Actually, we needed some people to just do what the heck they were supposed to do and that did not happen. There was no way we could have gotten all those people out of NO based upon the weakend time table of when the evac. was called, but it sure could have been minimized a lot more.
Reading the city and state plans has been very disturbing as they cover much of the pre-hurricane actions that needed to be taken and little to none of them occurred in the case of NO. Time after time, interview after interview it became abundantly clear that the First Responders on the ground had no idea what to do. I am tired of listening to people tell me this was a catostrophic event and no one would know what to do, and then turning to the Feds. and blaming them! Mayor G of New York on 9/11/01 had a major unplanned event of catastrophic proportions and by following the basic Incident Command Structure established in the city's ERP, he was able to guide New York through one of the darkest times. The ICS gives all responders at all levels a basic foundation to work from, it is evident in all that we're seeing that did not happen in NO. My question then becomes, WHY, as it is what we are all asking. If they don't know the plan and how to implement the plan, then you get Chaos. The breakdown of the entire city, police and fireman quitting is very telling. Either they were not being told what to do (as some claim) or they were not being allowed to do what they were trained to do (as some claim) or both. In any event we had/have American people dieing in the streets.
"Actually, we needed some people to just do what the heck they were supposed to do"
I agree completely, and I don't think we're mutually exclusive, here -- sometimes "heroic" consists in nothing more (or less) than staying at your post and doing what needs to be done when everything is falling apart around you.
A parenthetic point that came to me after my original post is that it sure seems that politicians and bureaucrats, as a class, seem to have this ability (character?) bred out of them.