Redstate

have made mistakes, perhaps the City screwed up worse than most, but there was a breakdown in communication and organization throughout all levels of government.

at gunpoint, I think.  There was an overwhelming sense by many that they needed to stay and protect their homes.

of current problems wouldn't exist.

To fail at this basic level indicates a huge problem.

I suspect in the end it was complacency, and too much reliance on luck.

THere is no way to explain why the evacuation order wasn't given until Sunday-I remember talking about Katrina and NO on Friday.  

Sure it may have been expensive to evacuate the city, but given what is happening now, was it worth it?

There is certainly some degree of blame to go around, but in the end, the failure at the local level is indefensible.

Every single hurricane. Everywhere.

Thousands of poor people sat in government housing thinking that the government would simply take care of them. They thought the government would restore electricity immediately, the markets and drug stores would be open the next day as if nothing happened. Many of the people in shelters didn't even have their meds with them thinking they would be home the next day. None of the most basic preperations were taken by many of the people you now see trapped in H. O. Why? Because politicians have trained them to think the government would take care of them from cradle to grave. They trusted a mayor that didn't even have the forsigth to use hundreds of school buses to eveac thousand of people.

This is a tragic lesson.

and one far too few will heed, i'm afraid.

We will see who did their jobs BEFORE the hurricane hit to prepare.  Tasks like this one.  The plan states: The Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness shall continue to exercise all levels of the City government in emergency preparedness and response operations. Annually, a minimum of one full?scale functional exercise that utilizes all levels of City government shall be conducted. This functional exercise shall include the Mayor, elected and appointed officials, independent authorities, and such non?governmental agencies as shall be determined appropriate.

With such a massive failure, heads must roll.  Hopefully, those heads will belong to those responsible.

But you aren't done yet. Sure, Mayor Nagin didn't do everything he could, but that doesn't justify the slow and inadequaete reponses of FEMA, Homeland Security, and everyone else involved. The blame doesn't belong solely on the doorstep of the first democrat you can find ;)

Eveyrone at fault needs to be found. Both sides of the aisle, and at all levels of government. And problems need to be corrected for the next event, terrorism or natural disaster alike.

After 9/11 (and in my opinion, this disaster is clearly worse), at least we had the decency to wait a couple of years before we appointed a finger-pointing commission (which, we are learning, failed to notice the since most important and necessary target for finger-pointing, but I digress).

Sure.  Because no one, conservative or liberal, was blaming Clinton or Bush (respectively) until years later.

[Also, a side note: Al Qaeda launched those attacks, not Jamie Gorelick.  Keep your eyes on the ball.]

I'm glad that you have such a clear insight into the minds and thought processes of the NO impoverished as you post grandiosly from your laptop computer and high speed Internet access.

Come now.

Surely, one of the more saddening things of this whole disaster is listening to various Americans criticizing our nation's poorest as if they have any, ANY, idea how these people think and act.

I certainly don't. And I suspect the vast majority of RedStaters don't either.

Sure.  Because no one, conservative or liberal, was blaming Clinton or Bush (respectively) until years later.

That's kind of the whole point.

[Also, a side note: Al Qaeda launched those attacks, not Jamie Gorelick.  Keep your eyes on the ball.]

Ah. But the 9/11 commission wasn't formed to determine who launched the attacks - we already knew that. It was formed to investigate "possible intelligence failures" that might have contributed to the fact that we didn't stop the attack.

to bust the Mayor's chops after the huriicane hit b/c his infrastructure is underwater.  I do believe he made major mistakes in the preparation stage, however.

1.  "That's kind of the whole point."  Do I need to write, "I am being sarcastic" all the time?
   
2.  Please see section 602 of the Act authorizing the commission.  You're just wrong.  Or woefully incomplete.

First, it didn't take the Dems very long to try to dump it on the front steps of 1600 Pensylvania Avenue!

Second, it isn't a matter of politcal party except to the extent that the current mayor is a Democrat. It is beginning to look like it has nothing to do with party it has to do with competence. It appears from this diary that had a well thought-out plan --- and didn't execute any of it.

It isn't FEMA that was responsible to maintain law and order on the streets of the city. 80% of the city is flooded. Let's be generous and say that only 40% is flooded deeper than people can move in. This means that all those NOPD officers had to control only 60% of their city --- and they couldn't control the situation at the Superdome?

If I were in charge of FEMA I'd certainly start with the presumption that my military and civilian assets would not have to worry about gangs, thugs, snipers, etc. I'd start with the presumption that the local police would ensure that the work area was safe. Afterall, that's just their d*mn job.

But, hey George Bush has been wrong about everything else so he must be wrong about this too.

though I'd say keeping order in this kind of situation is better suited for the national guard than the police. This is too big for the local police only.

I agree with pretty much everything else you said though.

I'm willing to admit their was fault on the parts of both the mayor and the president. It's counterproductive to pretend that either one is innocent.

Just stop trying to lay any blame on Bush. There has not been one once of credible evidence that GWB was at fault for any of the delays encountered in responding to the disaster. To say "Oh gee, I guess everyone shares in the blame is just pure Krap.

...too much reliance on the federal gov't.

I mean catastrophic.

plenty of blame to go around.

Warning: Irish socialist's blog which, however, does not detract from content. Try to put aside politics and look at all the screenshots in magnification.

That by the time Nagin issued the mandatory evacuation order and designated the Superdome, etc., as the "refuges of last resort" it was too late -- the vast majority of New Orleans' population had already fled the city in the previous 48 hours (we all remember the clogged highways out of New Orleans during the mass exodus when 90% or more of the population got out of the city on their own.)  The people left behind were the intransigent, or the poorest of the poor, the invalid or ignorant, or the ones who deliberately chose to stay because they were afraid of authority (drug addicts, drug dealers, etc.) and weren't going to leave in any case, etc.  In other words, an admixture of the most helpless and disconnected, side-by-side with the most dangerous.  

All concentrated in the Superdome with no place to go and a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the city.  

That the decision to evacuate came so late and that those buses just sat there after 90% of the population of New Orleans had already left voluntarily is difficult to fathom.  They should have been getting the poorest out first.  The more I look at it this is turning into a question of the last 10% (the most difficult and helpless and reluctant people to save were the ones who got trapped at the Superdome) -- which always takes 90% of the effort.  In this case that effort was almost nonexistant, and the decision to bring them into the city center when they knew they were going to get hit is just unbelievable -- it set the stage for all of the squalid and dehumanizing scenes we have seen over the past several days.

And that's just a small part of the pre-disaster half, not the post-disaster response.  Did anyone in the city government ever read that plan?  Has anyone in your local city government read its disaster preparedness plan?  

Should FEMA have had fleets of boats in warehouses in ST Louis, waiting to evacuate the NO residents that will refuse to leave?  Were you willing to pay taxes for such a prepositioned fleet?

the impoverished of NO.  I'm criticizing the culture of the nanny state.  Many of the poor have been conditioned to believe that the government will take care of them, especialy during natural disasters, therefore it was not totally unrealistic for them to believe the government would sweep in immediately after the storm and save them.  The point that Eagle made and I agreed with is that people need to understand the government rarely, if ever, lives up to the  expectations of the governed.

Just stop trying to lay any blame on Bush

Are you serious? It blows my mind that somebody might actually take your opinion.

Better tell Newt Gingrich to stop decrying the poor aid response, cause Bush is blameless ;)

Has anyone in your local city government read its disaster preparedness plan?

Everyone ridiculed the duct tape thing from HLS earlier, but its the kind of thing everyone should know.

It's kind of shocking how woefully unprepared everyone is.

I know that Bush will be criticized for not keeping afoot of the situation in the Gulf Coast, but does he need to go BACK to the region on MOnday?  It costs MILLIONS everytime he leaves DC.  Gas, Secret Service, Helos, National Guard, support staff-all for his visit.  Waste?  You decide.

I think we all already pay taxes for this to happen if need be.  The President's FIRST responsibility is to protect Americans at all cost.  Whether it be in NY, Afghanistan, Iraq, or NO.  Yes, we should expect it to happen.

Today's popular idea (I've seen it in a few places) of "let's not place blame, wait until things are all over" is, unfortunately, misguided.

We're in the middle of a hurricane season.  We're almost certain to have at least one more large hurricane make landfall in the southern US before November.

If we don't jump in, right now, and point out all of the stupid things that these people did (and what other people should be doing instead), many more people will fall victim to the same idiotic failures.

Disaster preparation and recovery isn't a one-time thing.  It's a continuous process, and you must "blame" the people who screw up so badly so you can get them out of the way and let people do the real job, and let the rest of the incompetents know that they can't get away with business as usual.

If you live in a town that's below sea level, and the levees break, the water won't recede on its own.  The streets won't dry until the levees are fixed and the water is pumped out.  That takes time.

Ambulances and buses and National Guard trucks don't swim.  If the roads are flooded, they can't pick up anybody or deliver any water.

buford, what should the feds have done differently?  Had fleets of boats on hand in a gigantic warehouse in ST Louis, in anticipation of thousands of New Orleans residents ignoring common sense evacuation orders?  How would FEMA have sold that to Congress?

FEMA DIRECTOR:  It's important for us to have this fleet of boats on hand, Mr. Chairman

APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:  But, these boats will cost millions to buy and maintain.  And, Mr. Director, New Orleans has an evacuation plan.  If they follow that plan, we won't need these boats--right?

FEMA DIRECTOR:  That's right.  But we know the residents won't evacuate.

CHAIRMAN:  How do we know that?  

FEMA DIRECTOR:  We just do, Mr. Chairman

Something like that, buford?

If you ask your secretary to do a job for the Department manager and the secretary bungled the job then it is your own fault for expecting your secretary to do the job of a department manager.

It is obvious that Category 5 Hurricane would be Catastrophe and beyond local and state resources dont you think they should have activated the military or federal to do the job.

and I doubt that most still in NO 'decided' stay, just as they are not deciding to stay now.  The poor, infirmed, hospital residents, or others who waited too late-did not want to die in the streets of their city.

Or, can you show FEMA how to part the waters?  If you know where FEMA can buy a staff like Moses had, then speak up!  I'll help pay for a stock of them.

If you can't, then those who need help needed to move to places which weren't likely to flood, where the help could reach them.

They didn't.

make buses and resupply trucks and ambulances and National Guard 5 ton trucks swim.

Or YOU'RE the one who can part the waters.  ( BEHOLD---HIS MIGHTY HAND!)

If the people who need help are surrounded by water, it slows down relief.  If only a few roads are open, and they are potentially blocked by snipers, that slows down relief.

The fundamental problem with your argument is that it is a total generalization.

I'm sure there were some of the poor folks who didn't leave because they figured the government would help/save them. And I agree with you in that it was a mistake to rely on or believe this. I'm also sure that there was some small percentage of those that stayed behind that figured they could loot amid the chaos.

BUT, I'm not sure how you can assume and generalize that this is how ALL those folks were thinking.

People should ask themselves where a poor family, with no car, no credit cards, no cell phones, and no checking accounts (something that the vast majority of us take for granted in our daily lives) thought they would go if/when they evacuated from NO.

It's hard for many of us RedStaters to imagine this scenario, I imagine. BUT, were I in that situation (again, I am guessing a bit here), I'm not so sure I wouldn't rather take my chances and tough out the hurricane than pack up a bag, get on a bus to God knows where, and live in some homeless shelter for God knows how long.

It's easy to say in hindsight that they should have left. But that's with the benefit of knowing how devastating Katrina would be.

The bottom line is that of those who stayed behind - 20% of NO - there are variety of reasons why they stayed behind. Some just couldn't get out in time, some didn't have the means to get out no matter what the circumstances, some figured the government would just help them, and some intentionally stayed behind to run wild. And there are probably a host of other reasons as well.

But to generalize and presume that ALL these impoverished people stayed behind simply because they have become used to the government helping them (and as an aside, from the looks of a lot of these folks, it doesn't look like the government is helping them all that much in the first place) is a vast over simplification of the problem at hand.

Our government has no vehicles that can float?  Where was the Navy-the Coast Guard was doing amazing things the first day.  Do not tell me that they could not get in.  Fox news was there the day Katrina hit.  As my Grandfather always said, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining'  You know more could have been done.  It's a travesty from Mayor on Up.  Pink slips will either be given out now, or in the elections to come.

It is not the President's job to call out the military or micromanage every event that may or may not take place in this country. That is why we have several layers of government. To think so is just plain ignorant of how the real world works.

indifference.  Or racism (see Congressional Black Caucus press conference on Friday).

I'm confused as to why you went with me on that one?

The government has helicopters and high-water vehicles. The national guard certainly does. The Navy has medical ships to help refugees. They were all simply too slow to respond, and slower than they could have been.

A medical ship departed Baltimore and will make it to NOLA next Thursday... well, sorry if I'm less than thrilled at that timely development.

We can drop food aid from helicopters in Afghanistan. Regardless of whether or not people are surrounded by water, why didn't that happen here?

See thread here.

These leftwing, Bush-hating fools do not add one once of benefit to this site.

If you ask the department managers (AKA the Mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana), who were elected by their departments, to do their jobs, and they bungle the job, it's their fault.

The Federal folks activated Saturday night.  The job to call out the Guard (AKA "the military") is the Governor's.

The Federal government, once again, is not the first responder for any major disaster.  They are there to support the locals, and when the locals get overwhelmed, it's their job to call on the Feds for help.  Guess what didn't happen in New Orleans until it was too late?

In the midst of New Orleans, where they could have become victims, too?  New Orleans has enough buses on hand NOW to evacuate everyone.  PROBLEM--they are submerged!  Kinda hard to drive that way.

Or, they could have gone to a huge Wal-Mart parking lot in, say, southern Arkansas, and waited.  This options overlooks a few problems:

1. Most of the assets you're claiming were delayed actually belong to the National Guard elements of neighboring states.  I'll bet those governors held on to them for a while, in case they might have been needed at home.  Katrina was a big storm.
   
2. If we had dispatched troops to stand by, where would we have put them while Katrina roared by?  Should they have stood outside in the rain and sung the "Army Song" while Category 3 winds whipped them?
   
3. Once the storms passed, and the Guardsmen arrived in New Orleans, they would have encountered felled trees, broken roads and massive floodwaters. Were the convoys supposed to fly/swim to the Superdome?

The damage has been done.  He needs to stay in DC and monitor the situation without causing any disruption.  The fact that people are coming in now is a positive thing.  Bush-if he does go, needs to meet with the 'people'.  Another photo-op will not go over well with anyone on both sides.  This really has become a bi-partisan issue.  I thinll he would look more 'Presidential' if he ruled from the White House.  HIs last three press conferences have been utter disasters.  He needs to shut-up, and let the work NOW speak for it's self.  Then he needs to fire people (deflect).  That would be the smartest thing he should do.

though not in the way the Congressional Black Caucus means it:

"Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were threatened with murder on Thursday.

"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came -- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/mayhem_dc

I am more than willing to give on the old, infirm, etc., though I believe that the leadership in NO was derelict in failing to move them at least to higher ground within the city.

However, I can assure you from watching way too many hours of news that the VAST majority of those left behind were neither old, infirm, hospitalized, or any other handicapping status.  They decided to risk it, and now they are taking up rescue time from those who were UNABLE to leave.

Stupid, selfish, careless and cavalier are just a few of the milder adjectives I use to describe them.

if along with the food, leaflets could have said, Bush and God love you'.

if along with the food, leaflets could have said, Bush and God love you'.

was the highest point in the city.  We see how that worked did'nt we?  It had an open highway to it, places available for helos to land, and yet the Red Cross was held back.  Then now tell me why it tookk 5 days to get ANYONE there (besides the press who must have used Divine intervention to make it there?

It had been the Bush Administration that had suggested everyone head for the Superdome.

This is the latest Known Fact from the left. Like all the other Known Facts, it is based on nothing but hot air. There is no evidence of a "breakdown in communication and organization throughout all levels of government." None whatsoever.

I have worked with black children as part of my church's outreach to the housing projects of a major American city. Have you ever visited a rat infested, drug infested, gang infested housing project? I challenge you to visit one of these hell holes and tell me if you still think the Nanny State is taking good care of poor people. Welfare is killing more people than it helps. Let me repeat that for all you speed readers out there. Welfare is killing people. It breeds a malignant cynicism that chokes away any self-esteem. It condemns people to poverty, hopelessness, drug addiction and suicide.

Democrats pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for their compassion. I would assert from my experience that Democrats and liberals are literally killing people with their compassion. They assume if you criticize the Nanny State then you hate the poor. I hate what sanctimonious liberals are doing to the poor.

The people of N.O. have been trained to expect a few crumbs from the state and call it a life.

You have probably been banned by now, but a few points.

The Superdome is not the highest point in the city.

The Red Cross was held back by Blanco.

The press were there before the storm hit.

PatHMV has already written a diary entry about this (and I don't want it to be lost in the political fingerpointing), and the Horserace Blogger mentioned the author (Mark Fischetti) in his diary about the politics of the diaster, but everyone should read the article itself, from Scientific American (the date on the article indicates August 31, 2005 but it was originally written in 2001.)

New Orleans and the entire gulf coast region are far too important to ignore or neglect --economically, culturally, historically, in terms of energy and food and commerce and our national identity.  It's impossible to imagine America without New Orleans, and the marshlands in Louisiana and the gulf coast region need a lot of work if we want to rebuild it and intend to keep it around.

Even though you may think any ideas that are brought upi contrary to yours should be admonished and banned.  I'm still here, and as a born and bred New Orlean-I know of what I speak.  Funny thought that you think I should have been banned-why do you think that?  Red State has always impressed me with the open dialogue.

Even though you may think any ideas that are brought upi contrary to yours should be admonished and banned.  I'm still here, and as a born and bred New Orlean-I know of what I speak.  Funny thought that you think I should have been banned-why do you think that?  Red State has always impressed me with the open dialogue.

so far you have not brought up any.

However, white people in the Ritz Carlton, and the Marriott where one of the first people evacuated (albeit on Thursday).  They were rushed onto buses under armed guards, and immediately taken to the airport in Houston-not the Conventiom Center.

Leon -

What I see is this:

We are getting a LOT of email and commentary from folks who are simply desperate to assign blame for this hurricane and the lackluster response somewhere. Frankly, the whole exercise sickens me.

followed by about a dozen paragraphs dedicated to placing the blame for the lackluster response anywhere but on the feds.

I agree that it's unseemly to seize this particular opportunity to make political points.  It seems, however, that that is exactly what you're doing.

You guys need to pick between the following two options:

1.  Eschew making political hay out of Katrina
   
   
2.  Stop complaining when other folks do
   

You can't have it both ways.

Cheers --

The Coast Guard boats and copters you saw that "got in" were what was near the scene to begin with.  Larger Coast Guard ships and boats are all busy sounding out the new channels and restoring navigation aids like buoys.  They're not done with that yet - they're trying to recreate a system that took a few decades to get in place in a day or two.

They can't bring in larger ships of any sort until that's done, or they run the strong risk of having a large piece of steel blocking one of the few major routes into the city, with no way to get it out for weeks.

Even bringing in more copters and boats from other areas had to wait until the area was somewhat secure and for enough stocks of fuel to operate the machinery.

sine my facts are not 'open dialogue' enough for you.  I have read the facts and the thoughts-I digest them both.  Contrarians line-up behind me.

1.  There are large portions of NO unflooded (I believe 20% of the city is above sea level).  I didn't say every infirm person had to go to the Superdome or the highest point, just dry land where a helicopter could land or vehicles could reach.  The city should have provided for exactly this in their disaster planning, in addition to having provisions in the disaster sites.
   
2.  The vast majority of the people in the Superdome should have been evacuated from the city.  Most were not old or infirm.
   
3.  The levees broke through on Tuesday, today is Saturday.  They were evacuating people from the Superdome day before yesterday (Thursday).  5 days?  We are not even yet to 4 full days and the evacuation is nearly complete (according to Fox, who reported this morning around 5:00 that there were about 2,000 people left in the dome.)
   
4. Furthermore, evacuation from the Superdome would have been much swifter than it was, had enormous amounts of manpower not been busy plucking people one by one off their rooftops into helicopters and stopping looters, rapists and killers.  There are MUCH more efficient means of transportation than rooftop service, which takes me back to my original point: it was the foolish, selfish, thoughtless and criminal people who exacerbated this disaster.  Not the rescuers or their leaders.

For the link to the NRO.  The New York Times just can't keep its story straight.  Four and a half months ago it was a "bad piece of legislation" and a "boondoggle."  Now, of course...

fingers at the moment.  It would be the American people who are doing that.  I do not care how Republican you are or how Democratic you are.  The American people are saying someone fuc*** up.  As usual the 'buck stops with me'.  Bush has looked as remote to the American people as did his father satnding around the local Winn-Dixie watching the scanning machine.  BTW-is Dick Cheney dead?

I've seen reports of the confusion on the chain of command.  That is a problem of organization and communication.  Military officials said they would have dropped in food had they been asked, the Governor was pratically useless for a day or two, the Mayor of NO was on the brink of cracking under frustration and despair, FEMA said the would have moved in if given the order from the organization (GSA?) that was waiting for the order from FEMA.  I don't know about "Known Facts", but this is the reality of the situation.  Several agencies trying to get relief into a flooded city and other destoyed areas, without a proper chain of command.  The disaster itself created a logistical nightmare for even the best prepared response.

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Houston by then had opened its doors.  And, all evacuees were put on buses with armed guards, whether at the Carleton or the Convention Center.  Your assumption that the "white Ritz crowd" received more attention than the "black Convention crowd" is part of this whole race baiting problem.  And is simply not true.  Armed guards were making sure no one was entering the buses with firearms or other weapons.

correspondants what they think about the Federal response.  Please start with Shep and Geraldo.  Then you can end up with O'Reilly.  (Hannity is so removed-impossible).  They all say the Feds were incompetent.  Their words-not mine.  They are there.  I won't get there until Tuesday, but will continue to let anyone who cares to know what REALLY is happening on the ground.

the civic center was not evacuated until TODAY.  Don't lie-you should know better.  Do you have a TV?  Wasn't Geraldo on FOX last night crying into a baby's arms?  

Give up on the race-baiting response.  I never said that.  I'm as white as a Vermont winter.   It is not a race issue, it IS a class issue.

he did the right thing.  He came to survey the damage for himself and see how the response was going.  "Not acceptable" in his words.  It seems everything is starting to come together, but it shouldn't take the President's constant scrutiny to get things together.  

"It's easy to say in hindsight that they should have left. But that's with the benefit of knowing how devastating Katrina would be."

Who on the face of the planet did not know how devastating Katrina would be? Doesn't everyone now know what a "Category 5" hurricane means? It seems as though most of the people that stayed depended on incompetent city goverment to help them, and it cost many their lives.

I do agree with this, however:

"It's hard for many of us RedStaters to imagine this scenario, I imagine. BUT, were I in that situation (again, I am guessing a bit here), I'm not so sure I wouldn't rather take my chances and tough out the hurricane than pack up a bag, get on a bus to God knows where, and live in some homeless shelter for God knows how long."

People have done this for as long as there have ben warnings about hurricanes, and for many it became a badge of honor. The decision to stay was THEIRS, not George Bush's. After Andrew, anyone who decides to ride out a Cat 5 is taking a risk that the evidence counsels against.

The main point is that if you choose to preside over a welfare state, which is what New Orleans had become, you better darn well have a pretty thorough plan to take care of people when things like this happen.

Alrighty. I'll grant you the first line if you grant me the rest of the section:

(2) ascertain, evaluate, and report on the evidence developed by all relevant governmental agencies regarding the facts and circumstances surrounding the attacks;

(4)make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, and the extent of the United States' preparedness for, and immediate response to, the attacks;

I also said:

However, given that folks are determined to finger-point right now, before the situation is even returned to normalcy, let us by all means examine a few pieces of relevant evidence, while they are "in the raw" and before they get dismissed as "irrelevant" by the inevitable official finger-pointing commission.

It's going on, whether I like it or not. If I keep quiet, it will just mean that the other side is doing all the finger-pointing. After a while, that sort of thing has a tendency to become reality among the general public.

The kind of precision in execution you seem to expect requires a huge ongoing devotion of resources--in money to pay for resources and personnel to be on standby, in time to rehearse and rerehearse and rererehearse your response.  Too huge to be practical.  

Are you prosposing, for example, that we should have had semiannual rehearsal evacuations of the ENTIRE Gulf Coast?  A three-state effort, at a minimum?  To get the level of precision you seem to expect, that's likely what it would have taken.

I'm not surprised there were communication problems, especially amongst many different agencies who'd never worked together.  It's happened on every Army exercise I've ever been on.  That's why we have communications checks in the motor pool, before we hit the road.

How would you have coordinated a communications check amongst EVERY National Guard, state police, local police, local government, state government and relief agency now associated with Katrina relief?  How big is YOUR motor pool?

See cirby's post above.  Where is the navy of which you speak, again?

1. Not everyone went to the Superdome.  I've seen plenty of helicopters lifting folks out of their own homes.
   
2. How many buses can you stage at the Superdome at one time?  If the answer is only 10-20 at a time, that means you can only load/move @500 at a time.

Keep throwing up your clay pigeon accusations.  I've got my shotgun ready.

Whether it is warranted or not (debate amongst yourselves), Bush will be to blame.  Someone needs to be fired yesterday.  Unfortunately Bush refuses to admit defeat and fire anyone who has faltered in his admin.  We all should know that regardless of how the city, state reacted to this disaster, the Feds completely fucke& up.  We have voted Bush into office for a second term because of his strong stance on security, and keeping Americans safe.  He ultimately failed.  Like I said-I am a Republican, but not a blind one.  What has been done since 9/11 to protect us?  How are his policies helping the American PEOPLE?  Great tax breaks, bankrupsy (sp) laws, Estate tax release, Iraq 're-building', etc, etc.  Even Scientologist would jump ship at this point.

... watch Fox reporters like Shep, Geraldo et al for the reporting of the story, not emotional editorializing on camera. I accept that they may be overcome by the sheer enormity of the problems and the human suffering. But having an emotional breakdown does not make Shep, Geraldo et al correct. in fact it makes them less responsible observers.

Although I think Fox is the only TV news operation that is even remotely even handed the fact that Shepard Smith breaks down on camera does not make him correct. It makes him human but at that point he has lost his objectivity and his reporting is now no better than interviewing a woman who has just lost her child. Being distraught does not raise your observations to a higher moral plain.

No profanity.

been perfect, but every military exercise I've been involved in (joint or not) has had a set chain of command.  And no matter what the IG threw at us, we were able to maintain that chain of command and get down to business, whether our response right or not.  That's not much to ask, by having a set chain of command you avoid alot of confusion.  You don't have to have an exercise evacuating 1 million people to establish a set chain of command for emergency personnel on a potential disaster in a hurricane prone area that is susceptible to flooding.  Apparently, there have been many studies done to this effect, it just wasn't carried out.  

Why were people so shocked by what seemed to be such a an anemic and ineffectual response by the Department of Homeland Security?  

Over the last few years, this Administration created this new department and worked hard to surround it with an aura of unprecedented competence.  The public was encouraged to believe that even though much of its work had to be shrouded in secrecy, behind the scenes Homeland Security was working hard to keep us safe.  Finally, after decades of incompetence, "the adults are back in charge."  No more nonsense!  Over the last several days, that carefully crafted image has taken a severe beating.  

Should anyone have really been shocked, though?  Remember, the Department of Homeland Security has also been responsible for the enforcement of our immigration laws.  

where are the boats that run everyday through the Florida Everglades?  Is this the first Hurricaine that we have experienced?  First time that the US feds have heard of the disaster that is not a where-but a when.  Come on.  If it were had been a bomb-would you still think the Feds did a good job?  

Secondly, I-10 is open for at least 400 miles.  How many 18 foot buses can you fit in there-you figure it out Einstein.

...keeping order in this kind of situation is better suited for the national guard than the police...

But regardless of which you accept is correct, it most cetainly is not the federal government or George Bush.

I would contend that had the NOPD maintained law and order the National Guard would not now be spending it't time and resources restoring law and order.

Unfortunately I disagree that the federal governement, and specifically the President, is not innocent. Had the local authorities and the state done their job we would not be faced with the chaos.

The government has helicopters and high-water vehicles. The national guard certainly does.

Yes, and they can only pickup 10 people at a time.  Less if they have to hover and pick up people by rescue basket.  As for dropping food, a chopper can only carry so much. Plus, they can only drop small packages at a time.  Imagine a mom and baby being CRUSHED by a huge food package dropping from above!

The Navy has medical ships to help refugees. They were all simply too slow to respond, and slower than they could have been.

And you spent HOW long in the Navy or Coast Guard?  Exactly WHAT qualifies you to critique maritime relief response times?  Or, did you want them waiting off shore-- in the midst of Hurricane Katrina! Are the channels and waterways to New Orleans, Biloxi and Gulfport clear and open to maritime traffic?  Are all the underwater obstacles cleared?  Marked?  If one of the relief ships strikes one of those obstacles, can you guarantee it won't sink? Is its crew expendable?  Should it drown or bob around endlessly in lifeboats?  (The Coast Guard is busy, remember?)

A medical ship departed Baltimore and will make it to NOLA next Thursday... well, sorry if I'm less than thrilled at that timely development.

Oh, ALERT THE NAVY!!  cd6 is disappointed with response times.  I suppose you wanted the Mercy or the Comfort (whichever medical ship is based on the East Coast) to be circling in the midst of Katrina's waves and wind?  Do the words "heavy sea state" mean anything to you?

We can drop food aid from helicopters in Afghanistan. Regardless of whether or not people are surrounded by water, why didn't that happen here?

All those helos I've seen flying around the skies of the Gulf Coast these week--was I imagining them?  They've been dropping supplies and rescuing people, cd6-- as many as they can carry.  That's not much--see Response #1.

You're not a logistician, are you cd6?

this one point.  The National Guard serves at the command of the governor.  Where and how they are used it up to her discretion.

  Once you federalize the guard, they can not act as law enforcement.

Don't you mean stopped towing the BS coming out of the Mayor's, Senator's, and the WH?  Shep (etal), has seen it first hand.  So because he shows a bit of emotion because he is standing next to a corpse makes you uncomfortable?  TOO BAD-that is reality.  Wake-up.  Ozzie and Harriet died over forty years ago.

The times article is referring to S. 728, the "Water Resources Development Act of 2005".

This bill would provide funding for a number of ACE projects among them Sec. 1002. "Enhanced navigation capacity improvements and ecosystem restoration plan for the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway System. the Review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Restructured Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway Feasibility Study: Second Report (2004) by NAS apparently found this project wanting.  (I read a page or two, dry as toast!)

Now this is the section of the bill referred to by the Times as a "$2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences".

There is another section of the bill:  "Sec. 1003. Louisiana coastal area ecosystem restoration, Louisiana." that deals with projects in Louisiana.  None of those projects are levees.  It does include about $2 billion in wetlands restoration along the coast.

So I think Eric got it wrong from NRO who got it wrong from eu rota who apparently didn't notice that the Times was referring to a specific $2.7 billion boondoggle and not generally to the whole 17 billion bill as a boondoggle.  To the extent that they condemned the wetlands restoration in Louisiana contained in this bill, I disagree with them.

But Nothing in the bill had to do with levees around New Orleans.  In fact, New Orleans is not mentioned once in the bill.

Exactly when do you think food aid was dropped in Afghanistan?  It wasn't until the military logistics were ready which was well after 9/11.  

As for the ship, even it had been prepped to go before the hurricane, it still would not have gotten to NOLA till late in the week, because it would probably stay out of the Gulf to avoid the storm.

The simple fact of the matter is that most of the problems would have been avoided if the local governments had been  on the ball and gotten people out.  The aftermath would be far more managable and would not be so dependent on resources from a base a couple of thousand sea miles away.

Bush does not have the power to fire Blanco or Nagin. The people of LA will have to do that themselves.

and yes those ships could have been stationed off the shore.  Albeit a nasty storm, they would have survived and moved in withen 24 hours.  You can spin it anyway you wish, but engineers and military guard could have-and should have been in downtown NOLA on Tuesday.  Are you telling me that the 'greatest' country on Earth could not make into it's own city for 5 days?  Come on.  I have been a volunteer all over the world in many disasters, and the #1 priority is moving in NOW-not when the channel is clear.  BS

the one at the top of the chain of command-not the president.  The presidents job is to put FEMA at the disposal of the governor, then the governer/local leaders tell FEMA what is needed where.

The governor seemed absolutely ineffectual here.

The mayor seemed ineffectual.

FEMA may or may not have been ineffectual-hard to say, given that FEMA seems to have done fine in other states that were hit.

and then poop here.

out to sea.

The Navy doesn't keep its ships docked or even close by, when a hurricane is on the way.

They go out to sea to either ride out the storm, or better yet, miss it all together.

There were in fact Naval ships out of Texas that arrived on scene and were working.

Other ships have been sent around from Norfolk, but it takes some time for ships to get there.  Airplanes are quick, but a ship can only go so fast-I think most top out at about 40 miles an hour.

Mr.Brown was fired from his Arabian Horse gig?

The Editors have rules. "Ounce" "a good think in such a unGodly " If this is a spelling bee, you bee beehind.

the real problem was in what happened before the Hurricane hit.

The news has far too long thought of hurricanes as entertainment-hey a hurricane is on the way-let's send our reproters to the coast to report on it from the beach.

It is stupid on the part of the news stations.

The American people have come to think of hurricanes as entertainment and something that doesnt' kill people.

Remember one of the hurricanes from last summer?  I think hundreds of thousands of people died in several Island countries.

People die in hurricanes all the time-we bacame too complacent.  People trusted a levee rated for a cat 3 to withstand a cat 4/5l-they took a gamble and they lost.

Parroting dKos talking points, especially when they've been discussed ad nauseam here, is not a good way to stick around for long.

There was a huge lack of communications, the Mayor allowed the emergency trasmitter sites for New Orleans to be built where they could flood, and to use natural gas for emergency power.Both things happened.

The Mayor could have easily demanded this be fixed well before the storm. The whole system should have been hardened, put on tall buildings, but I guess he forgot to do that.

The day the radios went out in New Orleans

This is just unbelievable.

This comment has no value, except to inflame.

off shore during a hurricane.

They put all of them out to sea, where they stay until it is past.

Also, Navy ships move very slowly.  They can't go super fast.  Some ships do, but those would be ships that wouldn't be much help to the relief efforts.

But the ship from baltimor can't get there any faster than its estimated time to travel.  Sort of like if I need to get from NH to Alabama-I can only make my car go so fast-no matter what I still have to drive the distance between the two states, and it is going to take ma a day to do it.

my point, except I don't think FEMA was coordinating with local and state officials very well.  Is it not coming out that way?  There should have been an established chain of command where a top dog was able to either delegate authority quickly or deploy resources where they needed it most.  There were multiple states involved and that could make it difficult.  Management by committee never works.  If the LA Governor dropped the ball because she didn't know better or was incompetent, that's a problem, if FEMA didn't advise her that was the way it needs to go, that's a problem, if the Mayor was completely unprepared and began to flake out, that's a problem.  Thus, a breakdown at all levels of government.

Listen, I agree with smagar that this whole thing in NO is a logistical nightmare and the efforts needed to accomplish rescue and recovery operations is immense.  I just didn't see an effective chain of command at any level until Pres. Bush physically went down there.  Without that basic structure things just won't get done in a forward moving fashion.  It seemed Miss. and Fla. had things together, so why did LA just spiral into chaos?  (It wasn't just slow, it was chaos) That's the big question in my eyes.  

Than I would allow. Frothing lunacy is NOT loyal opposition, no matter how much he whines when he's gone.

to be fired.

Bush has no control over their jobs.

We can evaluate FEMA later.

in good faith and not just a troll in disguise, I wonder if you've noticed how often the MSM are beginning their pronouncements with "Many are saying.." or "Some have said..."?  That's normally a sure sign that what they're "reporting" are their own inner thoughts/prejudices under the cover of third-party anonymity.

Now, in response to the "why is this taking so long" meme, perhaps you can tell me how the FEMA/Bush response time to New Orleans compares to the FEMA/Clinton response time to Hurricane Andrew in 1992?  I'll save you the trouble of an internet search: 5 days (by your count) for Katrina, 9 days for Andrew.  This total lack of balance, of holding Republican administrations to impossible heights while giving Democratic administrations an absolute pass, is what infuriates us on the right.

So it must not be too hard to understand...

It all starts with local governments

But if blame is to be laid and lessons are to be drawn, one point stands out as irrefutable: Emergency planners must focus much more on the fate of that part of the population that -- for reasons of poverty, infirmity, distrust of officialdom, lack of transportation or lack of information -- cannot be counted on to leave their homes after an evacuation order.

Tragically, authorities in New Orleans were aware of this problem. Certainly the numbers were known. Shirley Laska, an environmental and disaster sociologist at the University of New Orleans, had only recently calculated that some 57,000 New Orleans Parish households, or approximately 125,000 people, did not have access to cars or other private transportation. In the months before the storm, the city's emergency planners did debate the challenges posed by these numbers, which are much higher than in other hurricane-prone parts of the country, such as Florida. Because a rapid organization of so many buses would have been impractical, the city's emergency managers considered the use of trains and cruise ships. The New Orleans charity Operation Brother's Keeper had tried to get church congregations to match up car-owners with the carless, and it had produced a DVD on the subject of hurricane evacuations that was to be distributed later this month. Unfortunately, none of these plans was advanced enough to have had much impact this week.

At least they had a debate. So how was the Federal government suposed to improvise on 24 hour notice and get the job done.

Specifically, but if this turns out to be bad information from eu rota and the National Review, this is my last post on RedState.  

First off-i'm not your baby

Remember the old saying:  If you throw a rock in a pack of dogs, the ones who yelp the loudest are the ones the rock hit.

Secondly, I-10 is open for at least 400 miles.  How many 18 foot buses can you fit in there?

Problem is, we don't want I10 to be a parking lot.  Buses need to come in, turnaround, load and be able to leave.

I don't presume that Darth Vader is directing the relief buses.  If we haven't seen more at the Superdome or the Convention Center, I'm going to presume there's a good reason. Are you saying that there have been loads of buses standing by, with open roads and the means to load/transload at the Superdome, and the New Orleans officials are simply refusing to call them forward?

Or, going back to your remark of 400 open miles of highway--are you proposing that we should have parked 10,000 buses back to back on I10, going into New Orleans?  If so, how long would it have taken for people to walk to and board bus #6,317?  Go ahead, take a guess!

you figure it out Einstein

Did my rock hit you?

Leon -

Fair enough, that's your call.  Good luck.

Cheers -

anything so dramatic, the nro piece is only a slice of the eu rota one.  and actually they got it through don luskin.  (I acknowledge a possibility that I am wrong, but it looks like I have the right sources to me.)

Or maybe you are just sarcastically telling me that you think I am wrong?

Will he get a free pass simply because of political correctness?

Really to tell you the truth I'm sick and tired of all the political fingerpointing, in this disaster and elsewhere.  I've lived through it before and it really never gets any better.  You might be right.  I trusted Erick's link and to be honest I don't know specifically whether the contents of his post refer to the 17 billion dollar Coast 2050 plan, which I think is a very good idea, even though the NYT apparently doesn't like it because the ACE will be implementing it.  Or whatever.  The scientists and the ACE have been at loggerheads over this for years and the opportunity was lost for agreement in 1998, if you read the article.  Meanwhile New Orleans sunk even further, the wetlands were further degraded, and our country looks like a laughingstock in front of the world, with looters, garbage, feces piled knee high in the Superdome, and something like a million people displaced.  New Orleans is the most important gulf port we have, and everyone has passed the buck up until this point.  The engineering students at LSU and elsewhere have projected these kinds of floods, modeled them, and given specific recommendations for how they could be ameliorated.  I can't tell you how deeply ashamed of our country I am today.  

If the $17 billion dollar project that Erick referred to isn't the one that would redress some of these concerns by rehabilitating the wetlands in New Orleans and allowing the ACE to change the way they're controlling the Mississippi, then I'm completely wrong, and it's my bad, and the NRO should be ashamed of itself.  In that case, you're really right about the blogosphere -- bad information filters down from "trusted sources" and gets disseminated and I'll be the first one to say that I'm tired of it.  

I'm finished with the political sniping and blaming.  If the NRO report is wrong and this bill wasn't about wetlands or this was a failure of research on someone's part, I'm really finished with political blogging.  The one thing that I can't stand is misinformation.  

Of our country, I am absolutely not referring to the members of our National Guard and our military and the loyal members of the police force in New Orleans who have rescued so many people and who have accomplished miracles in the past few days.  They're the unsung heroes, along with the thousands of people in the Superdome who quietly tried to maintain their dignity in unspeakable conditions while waiting to be evacuated.  

Remember the old saying:  If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the ones who yelp the loudest are the ones the rock hit.

Sounds as if my rock found its mark.

why the specific note by you that "However, white people in the Ritz Carlton, and the Marriott where one of the first people evacuated ..."  That, friend, is separating the races, and by inuendo you imply that white people were treated differently.  Your words, not mine.

You don't have ANYTHING to address my comments?  Just, "Watch Shep and Geraldo cry.  Then you'll know it's bad."

OK.  OK.  I know it's bad.  But I will NOT cede that Shep and Geraldo are the experts.  Just that they are moved by the suffering.

If you want to be the Mayor of a city on the Texas Gulf Coast, you'd better be prepared for things like hurricanes and flooding. It's in your job description ... and, I'm sorry, but if a mayor of a flooded city spends most of his time dithering and whining BOOSH!!! BOOOSH!!!  ... he's letting his people die.

I don't mean to be stark ... but there ya have it.

If a disaster strikes your town ... do you really want to have to wait until the FEDS get their act together for assistance?

One of the take-home lessons of this whole tragedy is ... choose your local leadership wisely.

I didn't mean just the Texas Gulf Coast. I meant the Gulf Coast, period.

Sorry ... will try to engage brain before the fingers fly!

First of all, thank you for your service in crises the world over.  It's more than I have done.  A few points:

IS it your contention that the Navy should have had a huge relief fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, to knowingly ride out a Category 5 hurricane, and then respond?  There are others posters on Redstate who think that idea wasn't feasible.  But, you claim to be a logistician, so I don't have standing to dispute you.  

I agree there should have been some more engineers in New Orleans earlier, but their impact would have been limited.  I'd think they could have laid a few pontoon bridges, for instance, to allow refugees to move more easily from shelters to bus pickup points.  But, I don't see how we could have marshaled enough helicopters or boats to drastically accelerate the pace of rescuing thousands of people scattered throughout the city in small groups--i.e., the ones who refused to evacuate when warned to.

As for your comment on sending in aid NOW--"not when the channel is clear"--could you explain how a merchant ship sails THROUGH a blocked channel?

Let me ask you this.  Seems that much of this crisis could have been ameliorated if New Orleans had started evacuation earier.  Do you think that President Bush should have DIRECTED the NO mayor and LA governor to evacuate the city?

Seems to me that's the central question here. Whatcha think?  

(Insert snappy salute here).

You're being a little arrogant, dontcha think?  

Remind me again--just who are YOU to be telling US the options from which we must pick action options, or how we can/can't have things?

Cheers!

of course, that the National Guard responds to the Governor unless the president federalizes it. Blanco had all the authority she needed to put 8,000 Guardsmen on the street. She didn't.

Just as a favor to people who have followed the story.

Katrina wasn't a Category 5 hurricane.

of this crap.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.

That was Friday. Check the date on your memo.

Read all the Katrina threads before you post again on this subject.

One ounce of credible evidence is that Bush appointed heads of FEMA that have no experience in disaster management.  Granted, that's not the first time such a thing has happened, but appointing a life-long lawyer to be head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is probably not the best idea.

I'm not even in favor of appointing lawyers to the SC.

completely evacuated today-thought I heard a report from Geraldo saying that the last loads were on their way out.  

Not sure where they are taking the refugees, but the convention center people are going some place else.  

them up, they are unable to act as peace officers, while they can control the crowds and enforce the law, if the governor calls them up.

Although Bush is sending in about over 10,000 US active duty military troops-some are already on sight, others are on their way.  

first evacuated, at least according to an article posted at Outside the Beltway-http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/11873.

but after the fact there's not much he could do.  He screwed up big time not having his ducks in a row to prepare for this, but after the flooding hit, there's nothing he could do but beg for help.

He was blaming and accusing.

If you ask some folks hereabouts, arrogance appears to be my middle name lately.

To jog your memory -- I'm noone of any consequence whatever.  Just another average joe who signed up for an account here because it was free and it seemed like an interesting and possibly useful thing to participate in.  At most, I'm someone with some affection for you all, frankly, although with some differences concerning politics and policy.

My post was simply to point out the contradiction between bemoaning the politicizing of Katrina, then proceeding to politicize Katrina.  You all are, obviously, free to do and think as you wish, and you'll never hear me say otherwise.  However, like the rest of the world, much as you might want to you can't have things both ways.  It's just a fact.

Cheers -

How does that help?

They have a lot of smaller boats, and a large number of airboats, in New Orleans already.  Even if they wanted more, there's no direct land route to get there that won't take you a day out of the way.

What they need is large, freighter-type ships to come in to bring kilotons of supplies, not fiddly little airboats to run around and burn gas.

...the media got there by land. There wasn't and isn't any excuse for what happened. Blame it on whoever you want -- Nagin, Blanco, Bush, God, the Pope, et al -- but please stop pretending like what happened was excusable. It's offensive and, quite frankly and pragmatically, it's abhorrent to the American people.

The media got there by land.

And every single one of them was complaining about how they were short of water, fuel, food, et cetera.

It's really easy to drive one satellite truck a couple of hundred miles when all you have to worry about is a couple of reporters and a camerman.  Of course, what they never showed on camera was the big logistics tail that kept those people on the air (regular restocking runs froma a couple of hundred miles out).  They occasionally mentioned that they left New Orleans many nights and went to relatively-unaffected Baton Rouge.

It's a whole different world when you have to bring in thousands of soldiers, along with food, water, equipment, and fuel to let them do more than stand around and do nothing.

If it were up to some folks, we would have sent in a truck at a time, and they would have vanished into the chaos of New Orleans like they never existed.

Instead, we did it right.  We got a giant convoy of trucks, we got a lot of soldiers, we had an actual plan (the first time anyone had that in New Orleans since last week), and went in.

Lo and behold, it worked.

What a shock.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

August 27, 2005

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

...I don't get something about this release. Completely apolitically, where is the reference to Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard parishes? Were they in a separate document?

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Press_Release_detail.asp?id=973

Press Release

Date: 8/26/2005

Contact:Denise Bottcher or Roderick Hawkins at 225-342-9037

GOVERNOR BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY

BATON ROUGE, LA--Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco today issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.

The full text of Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005 is as follows:

 .........

SECTION 2: The state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage.

SECTION 3: The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.

In the U.S., all disaster preparedness and response begins at the local level and moves up from there (i.e., first city, then county, then region, then federal). It's only when local resources are exhausted or overwhelmed that the federal govt is called in.

In terms of destruction and devastation, a hurricane can't be beat. No matter what the local officials did or didn't do, the feds knew New Orleans couldn't sustain a hit by a class 4 or 5 hurricane. It was only a matter of time before they got called in.

When an entire U.S. city ceases to function, and that city is a major shipping and oil refining center, who but the federal govt would have anywhere near the resources to deal with it?

"There was a huge lack of communications, the Mayor allowed the emergency trasmitter sites for New Orleans to be built where they could flood, and to use natural gas for emergency power.Both things happened.

"The Mayor could have easily demanded this be fixed well before the storm. The whole system should have been hardened, put on tall buildings, but I guess he forgot to do that."

Well, President Bush knew that the political officials were corrupt and incompetent should he should have known they would have screwed everything up so he should have acted sooner and with more authority, perhaps by taking over.  (I don't have any knowledge of any corruption, but I see that statement made repeatedly here and other places)

The police department is just one of the agencies under him.  Beneath him is the Cheif of police, probably the something of communication, and beneath him some staff, and then laterally there are planning and zoning, legal, procurement, legal, and then there is the company that designed the site and installed it.

The next thing you will say is that because the problem with the foam breaking off the external tank was known, so Bush is responsible for the shuttle breaking up.

When you use a source, at least stick with what is said in that source when you cite it.

Hmmm, wonder where any American would get the idea that America would sweep in.

Maybe "sweeping" into Asia after the tsunami?

Or "sweeping" into Iraq to bring democracy (at a cost of over $1B per week).

And I would say that Bush didn't make it clear what he meant with his comment "unacceptable" or some similar word.

And he has made statements about what he was doing to secure America that I considered totally naive.

My comment on Sep 12, 2001, was that the collapse of the Twin Towers was nothing compared to the swamping of New Orleans. I suggested that a perfect terrorist target was New Orleans, possibly by bombing the levees during a tropical storm.  I was expecting a statement by Osama a couple of days ago, but I guess this was just a civil engineering failure.

From my point of view, was probably the number 1 disaster, natural or terrorist.  Number 2 would be the drought stricken west - a road trip by a half dozen terrorists placing timer based fire bombs along the way.  Number 3 would be the Gulf coast chemical plants - a number of teams placing lots of small bombs on large chemical tanks on timers over a large area.

To think that the Federal government can actually fight terrorism is surely believing in the nanny state.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but Bush does seem to suggest he can perform miracles at times.

The levees didn't fail all at once.  They survived the surge or surges.  There were small failures in the canals.  The failures were certainly small at the beginning as there is nothing that indicates catastrophic failure.

Levees and damns are things that are inspected during times of stress, like high water, storms.  The levees are managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Where were they in their inspection cycle of the levees?  What was their plan for doing this, interval, priority, etc?  What was their plan and logistics for responding to failures such as breaks?  Where were the logistics to support the plan?  If not available, where were they and why weren't they on hand?

My understanding is that the canals had recently been reinforced and raised by placing concrete walls on the top and that seem to be the case from some of the TV I've seen.  Given the location of these walls at the end of the canals, I can only ask whether anyone considered the hydraulic pressures that would result?  In your house, the plumber puts in special "shock absorbers" to prevent "water hammer" and in industrial applications, special provisions are made to prevent the the pipe being blown apart.

Could this disaster be the same kind of engineering failure that resulted in two shuttles being lost?

there, playing "Gee let's watch the hurricane hit, because hurricanes are entertainment" game.

Many of the media folks became part of the story, because they were just as stranded as the people who didn't leave.

leaders should have started evacuations etc.

Instead they waited-not a wise move.  

Let me count the ways:

He could have issued a shoot looters order.

When it started flooding, he could have moved those dang 350 buses ... there was a little time. What? The entire nation knew the levee was leaking ... he was clueless about it?

He could have really implemented his own disaster plan.

He could have sent the LA guard troops in to PROTECT the rescuers when the violence started.

He could have assumed control of his own city, like Guilliani and Daley did in their own times of trial.

Remember Guilliani rolling up his sleeves and serving FOOD at a center in NYC?  Now, compare that with Nagin's screaming "BOOOSH!!!! BOOOSH!!!!"

Sorry. I don't see Nagin as a victim. I see the people of New Orleans as victims of political hacks.  

And while he was focused on screaming "BOOSH!!! BOOOSH!!!" his constituents died.

Just call me a literalist, but I don't see what it's strength at sea for a few hours has to do with the discussion.

New Orleans was not hit by a Cat 5 hurricane.

at all.  But nobody sees my point?  He couldn't just "roll up his sleeves and serve food at a center"...everything...was underwater.

The buses would have been feasible before the hurricane, maybe...if he had ordered them to be used we probably would've lost them in the flooding or it would have been a waste of time b/c the flood was too fast.

And there was a disaster plan, he just didn't follow it, for reasons we don't know yet.

Nagin has no control over the LA national guard.

And I still say it's difficult to take control of your city when your infrastructure is underwater and some of your people are turning out to be part of the problem.

None of this lets him off the hook, he has made mistakes before and during this disaster that has led to the deaths of many people.  

See that is half the problem, Bush is taking criticism for failure at the local and state level.

"I see the people of New Orleans as victims of political hacks."

Exactly. Nagin was in WAY over his head, and people died.  

I said there's been a breakdown at all levels.  I actually think Bush got things going in the right direction while LA officials diddled around and FEMA tried to figure out how to organize things.

That does not refute the point. There is still zero evidence that there were any serious problems at the Federal level or with FEMA.

The delays in getting aid into NO were entirely due to the actions, or inactions, of Blanco and Nagin. If you or anyone has any credible evidence of failings on the part of FEMA, please post them.

The failings on the part of the local officials on the scene are numerous and well documented.

If you still don't know them, read the threads. Or ask, and I'll repeat them again here.

were not built to withstand a CAT4/5 storm.  It is not an engineering issue.

Is a hack someone who has never run for office before and who lead a major turn-around of a troubled business?  Nagin was the overwhelming favorite of the well-off and and whites; blacks split between the candidates.

03/03/2002 - Updated 01:20 AM ET    

Nagin elected mayor of New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A businessman making his first run for office coasted to victory over a popular police chief in Saturday's runoff for mayor of Louisiana's largest city.

Complete but unofficial results gave Cox Communications vice president Ray Nagin 76,469 votes, or 59%, to 53,781 or 41% for New Orleans Police Superintendent Richard Pennington.

Nagin, who will replace two-term Mayor Marc Morial, asked supporters to have patience as he works to change the city.

"I don't have a Superman undershirt under my suit," he told supporters who packed a hotel ballroom. "It didn't take us one year to get into this shape, and it won't take a year to get out. I predict a tough 18 months," he said.

Pennington, whose contract ends in early May, returns to work Sunday as police chief. He was relaxed and smiling as he conceded to Nagin, saying he will work with the new mayor's transition.

He said he has not considered either any other job offer or whether he would remain police chief if Nagin wants him to.

"The new mayor has an opportunity to select a new chief. I have to leave that up to him," Pennington said. "I'm not going to lobby for anything personally."

Nagin said he won't consider whether to replace him until the transition period is over.

"He is police chief until May or so, and we're going to honor him as such," he said.

Both candidates are political newcomers who took leave from their jobs to campaign after voters turned down Morial's attempt to change term limits.

It has been 66 years since New Orleans has had a mayor who had never before held elected office.

Nagin, 45, was the surprise leader among 15 candidates in last month's general election, but he held a commanding lead through public opinion polls going into Saturday's runoff.

Pennington, 54, last month's second-place finisher, campaigned hard and hoped for an upset.

Morial, who hired Pennington away from the Washington, D.C., police force, did not endorse anyone in either primary or runoff.

Nagin came to a foundering cable franchise as controller of its accounting system in 1985, and has turned it into one of Cox's top franchises. Pennington was credited with cleaning up a corrupt department and slashing the city's crime rate since arriving in 1994.

Both candidates are black Democrats in a majority black city but endorsements from two of the black candidates he defeated last month helped Nagin among black voters. He carried much of the white vote in the last election and polled well among upper- and middle-class blacks.

The last person who became mayor without being elected to any other office was Robert Maestri, who didn't even have to run.

He replaced T. Semmes Walmsley, who had resigned in 1936 after a political struggle between the Huey Long machine and the city's Old Regular organization.

Maestri, a businessman and state conservation commissioner, was Long's choice but was acceptable to both sides. Nobody ran against him, so under state law he was automatically elected.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/03/02/neworleans-mayor.htm

You do realize, of course, that what you just asked the President to do is what they call "unconstitutional."

The President can't just set a Governor aside by fiat.  If he had done what you want, he could - rightly - be impeached and removed from office.

It wasn't that they were expected to fail, it was expected that the storm surge for a cat 4/5 storm would top the levees and flood the city.  The storm surge did not top the levees.  And, in fact, the levees themselves did not fail.

And if you look at the failures, the failures are at right angles to the direction of the surge.  This means the failure occurred as a result of wave interference, the force of the wave coming in collided with the force of the reflected wave.  Engineers are supposed to know about these kinds of things.  By putting the straight up concrete barriers, they prevented this coliding wave from going up and over the canal wall, which is similar to the levee wall, so the force would have been applied directly to the wall.  The wall is anchored in the levee, so my guess is that the pressure on the wall caused it to rip out and tear a hole in the earthen canal wall, and then the water flow just opened it up.

An engineer knows that you can't resist strong forces, you must absorb or redirect them.  Cars are designed to crumple to keep the car from failing catastrophically which would completely destory the cargo - the people.  Plumbers build in "shock absorbers" to your plumbing to prevent it from suffering from constant shocks that will lead to failure (and making a hammering noise every time you shut the water off).

Btw, I'm an engineer, and in my career I have made mistakes that have had adverse impacts on customers.  However, my mistakes were not in life critical systems, but in general purpose systems.  My employer made sure that customers knew this and then aided customers in making sure what I and thousands of others did was analyzed and tested as to meet the specific customer application.  The tendency in the past two decades has been to eliminate testing in all fields of engineering, from software (Windows) to nuclear power plants to areospace (shuttle), unless high quality has a marked impact on product price and competitiveness (747, 767, Airbus).

Now I'm speculating on what happened, but I'm basing my speculation on my knowledge of engineering and physics, and actively studying the risks to New Orleans as an interested, distant observer.  I realized that there were life critical systems protecting New Orleans that were not getting the funding that the scientists and engineers advised.  It reminds me of NASA.

We can step back a bit and just look at the impact of wetland loss in the Gulf coast.  This has exposed hundreds of miles of pipeline to open water - the pipes were buried in wetland soils which have disappeared in the past 20-30 years turning buried pipe into underwater pipe.  That pipe was not engineered to be underwater.  With this storm, the energy companies have suffered massive economic loss, but the impact is going to affect every America even if you are not in the Gulf Coast region or even if you don't get your products from any of the affected oil companies.

the distinction you are making.  However, a 15 foot levee cannot withstand a 22-26 ft storm surge, in more ways than just the obvious.  Certainly the vector of hydraulic force against the wall is an issue, but there is no way around the force scaler parameter, which as an engineer you understand.  Deflection of the force vector could only operate within certain limits of force scaler the material property could withstand before a breech occurs, which is what I am suggesting happened.  Certainly, a system could be designed to withstand CAT5, however, based on cost analysis, such a system was rejected.

If I pulled 6 G's in my Bonanza, I could reasonably expect a catastrophic failure of the wing spar.  There are notable similarities to the NO levee system.

And maybe he is not a "hack", but he is apparently unfit to lead. The corrupt New Orleans political machine is full of hacks, however, and that is what failed the poor people of the city.

When Nagin blamed President Bush for everything, any respect anyone ever had for him should have evaporated. Mine did.

... displaying the courage to tell truth to power.

Hmmm sounds like a scary thought to me here.  

THE GOVERNMENT forcing me from my home at gunpoint for my own betterment?

Here in Texas that's grounds for a standoff.

smagar's responses are perfect.  It's nice to read on this page where people have much common sense and some experience, or at least understanding, with coordination of a major effort of this scale and timeframe.

It's increasingly frustrating to read or watch on TV where someone bellyaches that Bush didn't act quickly enough, and the images and descriptions are those of people being left behind with no hope or any one caring.  That's a load of crap, and fodder for the folks who want "THE GOVERNMENT" to take care of everyone immediately no matter the conditions.

After reading all these postings, I am increasingly convinced that our Presidential leadership is strong, as it has always been, under Bush.  

Again, Mr. Bush acted as quickly as he was legally allowed to do so.  Any sooner, and the Feds would be overstepping their boundaries, taking over where the State and City should have been controlling the area.  And I personally would be very very frightened had the Feds rushed in without first conferring with the lower levels of government.  A Federal government strong enough and without the legal boundaries of having to discuss action with the local gov'ts is one I don't want in my backyard.

"Speaking truth to power" doesn't include efforts to cover up your own sorry incompetence, and you don't "speak truth to power" when you lie.

Sorry. People died while Nagin whined.

Surely he had time to locate his own emergency plan. It's his JOB as the mayor of a coastal town.

You had to see it.

finally pointing out to those who wish to use "the media got there" line of reasoning to browbeat the federal response, that there is an incalculable logistical difference between supporting five reporters vice providing for 100,000 to 150,000 evacuees, aid workers, and soldiers.

...do what they can to solve problems.

Bad people try to place blame (usually on good people) for the fact that there was a problem in the first place, or that the good people didn't deal with it quickly enough.

Preventing and coping with a local disaster is primarily a local responsibility.  Locals are the ones who have the greatest interest and pertinent knowledge, and are the ones already at hand when a disaster occurs.

Bad people will also make a problem worse.

Tens of thousands of people have come in from around the country to help with the disaster.  Tens of millions from around the world are sending money.

Anyone who wants to place blame outside of Louisiana needs to take a good hard look in a mirror.

as long as that blame is centered solely on local government.

I'm not sure what you're saying.

Just saw Nagin on 60 minutes and he talked about his meeting with Bush - doesn't sound like there are any hard feelings.

Nagin is clearly a business man.  He was trying to get people in to help, but he was told repeatedly that the feds can't act without the state authorizing it, while the state said, they are authorized because fema is in charge.

If you look at President Bush's emergency order, I don't see how FEMA wasn't authorized to bring any federal resource to bare on the problem.

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600.

Also buses were used to move people to the shelters, which are in New Orleans.  Source, a comment on the news.  The commander of the army forces in New Orleans credits the collection of people at the superdome before the storm with saving many lives.  This was also part of 60 minutes segment.

He was interveiwed on 60 minutes in the blownout high rise hotel which is his command center.  My guess is that he left New Orleans to try to get the state and feds to just do something instead of just debating juristicion.

"Again, Mr. Bush acted as quickly as he was legally allowed to do so.  Any sooner, and the Feds would be overstepping their boundaries, taking over where the State and City should have been controlling the area.  And I personally would be very very frightened had the Feds rushed in without first conferring with the lower levels of government.  A Federal government strong enough and without the legal boundaries of having to discuss action with the local gov'ts is one I don't want in my backyard."

You're drowning and FEMA is standing there saying, "we need the proper authorization before we can pull him out of the water because we don't want to violate his rights"."

But the important thing is that for life critical systems "good enough is not good enough."

But I want you for as the Federal risk manager for my nuclear reactors; it should increase my profits quite a bit.

capably handled all the parameters for which the system was created.  This was my original contention with your statement.  Engineered products can only be expected to operate within the parameters set forth by design.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I'll take your bite as a compliment as I received nuclear education courtesy of the US Navy, which has never had a nuclear accident.

around here.  And I'd like to assume you're not as ignorant as you pretend to be with regards to our system of republican government?  Your ideological stripes are showing -- perhaps you would be happier over at dKos?

Nagin was doing everything he could do, he did everything he could do, his men did everything they could do, so, if he had just kept quiet, then he wouldn't have been to blame, because how could he reverse hundreds of years of bad Mississippi watershed policies that placed commerce, farming, and using flood plains at higher priority than environmental matters in just two and a half years.

The bus thing seems to be a big buggaboo, but unless you can demonstrate in "the plan" that the buses were to transport the people of New Orleans without transport outside greater New Orleans instead of to safe shelter (the convention center and superdome), Nagin did everything in "the plan".

As far as spending money to "fix the problems in his two and a half years:

"Last year, Mayor Ray Nagin took New Orleans' seven assessors to task for undervaluations of property that he said were costing the city more than $15 million a year. Although the assessors countered that the mayor was ill-informed and acting outside of his authority, the statistics suggest Nagin was low-balling the loss."

Well, read the whole article:

http://www.nola.com/speced/dubiousvalue/index.ssf?/speced/dubiousvalue/titl
estory040404.html

And now I hear that the Governor of Mississippi is pleading for help - something I think is long over due from what I've seen on TV and heard on radio.

Maybe I'm too old - I've heard Grace Hopper speak and agree with her, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." and I worked for DEC for 25 years where we were drilled to "do the right thing" and "if you see a problem, you own it".  Hearing Nagin speak, he's my kind of man.

And am I brainwashed into believing the US military does whatever is needed to get the job done, no excuses?  Who makes the decisions in a firefight?  Was "failure is not an option" merely a holliwood slogan and not an imperative at NASA?  Would it be wrong for President Bush to say "I don't care what rules you have to break, get in there and help those people in need!"?

I've broken lots of rules in my career, my bosses grimaced and asked rhetorically "did you have to?" and then went off to patch things up.  Nagin has asked his people to work beyond the limits and as a result two officers have commited suicide because they couldn't take it anymore.  I've never had to face anything like he has, nor any of his people.

I just can't believe all the people who claim to despise the blame game, that sure have assumed, the leader of no more than a few thousand people has screwed up and should be blamed for not saving all the people.

I learned today that New Orleans was in the top three biggest risks for Homeland Security along with a terrorist attack on NYC and a large San Franciso earthquake.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_preparedness_for_New_Orleans and update it if you have better information.

And to think that I dropped into this forum today looking for reasoned analysis on the way forward, given all the major issues this crisis has finally smacked America across the face with a two by four.

Had the City Mayor and State organizations followed their own disaster plans (i.e. "law") to the letter, many folks would have been out of harm's way and a lot sooner, and the FEMA workers would have been able to get to people a lot quicker.

If my kid's in trouble I don't expect my boss to bail him out.  It is nice, and somewhat expected, on a humanitarian aspect for him to help, but as head of my household am expected to care for my own.  If I fail to act, it may take time for someone to realize I don't have what it takes to do my job -- which appears to have happened here in NO.

I see it now, was pretty angry, yesterday.

You know, we went on a picnic last night with some good friends...some liberal, some conservative.

We were all swapping stories about how we were helping the influx of refugees, here in Texas ... and how, libs and cons alike at the picnic actually agreed on more points than we fought over. (altho I'll have to confess, political discussion has become more of a sport)

Even our teenager, who pridefully don't care about alot, had gotten involved in helping.

Dang! That's America.

blame be assigned where it belongs?

It certainly appears to belong with Nagin and Blanco. Why are all the people who were so desperately trying to assign blame to Bush and FEMA (without any evidence of wrongdoing) now insisting that it is wrong assigning blame where it is due?

It would be illegal, anf you would be calling for his impeachment.

"Would it be wrong for President Bush to say "I don't care what rules you have to break, get in there and help those people in need!"?"

Regardlees of popular opinion on the left, the president is not the dictator of the US, and cannot simply order the miltary to take over states and cities, no matter how incompetent the governor and mayor may be.

"The bus thing seems to be a big buggaboo, but unless you can demonstrate in "the plan" that the buses were to transport the people of New Orleans without transport outside greater New Orleans instead of to safe shelter (the convention center and superdome), Nagin did everything in "the plan"." Just to a "safe shelter". He might as well taken them to the beach and they would have not had to sit around and suffer. How about safe shelter meaning "way up the road"

...for a prime example of why not to rush in and try to "just do stuff" without some serious prep, let's look at Admiral Sean Penn.

He decided to be Really Clever, bought a three seat bass boat with a small motor, loaded it up, took his posse with him, got one guy to drive the boat, one personal photographer, a small amount of food and water, donned his bulletproof vest(!), and started out to "rescue" people.

Of course, with Penn being an unprepared moron with no training, the boat started taking water (they forgot to put the drain plug in), and the motor wouldn't start.  So they went rowing off down the street, so the three people in the boat could show Penn rescuing one person, while the second guy actually did the work of driving the boat and the photog could have a good "look how easy rescue work is" photogallery ready for the Tuesday news...

I'm sure communication could have been better -- but I really disagree on the idea of most fault resting on the city administration.

This document is interesting, considering the press coverage before the hurricane regarding their phased evacuations.

For those who are interested, here's a link to three years of special reports on hurricane danger in Louisiana:

http://www.nola.com/abcweather/

The 2005 program mentions how Aaron Broussard was criticized for calling an evacuation of Jefferson Parish too early -- 55 hours before the storm was to arrive -- because he did not want to evacuate his parish at night.

According to this, and according to the Louisiana State Police's evacuation maps (link below) the southernmost parishes were to evacuate 50 hours before, then other parishes 40 hours before, and then Jefferson and Orleans Parishes at 30 hours before.

http://www.lsp.org/pdf/Web_StateMap.pdf

I noticed you did not quote several pertinent portions of the City of New Orleans plan that related to phased evacuation and other things, so here's a few quotes for people who didn't have the time to read the original plan.

"Precautionary Evacuation Notice: 72 hours or less

Special Needs Evacuation Order: 8-12 hours after Precautionary Evacuation Notice issued

General Evacuation Notice: 48 hours or less"

and:

"Slow developing weather conditions (primarily hurricane) will create increased readiness culminating in an evacuation order 24 hours (12 daylight hours) prior to predicted landfall."

------

The portion of the document you quote giving a 72 hour notice is a MAXIMUM notice, not a minimum one.  Why?  Because our ability to predict the path of hurricanes is simply not that good yet -- 72 hours is long before they know where it's going to go.  Don't believe me?

72 hours before landfall would have been 6 AM on Friday morning.  The NWS had not said where they thought landfall would be at that time -- but here's what they issued at 10 AM Central:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/graphics/AT12/12.AL1205W.GIF

If you notice, this puts the eye where it would hit the Florida panhandle, and be very little threat to New Orleans.  At 4 PM it was looking like it would hit Gulfport, and at 10 PM they adjusted the forecast to New Orleans.

http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1125123944221200.xml?nola

This article ran in the Times-Picayune Saturday but was written Friday night.  If you notice, Nagin urged people to prepare, but not even Grand Isle (much closer to landfall) had started evacuations on Friday night.  You'll also see that this was the first that the models predicted the hurricane would come so far west.  In other words, the precautionary notice was issued Friday night.

With Saturday morning being 48 hours, the southern parishes followed the plan and issued evacuation notices.  Saturday at noon, Mayor Nagin issued a statement that the Superdome would be a "special needs" shelter and started evacuations for those people, also encouraging the 9th Ward and other low-lying areas of Orleans Parish to evacuate.  Contraflow was started at 4 PM Saturday -- which is actually earlier than the plan stated (they said 30 hours for Contraflow but that would have put it at midnight.)  He also specifically said that he was not issuing the general evacuation notice then to allow the people from the southern parishes to get out -- according to the plan.  The general evacuation order was issued at daylight on Sunday morning -- giving 12 hours of daylight for the evacuation of Orleans Parish.  That is also according to the plan.

This may not make a lot of sense to people who think New Orleans is the southernmost point in Louisiana -- but it isn't.  I went to college in Louisiana, and my roommate was from the Grand Isle area.  She mentioned back then (in 1997) that when they did issue evacuation notices it was nearly impossible for her family to evacuate -- because the traffic from New Orleans blocked them in.  There are no major highways in that area, and most of that area is at or below sea level.  

The evacuation for Hurricane Ivan was a complete nightmare, with people in the southern parishes stuck in a very dangerous area since they could not get out due to the traffic from the New Orleans Metro blocking them in.  Hence, they created the phased evacuation.

I'm not saying that the plan was perfect.  We've all seen that it was not.  What I'm saying is that Mayor Nagin did follow the plan that was in place.  

I'm rather suprised you would take the statement about the 72 hour window so far out of context -- that kind of logical fallacy is one I usually only see Democrats make.