Dad - the Katrina aftermath is very bad. I donated some money to the Lutheran Disaster Recovery program last week.
FEMA and the federal government did drop the ball on this one, but if you want to be depressed, look at the complete and utter failure of the state and local government in Louisiana. It takes the federal government 3 to 4 days to organize and move relief efforts, so you have to depend on your local government until then. I remember that the first appearance by the federal government after September 11 was on Friday, September 14th... That took over three days, too.
But New Orleans and Lousiana are a mess. You can argue that N.O. didn't have a functional government before the storm hit. Look at N.O.'s hurricane evacuation plan as of July 24th, just a few weeks ago, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayne:

City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation. ... Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city.

They didn't finish this project, but this was their hurricane evacuation plan - tell people they are screwed...

On top of this, N.O.'s official hurricane plan calls for using city and school buses to evacuate people without transportation. What did Mayor Nagin do? He let hundreds of buses be flooded and become unusable. Satellite pictures of the ruined buses are here and a smaller, Yahoo News picture is here:


Blanco, the Louisiana governor, does not seem to be able to handle the task. According to the Washington Post, "Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency..."
In addition, the governor has control over the local police and the state's National Guard units. When it seemed that these resources were not being used effectively, the federal government offered to take over control of the police and National Guard, but Blanco said 'no.'

To compare, look at Mississippi, which was much harder hit than Louisiana, and where many more people lost their homes. You don't hear any reports of looters taking over Mississippi towns, or people shooting on relief efforts or workers trying to fix the levees. The state and local governments did not break down in Mississippi as they did in Louisiana.
- posted by Christoph Roggenkamp @ 9/06/2005 03:03:00 PM