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[Tyrone Slothrop]

OK, from one of my favorite blogs quoting another of them (hi Sebby!), quoting a newspaper, here's something that suggests wild incompetence on the part of the municipal officials in New Orleans:

Via Brad DeLong, a report from the Times Picayune from July 24th of this year about the New Orleans city government’s plan for evacuating the city in the event of a major hurricane. The plan (presented here in full) was: 1. Make a video telling people that if disaster threatens they will have to get the fuck out of town themselves, because the city isn’t going to do anything to help out. 2. Distribute the video around town on DVD. This completes the evacuation plan.

• In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind; Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult
  By Bruce Nolan, Staff writer, New Orleans Times-Picayne, July 24, 2005
  
  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.
  
  In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the city in the event of an evacuation. “You’re responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you,” …
  
  Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of a Category 3 hurricane. Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. …
  
  In an interview at the opening of this year’s hurricane season, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Joseph Matthews acknowledged that the city is overmatched. “It’s important to emphasize that we just don’t have the resources to take everybody out,” he said in a interview in late May.

So, the city told them in advance that they’d be left to drown like animals and FEMA were careful not to take any action—e.g., planning and executing a relief effort—to prevent this plan from being put into effect. It’s clear that the city and federal authorities were just made for each other. What a nightmare.

Crooked Timber (which links to other stuff on city, state and federal preparedness, none of which I've read)