Katrina Update:many local failures in NOLA

The knowledge that N.O. was in danger of hurricane damage was not exactly a new idea...especially after a previous hurricane a year before...

There was a meeting with FEMA in summer 2005, and the need to evacuate was noted

Nevertheless, Hospitals did not have emergency plans, i.e. with stocking food, water, medicines, and generators to the upper floors... there was no decent evacuation plans for either the city or hospitals, and prior to the storm, the state officials charged with evacuation planning for the local hospitals turned down federal help....and similarly, there was a failure to evacuate many nursing homes, the National Guard was a bit disorganized (and their after action report seems more upset that the 92 airborne and the Air force got credit for what they did rather than pointing out the problems)...

Captain Brayard's devestating report on lack of local planning is here...read it if you don't have time to read all the others...

And poor Mayor Nagin, who seems to have been caught in the chaos, asked FEMA for help, which of course didn't arrive...easy to criticize both of them...but Nagin was a reform mayor who inherited a corrupt inefficient system in 2002, and FEMA had three states decimated and roads blocked meaning that logistically it was impossible for immediate help...

But of coure, it's easier to blame FEMA....