Reporters were saying that only one in five homes was shuttered or boarded up. People saw the hurricane in the Gulf and assumed it would not hit them because they rarely do. Because they wasted their efforts on previous hurricanes that missed, they became complacent. This is, of course, not a valid excuse to get money to fix your home.
The fact that I have to pay federal taxes for people who knew about a risk but refused to fix it, and for people who did not even try to protect their homes makes me more than a little angry. I live in Seattle. We are prone to earthquakes (the last major one occurred in 2001). During the last earthquake, many flaws in the infrastructure of the city were found (including a major fault in a seawall). These are now being fixed, not being completely ignored. If a major earthquake hit Seattle, FEMA funds would be OK with me because people are at least taking precautions.
New Orleanians probably knew that if they passed those bonds, the money would probably only go into the politicians' pockets (and those of their cronies) anyway.
Well that is a good point, and I must admit I haven't really followed the preparations for this hurricane all that closely, so I can't comment on what was or wasn't done. But I think my main point still holds--there are always natural disasters, and there are ways to ameliorate the consequences, but you can't live in 100% safety from such disasters anyplace in the US (or the world for that matter).
And if we placed all the places where FReepers have said "you should just move" (either because of weather or politics) on the Do Not Live List, I don't think there would be a single major city to live in or near.
BTW I loved Seattle when I would visit from eastern WA. Glad that 'quake wasn't bigger, because there are a lot of (private) brick buildings there that probably could not handle a really big one.