Quote:
Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Mark Morial was on Meet the Press this weekend (along with others).
Among other things he mentioned, was that after their experience with Hurricane Georges in 1998, they realized 25% of the N.O. would refuse an evacuation order. Where was the city's plan to confront this reality?
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Where was anyone's plan to confront this? I've read that FEMA identified three situations as the biggest threats to the U.S.: a terrorist attack on New York City, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a hurricane hitting New Orleans. I've also read that when planners got together to plan for the latter, someone would bring up the question of what to do about the people who did not self-evacuate, and there'd be a lot of dumb stares. No one had a plan.
So there was a huge failure here, by a variety of people. This includes the DHS and FEMA, whose mission statements suggest that preparing for events like this is their job. If this is how they've been doing their jobs, those of us in NYC and SF have a lot to worry about. (Would you trust your average big-city mayor to plan for one of these disasters?)
