[Knitting A Conundrum]

There is no reason except that people weren't paying attention and the govt. didn't want to evacuate. SHAME! THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WHO DROWNED ARE ON THE HANDS AND HEADS OF THE LOCAL POWER STRUCTURE!

[r9etb]

To be completely fair, there were also a lot of people who just plain didn't leave, and who are now paying the price.

Where the gov't failed is partly on the evacuation side, and to a large extent on the side of being completely unprepared to answer "what's the worst that could happen?" It's not like this failure mode was unexpected. They just weren't able to respond when it happened.

[Trust but Verify]

Yes, I believe you are correct. They waited too long to issue evac orders, had no plan for moving large numbers of poor people without any means to move themselves OUT OF THE CITY, and rolled the dice that things wouldn't be that bad.

They knew that evacuating everyone was impossible to do in that short amount of time and they didn't want to be responsible for having busloads of people sitting in traffic on freeways when the storm hit.