[looney tune]

Well, if that was the case, they still knew it in advance the city would flood. Why did the President have to tell the mayor to effect mandatory evacuation? Try as you may to point the finger at the administration, hurricanes are a way of life in coastal areas. Planning should be done on city and state levels. That said, this storm is of Biblical proportions & no planning can fully compensate for that.

[DeeOhGee]

Try as you may to point the finger at the administration

See my response in 101 and quit making unfounded accusations.

[bvw]

It's not the plans, per se, that count either. It is the active and continually engaged process of involving all levels of authority and action that are needed in probable forseeable circumstance in the planning. In making up contigenecy plans, evcuation plans, communitcaion plans, setting rules as to who has what authority in what circumstance, etc.

Having ACTIVE worksessions, drills, training. Doing so year-after.

Otherwise, on the bad side -- Creating a bureaucracy of "planners" who make plans in a vacuum -- that is, with little involvement or drills with the people and groups who would actually be involved does NO good.

For it is not the "plans" that matter -- what counts, what works, what is most effective in this kind of disaster is the training, the personal interlocking of associations developed in drills and worksessions, the command and field awareness of resources and procedures developed in those drills and work-sessions that enables a effective and marvelously adaptible response.

[RobbyS]

The scope of the disaster is such that the plan failed to provide for it. This is like war. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Then it is a matter of execution. Didn't help that the mayor and governor reacted slowly and ineffectively.