

Anyway, a further point, with my deconstruction hat on, whether or not the fiasco to date has been caused by a "racial element", it sure as hell has a racial element now, doesn't it? Rightly or (as I believe) wrongly. And, you know, the factoid that Bush cut short his holiday to sign emergency legislation for Terry Schiavo, but remained away from Washington for this...well, interesting. I guess Bush knows what pushes his supporters buttons. Maybe he thinks they care more about one right to life case than a few thousand starving blacks?

Just asking.

Not just the Executive...Congress, too. (Link below is to an editorial cartoon).

[Aenlic]

I don't necessarily think that some of the problems were racial; but there have been instances in the event with a definite economic status bias. Do a little digging into what happened at the two hospitals across the road from each other. One, the Tulane University Medical Center was a private hospital, the place to care for the wealthy. The other Charity Hospital was a public hospital existing entirely on charity donations and cared for the poor without insurance. Care to guess which one was evacuated entirely in less than a day while the other - right across the street had no power, no food, no water, dwindling medical supplies, rising water and no evacuations for days?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Was the public one run by the govt?

I'm guessing no, if it was funded by donations...

[yesdachi]

You're right, of course (mis-counted my zero's). My follow-up question was: "IF some where left behind in a 'total' evacuation, who would those folks likely be?", with the built-in answer being "Those least resourced for transportation", i.e. the poor.

I think I might be more inclined to say the stupid. After seeing more interviews with survivors I cant do anything but shake my head. Of course poor and stupid probably walk hand in hand.

Still no excuse for the total lack of leadership from local gov. and poor response time from the federal gov.

I saw on the news a night or two ago where trucks of supplies (with news teams in them-vultures) from Michigan were the first to arrive in a Mississippi town hit hard by the hurricane. How can supplies from Michigan get there before supplies from the Gov. or even from states closer? There are 6 stated between Michigan and Mississippi. And where was the mayor of this Mississippi town? Do all local gov. officials disappear when their city is in trouble? This mayor or others like him couldn’t have gotten on the phone and ordered a truck load of water and supplies from a grocery store a few hundred miles north?

Asleep at the wheel indeed.

[Aenlic]

Charity Hospital, known really as Big Charity, but officially called the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans is (was) run by the Lousiana State University system. It was the oldest continuously operated hospital in the U.S. up until last week. Yes, it's government run; but by the LSU system. It received funds from donations and from reimbursements for Medicaid and Medicare. New Orleans had, until last week, ranked 5th highest in the U.S. in terms of the percentage of its population without health insurance, and New Orleans was the 4th most impoverished city in the U.S. as of last week. Charity was the hospital of last resort, as opposed to the much more expensive private Tulane Hospital.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

For three days NO was told that a calls 4 or 5 hurricane was going to hit. They also knew that the levies werent designed to survive such a storm. They also had an evacutation plan. They never did squat to implement it. The Mayor is a moron. This is what happens in a state where they count on the government to take care of them.

[Adrian II]

For three days NO was told that a calls 4 or 5 hurricane was going to hit. They also knew that the levies werent designed to survive such a storm. They also had an evacutation plan. They never did squat to implement it. The Mayor is a moron. This is what happens in a state where they count on the government to take care of them.

LOL! From now on every citizen should build his own levee! Why didn't they think of it before? Sorry, it is becoming impossible to take you serious anymore, Gawain.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

LOL! From now on every citizen should build his own levee! Why didn't they think of it before? Sorry, it is becoming impossible to take you serious anymore, Gawain.

I suggest its you who shouldnt be taken seriously anymore. If you lived somewhere where they said if a force 4 hurricane hits you ciity will be under water and were told a force 4 or 5 hurricane was headed there would you just stay there? If you were the mayor would you evacuate the place or not? They knew the levies wouldnt hold and yet they stayed. The Mayor knew and yet didnt put into effect the evacutaion plan at all.All I can say is their lucky the storm veered away at the last minute.

[econ21]

Presumably, the institutionalised were evacuated in NO ...

Care to guess which one [hospital] was evacuated entirely in less than a day while the other - right across the street had no power, no food, no water, dwindling medical supplies, rising water and no evacuations for days?

Oh boy, sounds like I assumed too much. The authorities could not even evacuate a hospital, even after the flood?

[Adrian II]

If you lived somewhere where they said if a force 4 hurricane hits your city (..)

Who would 'they' be? Ah, the evil government! I thought you would never rely on the goverment, Gawain?

Really, nearly everything you have posted about Katrina has been self-defeating. Remember that paranoid Boontz-blog you quoted? The one with the racist undertones that said the NO authorities demanded that everyone hand in their guns when they entered the Superdome so they would be easy prey for gangs and rapists? Man, oh man...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I doubt that there was, or is, any racist component.

As to whether class plays into it, the only demonstrable truth is that those lacking the personal resources to evacuate (for whatever reason) were in the greatest danger.

Planning:

Apparently, NO had a written evac/hurricane plan ready to go. Known time required for complete evacuation -- included the disadvantaged and hospitalized -- was 72 hours from the mayor's "GO" signal. The mayor's emergency power would have been sufficient to declare the evac provided that the state of emergency had been acknowledged.

Unfortunately, the plan wasn't implemented and may not have been well known to anyone outside the NO government committee that developed it. SNAFU then became FUBAR when the levees went.

Seamus

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Who would 'they' be? Ah, the evil government! I thought you would never rely on the goverment, Gawain?

If you didnt rely on them at all there would be no levies and no disaster thats true. Im talking about engineers here not the government. I also never said to neve ely on the govenment. Thats a stupid statement. Relying on them as little as possible though is another matter.

Really, nearly everything you have posted about Katrina has been self-defeating.

Says you

Really, nearly everything you have posted about Katrina has been self-defeating. Remember that paranoid Boontz-blog you quoted? The one with the racist undertones that said the NO authorities demanded that everyone hand in their guns when they entered the Superdome so they would be easy prey for gangs and rapists? Man, oh man...

You sound like the racist here. He never mentioned race.

[Adrian II]

Apparently, NO had a written evac/hurricane plan ready to go.

Apparently both the State and the City had one. This is the Louisiana plan. I can't seem to find the City of New Orleans plan.

Here is a line-up of crucial episodes by the BBC which is still tentative, I guess, in the sense that reporters don't know what went on behind the screens. It is being updated once a day.

Multiple failures caused relief crisis
Analysis
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The breakdown of the relief operation in New Orleans was the result of multiple failures by city, state and federal authorities.
Evacuation at last, but why so late?

There was no one cause. The failures began long before the hurricane with a gamble that a Category Four or Five hurricane would not strike New Orleans.

They continued with an inadequate evacuation plan and culminated in a relief effort hampered by lack of planning, supplies and manpower, and a breakdown in communications of the most basic sort.

On top of all this, there is the question of whether an earlier intervention by President Bush could have a made a big difference.

The planning

Before Hurricane Katrina struck, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was confident that it was ready. Its director, Michael Brown, said: "Fema has pre-positioned many assets including ice, water, food and rescue teams to move into the stricken areas as soon as it is safe to do so."

Mr Brown even told the Associated Press news agency that the evacuation had gone well. "I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth," he said.

Yet on Saturday 28 August, the day before the evacuation was ordered, Mr Brown did not say that people should leave the city. All he said was:

"There's still time to take action now, but you must be prepared and take shelter and other emergency precautions immediately."

This has made Fema appear complacent in the period immediately before the hurricane arrived. If it did not expect the worst, it would not have prepared for the worst.

The Brown statement went out on the same day that the National Hurricane Center was warning that Katrina was strengthening to the top Category Five. Everyone knew the dangers of a Category Five. A Fema exercise last year called "Hurricane Pam" had looked at a Category Three, and that was bad enough.

The evacuation

It was announced at a news conference by the Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday 28 August, less than 24 hours before the hurricane struck early the next morning.

The question has to be asked: Why was it not ordered earlier?

The Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said at the same news conference that President Bush had called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation.

The night before, National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield had called Mayor Nagin to tell him that an evacuation was needed. Why were these calls necessary?

School buses still lined up after the hurricane

Again, as with Fema, the New Orleans mayor should have known that on the Saturday, Katrina was strengthening to Five.

It was already clear on the Sunday that the evacuation would not cover many of the poor, the sick and those who did not pay heed.

The mayor said people going to the Superdome, a sports venue named as an alternative destination for those unable to leave, should bring supplies for several days. He also said police could commandeer any vehicle for the evacuation.

But how much support was there at the Superdome? And how much city transport was actually used? There is a photo showing city school buses still lined up, in waterlogged parking lots, after the hurricane.

There are questions for the mayor, dubbed heroic by some, to answer.

The relief operation

The scenes which most shocked the world were at the Superdome and the nearby Convention Center. Yet it turns out that neither Mr Brown nor his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, knew about the crises there until Thursday.

This, despite numerous television reports from the scene. It was not until Friday that the first relief convoy arrived.

"It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to drain into the city."
Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary

"The very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody, none of the state and local officials or anybody else, was talking about a Convention Center," Chertoff told CNN. Note how he blames local officials.

Nor did he know about the breach in the floodwalls until a day later.

"It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to drain into the city," he said on NBC.

Other, more successful operations, notably the airlift by the Coast Guard, should be acknowledged.

And in a disaster area the size of Great Britain, resources were stretched.

But ironically the failure at the Convention Center would have been fairly easy to put right. Reporters drove there without problems. One took a taxi.

What, one wonders, was Fema/the mayor's office/the governor's office doing while all that was played out on live TV?

One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do nothing but monitor TV.

Some of this might explain why people at the Superdome and the Convention Center had to wait so long. It does not explain why communications were not better.

Another sign of slowness was that the Department of Homeland Security did not issue the first ever declaration of an "incident of national significance" until the Wednesday. Such a declaration allows the federal government a greater role in taking decisions.

One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do nothing but monitor TV

In fact, the arguments between federal and state authorities about who was able to do what is another part of this story.

The Department of Homeland Security said the local authorities were inadequate. The locals responded that Fema had been obstructive - it had, for example, stopped three truckloads of water sent by the store Wal-Mart. And so on.

It took days to sort out who should send troops and from where.

Indeed, the intricacies of the various responsibilties of state and federal authorities do not always allow for quick decision making, though that did not stop rapid action in New York City on 9/11.

Nor does Governor Blanco escape criticism. It took until Thursday, for example, for her to sign an order releasing school buses to move the evacuees.

The president's response

Mr Bush has been blamed for failing to rise to the occasion. His critics argue that he took too long to get back to Washington and did not provide the inspirational leadership needed at such a time. Nor, it is said, did he intervene early enough to get things moving.

Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz concluded:

"Anger has been focused on Bush and his administration to a degree unprecedented in his presidency. Senator Mary Landrieu [a Louisiana Democrat] said in an ABC News interview that aired Sunday that she would consider punching the president and others for their response to what happened there. Local officials, some in tears, have angrily accused the administration of callousness and negligence."

The president's defenders point out that it was he who urged an evacuation of New Orleans (he has no legal power to order one) and that he did acknowledge the "unacceptable" pace of the relief effort. Further, they say that aid is now flowing and reconstruction will take place.

Another issue for Mr Bush is why Michael Brown was appointed director of Fema. He had previously been its deputy and had been hired as its general counsel by the director Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's chief of staff when he was Texas governor. Mr Brown, a lawyer from Oklahoma, played a role in studying the government's response to national emergencies. Before that he had run the Arab horse association.

Senator Hillary Clinton has said that Fema should be removed from the Homeland Security Department and made an independent agency again.

The gamble

When Hurricane Camille, a rare top Category Five storm, hit Mississippi in 1969, just missing New Orleans, the levees around the city were strengthened - but only enough to protect against a Category Three hurricane.

The gamble was taken that another Category Five would not threaten New Orleans anytime soon. This attitude prevailed among successive administrations.

Lt General Carl Strock, the Army Corps of Engineers commander, admitted that there was a collective mindset - that New Orleans would not be hit. Washington rolled the dice, he said.

After flooding in 1995, the existing system was improved. However, the sums were relatively small. About $500m was spent over the next 10 years.

From 2003 onwards, the Bush administration cut funds amid charges from the Army Corps of Engineers that the money was transferred to Iraq instead. The latest annual budget was cut from $36.5m to $10.4m.

A study to examine defences against a category Four or Five storm was proposed, at a cost of $4m. The Times-Picayune quoted the Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi as saying: "The Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies."

But in any event, there was no plan for a major strengthening. This would have taken billions of dollars and many years.

And an Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, Connie Gillette, said there had never been any plans or funds to improve those floodwalls which had failed.

Update: a reader has pointed out a quote in the New York Times indicating that the failed floodwalls had in fact previously been strengthened:

'"Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said [it] was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded." "It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."' It is a long and complex chain of responsibility.

All these issues, and many more, will now be the subject of congressional and other inquiries.

[PanzerJaeger]

I fail to see how this has anything to do with a hostility towards government Adrian. Who was hostile towards government, the people who evacuated or the people who did as they were told and went to the superdome?

On the contrary, it has everything to do with the incompetency of the local government. Making it bigger does not solve this problem.

PS - First you pushed gun control and now you are pushing bigger government.. I sense a bit of an agenda.

[Red Harvest]

Sorry, under 500.000. In any modern city they could have been evacuated in twelve hours time. So we don't know what might have been if that mayor would have got off his you-know-what in the first place.

Where did you get that 12 hour estimate from? It takes 12 hours just to get started on an evacuation of that scale. Many people will be at work--yes, even on Saturday and Sunday as quite a few of the industries are 24 hour operations with shifts, plus the employers had to prepare for the storm--you don't just flip an off switch on a refinery. There were something like 1.5 million in the whole area that had to evacuate, often using the same routes. And New Orleans is more remote than many cities because of the river, Gulf, and bayous. Even those who evacuated the coast often still ended up in areas that were hard hit and out of power, gas, etc.

Plus, you need to understand that people tried to board up/prep their homes before they left. When you hear a storm is coming you begin prepping your house and gathering stuff to leave. It isn't like you hop in your car immediately.

FEMA's own test scenario showed that many would be unable to evacuate, lacking transport. Institutions and hospitals could not be emptied easily, and there were not enough buses, nor people to manage the effort. Tourists got trapped when the airlines quit flying and all rental cars/vans/buses were already committed.

The webcams showed the roads packed on Sunday evening when I looked so I don't see how what many believe is true: that everyone even with cars who wanted could have gotten out. My sister-in-law weathered the storm in Baton Rouge because her responsibilities prevented her from being able to consider leaving until Sunday afternoon, at which time the roads were full.

I suspect you way overestimate the availability of buses in a given area of the U.S., you are probably thinking in terms of European bus to populace ratios, but admittedly that is just speculation on my part. To get enough buses, they would have had to have been marshalled from outside New Orleans at least 24 hours before the storm. While the eye of the storm hit at 7AM Monday, those causeways and highways would have been impassable many hours before that. (I don't know when/if they were actually closed but suspect well before midnight.)

[Adrian II]

I fail to see how this has anything to do with a hostility towards government Adrian.

I mean the hostility against government that began with Ronald Reagan, based on the notion that the govenment is the citizen's worst nightmare. Cut-backs, tax cuts or tax ceilings, privatisations and outsourcing of government tasks or staff to the private sector, together with the adverse rhetoric of 'Who needs government?' have led to an erosion of the government's sense of purpose. Poor Mr Brown's failure over the past week is not just the result of his incompetence. It is also the result of a situation where he was faced with calls for greater domestic terrorism preparedness on the one hand, and years of funding cuts, personnel departures and FEMA's downgrading from a cabinet-level agency to a subordinate department of Homeland Security on the other hand.

Who was hostile towards government, the people who evacuated or the people who did as they were told and went to the superdome?

All of them were, and I guess all of them feel let down. Even those who survived will wonder why those levees were never upgraded.

PS - First you pushed gun control and now you are pushing bigger government.. I sense a bit of an agenda.

Well spotted. I actually have political views of my own. What amazes me is that views are suddenly called 'agendas'. Are you suspecting me of planning to run for U.S. Senator or something?