Oh, that's friggin' brilliant. Walk just far enough to be caught out in the open for a Cat 5.
Please try and adjust your views to have some relevance in real-world situations.
My views need no adjusting, thank you.
My point is simply that people have taken responsibility for themselves for millions of years. It's one of the reasons why the species has prospered; those that do not take responsibility become extinct. Why do the circumstances under which a person is expected to follow this basic survival rule change anything?
It's in your interest to not stick your tongue into a wall socket, and so you don't. It's in your interest to get yourself a job to provide yourself with the necessities of life, so you do. The same with a Cat-4 or 5 hurricane: it's in your interets to be prepared to evacuate, and if the means are not available, then improvise.
You make it seem as if the people who got caught in the city or who left it too late were people incapable of rational thought in the days prior to, and the day of, the storm's arrival. That kind of thinking, by the way, borders on insanity. When we absolve people of their responsibilities, and remove or deaden their natural instincts, then we no longer have people: we have masses of undirected skin walking around that simply look like us.
I'm not saying that what that sherrif was right or that there could have been a different/better response from local authorities, all I'm pointing out is that ultimately people make choices, good and bad, and that they must live with the consequences.
In the meantime, we should offer a helping hand in anyway possible, but we should never forget that most of this suffereing was infinitely avoidable if only people were encouraged to think and act for themselves, as individuals and collectively. It's obvious that private citizens in NO did more to save their neighbors and organize rescue efforts than the police or state did. That same initiative and enlightened self-interest and self-sacrifice could just as easily have been put to use prior to the storm as it was in it's aftermath.
The fact that it wasn't is a sad commentary on human beings.