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Originally Posted by richlevy
FEMA is a soup-to-nuts agency. While it does not get involved with every landslide, it is supposed to handle the big disasters that cities and states can't handle alone.
I agree that in the first six hours the city should have had an effective evacuation plan. After that, it was FEMA's show. 4 days for food and water? Turning away corporate shipments of food and water?
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You're not supposed to expect anyone to show up for help for at least 72 hours after a disaster.
Mitigation means fema provides consulting services to reduce the overall impact of a disaster BEFORE it happens. Communities can listen to FEMA or not.
New Orleans did not.
The Presidential disaster declaration was made BEFORE Katrina made landfall. This released the resources, like FEMA, to be available
when the local government called for them. They didn't call. As I've said before, FEMA doesn't just go. They have to be invited. If local resources are able to handle a situation, that's what's supposed to happen.
That the city did manage to evacuate a large number of residents prior to the storm hitting indicates that there were some plans in place, but not all of them were followed. Even if the busses had been used, that would be one trip out ... with the contraflow in place, egress from the city was possible, reentry wasn't. I haven't seen numbers on how many seats were available on those flooded busses, but probably far fewer than were needed. Lifeboats on the Titantic fewer.
It was a mess, but Brown didn't cause it.