The Mayor of NO and the Governor of LA blew it bigtime.
I've dealt with SEMO (State Emergency Management Office) here in NY, through 9/11, floods, ice storms, blizzards, and blackouts. It gets a little chaotic sometimes, but NY get things done.
King George Pataki may be an arrogant ass, an incompetent, and a crook to boot- but on 9/11 things got done. And Rudy Giuliani was right there at Ground Zero.
In NO and LA, incident command was never established.
It seemed as if nobody was in charge.
In NY, one of our best sources of info on disasters is the media- we have a wall of TVs in the operations centers. If a reporter sees something, the folks in charge find out. Representatives from every department- National Guard, State Police, Transportation, Conservation, every state agency- are there at the command center. If something needs doing, the request goes straight to the agency best able to handle it, word gets passed to the "boots on the ground" and stuff gets done.
"The Mayor of NO and the Governor of LA blew it bigtime. "
I am afraid your are correct here.