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Originally Posted by texxasco
You bet... By the time Katrina was hitting Florida, a projected path showed New Orleans as the most likely target.
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I don't believe that's the case. New Orleans was a long shot when Katrina was hitting Florida.
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I happen to work for the transportation dept of my states prison system, and I have evacuated prisons in the Beaumont area...
Don't go making assumptions about people,...you know what assuming does, don't you?
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I apologize for the assumption. I don't live in the area, but I have plenty of family who live in Houston, and as far south as the gulf coast. My sister lived in New Orleans until this time last week. Family members in Texas are now housing my sister, as well as several friends from New Orleans.
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I have not once stated the Mayor of NO should have, or even could have gotten everyone out of NW before Katrina hit. It's idiotic to even think he could have acomplished that. Even IF everyone could have been offered a ride out, many would not have taken it. That's fact. However, a good portion could have been evacuated had resources been utilized in and around new Orleans alone...
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The final chapter has yet to be written, but my contention is the mayor could have evacuated some people, only at the expense of the ones who remained. In other words, police and other resources would have been devoted to the evacuation process (and many would have had to leave with the evacuees) and the remaining people would have been left with nothing- probably not even the shelter of the Superdome.
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People are taking the time to blast the federal government, and yes there were failures at every level of government....but it starts at home, at the lowest level of government and that means the city council and mayor of New Orleans, as well as the other cities affected. The Mayor of New Orleans, as well as members of the city council failed the citizens of New Orleans. Period.
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Well, maybe if the Army Corps of Engineers levee projects hadn't been underfunded over the past thirty years, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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This also would have been a fraction of people to survive as well, rather than die from the hurricane or the flooding afterwards. If NO had a plan and executed it, we could look back and critique what they did.... but they didn't do ANYTHING. Don't you get it? Anything would have been better than nothing.... 1 - 1 single life saved would have been worth the effort. He could have started with the sick and elderly.... Haven't you heard the reports comign from the hospitals that lost lives because they couldn't come up with basic necessities..ie; running water, electricity, etc... Just evacuating the sick and elderly would have gone a long ways. But for many being sick and/or elderly was their death sentence.
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I wouldn't say they didn't do anything. Whether their plan was adequate, I don't know. I do know there was no way given the timeline and resources, as I understand them, to evacuate even half the people that needed to be evacuated. Obviously, the best case scenario would have been to evacuate 500,000 residents in 24 hours, and to have had Cat5-resistant levees. But, that didn't happen.
Hospital evacuations are tricky. It's not even as simple as loading everyone on buses. Many or most patients need to be evacuated by ambulance, and many other patients need to be airlifted out. I have a close family member involved in emergency planning at a major hospital here, it's not an easy thing to do.