Concurrently with ongoing operations, FEMA, in fact all the way up to Bush, need to set another team, standing back, to assess the scope of everything that needs to be done.
The locals have been head down, ostrich style, and I think FEMA has used their "all is well" estimates to plan their own operation.
If so, they are going to get swamped from the get go, the local officials' estimates of the numbers who stayed behind are falling far short of both independent pre-storm estimates, and also what we are actually seeing in ground truth.
I guess none of them watch television or listen to the radio. In any event, nobody has said "all is well" ever. They have said the precise opposite.
WWL-TV now reporting that Sen. Vetter joining the bash FEMA brigade, parroting angry statements by the mayor and state emergency ops head.