who do you hold responsible?

[Carrie]

Biggy, I don't think the folks in charge did everything right. I think they did what they *could*... you can only plan so far ahead and when a hundred thousand people ignore your order to get out, what do you do? Ya know?

The NOPD thing is mind-boggling. But in my mind, this can't be attributed to one person or to higher-ups. This is a set of people each individually choosing to act in this manner. You can't control that kind of thing. If folks that are still there can get pictures of this stuff happening, I think every police officer caught in a photo should be fired immediately with no pension and a no-rehire notice on his record that gets sent to every police dept in the country.

As for this being preventable, I think the only way to universally plan for that is to *force* people out of their homes and onto buses and evacuate them whether they want to go or not. If the city were empty of people right now, this would be a much better situation.

The folks who are starving right now, dying right now, they wouldn't be if they had left when they were told to. And I'm sorry, I don't think the people who stayed or "stuck it out" are brave or noble whatsoever. That's not bravery, it's not nobility, it's stupidity and pride. They are all *contributing* to what's happening right now, even if they're trying to help in some small way. Each of them is still a person that the gov't needs to be concerned with, their safety, their physical needs. When they piss and shit they're contributing to polluting the water.
The city officials, the Guardsmen, etc all could be focusing right now on clearing the streets, draining the water, getting the power back on... instead, because of the folks who stayed, they have to divert all of that attention to stopping looting, raping, starving, pollution...

The only way to prevent this would have been to use guns and force the people to leave.

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by Carrie

As for this being preventable, I think the only way to universally plan for that is to *force* people out of their homes and onto buses and evacuate them whether they want to go or not. If the city were empty of people right now, this would be a much better situation.

That is what a "MANDATORY" evacuation is. You don't just say "you have to get out", you make sure they are out.

The only evacuation plan I saw in action throughout this was to tell people to go. Some of those people spent 9 or 10 hours and only managed to get 90 miles down the road. Airlines, that could have been flying all the way into Sunday evening had canceled flights Sunday morning leaving travelers stranded.

That is piss poor planning on the part of whoever came up with the evacuation plan.

The "plan" also did not take into account those without transportation. If you are in an urban area, you have a good many folks that do not have cars. If you do a mandatory evacuation, you have to take into account that you might be busing a whole lot of people out. The plan did not include "ordering" the airlines to keep flying folks out of there. If you are a tourist area, then you know that you need to take into account the fact that many folks will be relying on air flight.

Then the putting folks in the superdome thing. Dammit. That was obviously a last minute call as evidenced by the lack of food, etc.

The Feds labeled it a federal disaster BEFORE the storm hit.
The media were calling for a worst case scenario from the word go.

Since they knew they had a disaster going into it, they should have had stuff staged and ready to go. They didn't !

It is obvious that there was no real plan. The only plan was "ok, evacuate, everyone will leave..."