The federal government is mighty, especially when they wish to take our money via taxes, but they can not perform miracles. Just imagine for a moment. The City of New Orleans has about 4.5 million people, not even counting the suburbs. Lets say half the people got out, i. e., 2.25 million people. To sustain those folks left with a minimum, sustainable amount of potable water each day, disregarding food, would require about 1.2 million gallons of water to be brought in each day. In four day period that's 4.8 mil. gallons. When the hurricane hit on day one nothing would get in. On day two it was too dangerous to try helicopter rescues. On day three you might get a dribble in. On day four you might get a few tanker trucks in with NG escorts. The best solution to the problem on the ground is to get everybody out as soon as possible, and get them safely to to shelter areas, away from the cesspool that is now NO and environs. Pretty soon you are going to see people getting sick and dying from all sorts of things like hazardous materials, waterborne killer bacteria, floating rats, snakes, insects, fires, etc., etc. This would make the current carnage look like a drop in the bucket in comparison. Once you have cleaned up that mess you now have to get the city's water supply systems back in operation. This is going to be a huge job. Just cleaning up the water storage facilities will be huge. Firefighters will have an easier time with their pumper trucks getting water, they can simply pump it out of the flooded streets, but even then they are going to face some dangerous gas fires. They also may face thugs with bullets that would love to commandeer a fire truck and go for a joy ride for the hell of it. I can not even imagine how much damage has been done to the drainage, piping and electrical systems that power the utility operations in NO. Once NO gets their pumps back on line it is estimated by the COE that it will take at least 80 days to pump all the water out over or thru the levees, assuming they do not have any major rain storms between now and then. It will take months, and even years in some cases, to clean this mess up. And that is just a taste of the magnitude of this tragedy.
Can they even pump this water back into the lake??
It's contaminated with EVERYTHING, do you really think OSHA and EPA are going to let a DROP of that stuff go anywhere but a tanker car??
The city has 1.4 million in the Greater New Orleans Area. Many of those got out. Many could not. Best estimates are that anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 people were left in the city at the time of the storm.