IIRC 72 hours..Yes the plan should have called for evacuating those without their own transportation first...thus allowing buses to clear the area or make two trips and not endangering bus drivers......furthermore not having sufficient shelters locally with a population known not to be mobile was incompetence at the least. The superdome and convention center both should have been built with that secondary purpose in mind. Any casino or other government buildings they financed and built should have doubled as shelters and should have been built accordingly. A few extra dollars would have saved countless lives and billions of dollars...yes I know hindsight is 20-20 but one would have to have been blind to be sitting in their risky position (storm wise)and not to have prepared and planned ahead. Heck they could have built an elevated train for evacuation. Also one of the major freeways out of town was built to go under a train and of course regularly flooded during storms.As for their police department that is another story of poor planning..
It appears the state rigidly followed the plan and used up all the time that should have been used for mandatory evacuations. Nagin was up against the wall: he had one day to perform a mandatory evacuation. With traffic as bad as it was Sunday, he could have only gotten one trip out of the buses- and he didn't have time to force Blanco to open up shelters, even if he went public.
I disagree he had authority delegated to him to declare both a voluntary and mandatory evacuation...he and the governor hesitated to call an evacuation because of last years Ivan which turned and missed NO....I think she was waiting for him and he was waiting for her to make the call to deflect criticism if the storm turned...no one (in LA)learned from the tsunami that it is better to be safe than sorry and inconvenience the tourists and occupants and loose a little income than wait or do nothing and loose everything. Neither could pull the trigger until forced by the President. His and her authority is clear, either could have ordered an evacuation..
from NOLA
III. EVACUATION ORDER
A. Authority
As established by the City of New Orleans Charter, the government has jurisdiction and responsibility in disaster response. City government shall coordinate its efforts through the Office of Emergency Preparedness
The authority to order the evacuation of residents threatened by an approaching hurricane is conferred to the Governor by Louisiana Statute. The Governor is granted the power to direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from a stricken or threatened area within the State, if he deems this action necessary for the preservation of life or other disaster mitigation, response or recovery. The same power to order an evacuation conferred upon the Governor is also delegated to each political subdivision of the State by Executive Order. This authority empowers the chief elected official of New Orleans, the Mayor of New Orleans, to order the evacuation of the parish residents threatened by an approaching hurricane.
B. Issuance of Evacuation Orders
The person responsible for recognition of hurricane related preparation needs and for the issuance of an evacuation order is the Mayor of the City of New Orleans. Concerning preparation needs and the issuance of an evacuation order, The Office of Emergency Preparedness should keep the Mayor advised.
The problem was really two fold. One, New Orleans is a death trap. Much of it sits below sea level and there aren't enough ways to get that many people out. Two, disaster planning was ignored for decades. The city, and really the nation at large, just gambled that this would never happen. We lost, and I hope it wakes us up to the reality that some of our cities are not sustainable over the long term without a serious investment in infrastructure.
There was going to be massive loss of life- no way we could expect either Nagin or Blanco to fix the fundamental issues just in the last two years. But, after the hurricane, a series of mistakes caused an even greater loss of life.