Without getting into the political partisanship of this thing Rick, there WAS an evacuation plan in place, there has been one for years. The problem was that the, shall we say, less than descerning mayor of New Orleans, NEVER executed it. There are picures all over the news of literally hundreds and hundreds of city and school buses sitting half submerged or even alomost completely submerged in flood waters that were never used, never ordered to be used, and never made available even though they were an integral part of the the evacuation plan that the shall we say, not very smart mayor of New Orleans never ordered enacted until the rising waters made the evacuation plan impossible.
The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, AND FEMA, all had prestaged supplies including food, water, cots kitchens and so on and so forth and the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army made REPEATED requests to be allowed to go in prior to the full impact of the hurricane and begin helping. The, shall we say, somewhat stupid mayor of New Orleans REFUSED to allow them in, stating that the local government DID NOT NEED ANY HELP, all the while never ordering the evacuation of his city until it was too late.
Federal law requires that the state or local government has SOLE responsibility to ask for federal help, and FEMA and the rest of the federal government could not by law go in and just start doing their job unless the, shall we say, completely idiotic mayor of New Orleans asked for help, which he did not do until AFTER the transportation infrastructure of New Orleans was destroyed or underwater thus making realistic rapid response impossible.
Only the, shall we say, equally stupid and completely incompetent governor of Louisiana could order the state National Guard or additional National Guard form other states to go in to restore order, she did not do so until AFTER the transportation infrastructure of New Orleans was destroyed or underwater thus making realistic rapid response impossible.
The president of the United States, no bright bulb himself, at least had sense enough to know this could be very very bad and called the, shall we say, brain dead moron mayor of New Orleans and URGED him to request federal help, (Bush had ALREADY declared a state of emergency, thereby enabling immediate funding and response, which COULD NOT BE ENACTED unless requested by local officals), URGED him to evacuate the city, URGED him to take action, HE DID NOTHING!!!! He crowded tens of thousands in the Superdome with no food, no water, no security, no plan, no anything, essentially dooming them to what we all saw on television, gangs of armed thugs roaming the stadium raping and pillaging, filth beyond comprehension, a stadium surrounded by water making rapid response impossible. Mind you, the city's official evacuation plan DID NOT INCLUDE crowding people into the Superdome or the Convention Center, rather, it included using the hundreds and hundreds of city and school buses at their disposal to get people to higher ground outside of the city. Instead, those buses NEVER MOVED from their parking lots. Absolutely none of the federal response was possible without the local city government officially requesting it, which the, shall we say, criminally negligent, completely clueless mayor of New Orleans did not request until well AFTER it was too late to rapidly respond to the disaster, the damage had been done, lives were being lost.
I am no fan of any government, indeed, I am politically neutral, but no way this can be laid at the feet of FEMA or the Federal goverment, this was failure at the state and local level that defies imagination, failure that killed people, failure that is inexcusable, failure that IMO makes the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana almost criminally negligent. Whether the levee's were unable to handle what Katrina threw at them or not is not the point, if the city evacuation plan had been followed let alone even ordred enacted in a timely manner, which it was not, this would not have been anywhere near a fraction as bad as it wound up being, and THAT my friends, was the the mayor's fault, nobody elses.
All you have to do is look at the reponse and recovery of Alabama and Mississippi to this huricane, they followed protocol, they requested federal help, they allowed NGO's to come in and set up relief centers, and as a result, we are not seeing or hearing about this kind of thing from these states, just like we never hear about them from the huricane capital of the world, Florida. I realize the floodwaters change the dynamic, but we are not talking about the floodwaters other than it made the evacuation impossible, but the point is, the evacuation should have been carried out LONG BEFORE the floodwaters even became an issue.
