Nothing has happened to us that even approachs this hurricane in the past 50 years. The officials are just learning how this civilian generation reacts to disastophe.
Did you know that looting would be widespread be it hit land? I didn't.
It stands to reason. I knew the Superdome was going to be hell within 24 hours and hell cubed within 72 hours. I knew not figuring out how to evacuate those without cars were gonna leave the poorest people in the city with few supplies. And it stands to reason that some folks would loot to survive and others would take advantage of the situation to loot and steal drugs and alcohol and run wild.
The continual wildcard in all this is the horrific lack of adequate disaster planning before the storm arrived.
I know that people worry about looting in the wake of disaster. Mostly because homes and businesses have been left open and abandoned. But the scale we are seeing in N.O. I doubt anyone could have predicted that.
Maybe someone could have studied reactions in certain demographic areas in similar situations. Or they could have seen what happens where there has been rioting and looting when law enforcement is either absent or ordered to stand down. But I am not sure if that would have done any good. It still boils down to bad people behave badly and the good people must defend themselves against that.