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Yeah, I've consistently been posing the rhetorical question (here, elsewhere) as to why there was no process to implement a "mandatory evacuation."

Allow me a moment here: most people respond to that notice and pack up the car with the kids, the pets, the inlaws if they have them living with/near, and two weeks' clothing and emergency snacks, water and necessary paperwork/documents and then, if they have enough time, call ahead to make temporary housing plans. And then they leave.

On the other hand, no major city is without the handicapped and elderly and extremely impoverished (or even moderately incomed who don't own/use private transportation), such that there is surely awareness that they number many thousands in cities as large as New Orleans. And New Orleans, especially, with it's larger than usual percentages of needy living within the city limits.

Not like the Mayor of N.O. and the governor of the state is not acutely already aware of those numbers of most needy and/or unable persons in failing any response to a "mandatory evacutation."

Such that, even if there was no preset plan for mandatory evacuation of those thousands who could not act on their own behalf, there SHOULD HAVE been and COULD HAVE BEEN a process put together quickly to get as many of them out of the city...with the Governor's intervention, they could have been, literally, driven north to many among many other towns/cities with gymnasiums, schools, city centers, even motels and hotels the state could have paid or otherwise brought into the mix so as to help/assist in such a terrible emergency.

Instead, the mayor and Governor did nothing. They hesitantly agreed to the evac only one day before the devastation appeared, had notice of the intensity of the destruction bearing down on them, and did nothing more than make a public speech and return to safe housing with meals, helpers and communcations for themselves and theirs.

It seems to me that it is INHERENT to their JOBS, their positions by which their oaths are sworn, that they were to make whatever arrangements possible under those circumstances to get people out of harms way, who were not able to save themselves.

I did see a lot of disabled, frail and newly born among the stranded but I also saw a large number of well nourished and very fit persons. Such that, there were also a lot who remained behind who seem to have made that choice not by inability to depart but by determination to remain.

In which case, those are a different sort...but for those who were/are frail, incapable of leaving on their own, too young, too elderly, too ill, incapable of forming a plan, whatever, they should have had a means provided for them by which they were transported out of the City.

All the other rural areas and small towns, they certainly also have their numbers of similar persons, but New Orleans, ESPECIALLY, is/was a central housing area for very needy people, retired and infeebled.

The ONLY negligence I see already identified in this terrible tragedy is LOCAL GOVERNMENTS. Mississippi and Alabama, contrarily, are recovering...no folks from there leering into cameras yelling about the federal government, the President.

Obviously, New Orleans and some in the state elsewhere are people who are using this devastation to blame rather than assist.