..The incompetence of NO and LA officials in mind-boggling...
I would argue you are not only wrong but completely misunderstand the situation. The same is true for the misguided docs from NC.
NO is an evacuated city and no aid is being given to people there. To get aid you must evacuate to a shelter or other protected area. The doctors went to the wrong place. Had they gone elsewhere in the disaster area they would have been welcomed.
The message is that NO is being purposely emptied of people to insure that the needed services can and will be delivered. That is not possible within NO.
The correct reponse would have been to say "You need to set up at XXX (where XXX is the place where evacuees are processed and triaged prior to being sent on), and Officer Smith here will guide you to where you can set up"
Pissing away a 100-man MASH unit is NOT my idea of good resource utilization