Katrina: How bad is our emergency planning?

[CORed]

In the wake of Hurricaine Katrina, and the slow response to the disaster, lots of finger pointing is going on. Democrats are smelling blood, and are trying to score points against an increasingly unpopular Republican president. Nonetheless, it is evident that government at all levels, federal, state and local dropped the ball badly. It is quite evident that, at all levels, our political leaders are making it up as they go along.

While Hurricaine Katrina is a disaster of a magnitude not recently seen in tha U.S., and created severe logistical problems it was hardly a suprise. It was well known that the New Orleans levee system would fail in a category 4 or 5 storm. Why then, were there no plans (or such bad plans as to be as bad as no plans) to deal with it? This was not a force 9 earthquake in Chicago, a volcanic eruption in New York, or blizzard in South Florida. Nor was this an asteroid impact, massive nuclear attack, or Yellowstone eruption (i.e. a disaster so bad that recovery is nearly impossible). It was

A few observations: It is all well and good to issue evacuation orders, but New Orleans has a lot of people who simply lack the means to evacuate on their own. Clearly, in the future, if we are serious about evacuating a large urban area, some though needs to be given to providing transport to people who don't have cars. Evacuating New Orleans, San Francisco or New York is quite different from evacuating the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There aren't that many poor people with beach front property.

Issuing a second evacuation order after the city was flooded was especially pointless. Most of the people affected by the order had no means of receiving the order and no way to get out if they did. The governor of Louisiana has repeatedly demonstrated that she is completely unfit for the job.

The cost of disaster relief will be higher, by an order of magnitude or two, than improving the levees would have been. The levees will still have to be improved. OTOH, given the level of stupidity displayed so far, it wouldn't surprise me if we pump out New Orleans, send the refugees back, and then decide once again that improving the levees is too expensive.