Excuse me, and don't take this personally, but I'm afraid that many don't comprehend just how bad this is. It's not going to be better in 5 days. I don't care what the plan is. I don't care who is in charge. It is physically impossible to make this better in 5 days. It's a miracle that so many have been saved in 5 days. This is akin to a tornado and a flood hitting three states all at once. It's not just New Orleans. People are doing everything they possibly can. It's like complaining that there's not enough being done because Mt. St. Helen's blew up. It's a catastrophe. It's a natural disaster. We are ineffectual against an event of this magnitude. Could things have been different? Sure, people could have evacuated. But they didn't for whatever reason and wouldn't have no matter what. Nothing could have stopped it. Even if nobody died, everything would have been destroyed and there would still be problems with what to do with all the people.
Some of us spend entire weeks each year in disaster response training for events just like this.
There are entire companies that exist just to do training for horrible, horrible disasters.
Here in Seattle about 2-3 times a year all the hospitals and LE participate in a citywide disaster drill. We do the whole kit and kaboodle on pretending. and we endlessly rehearse.
What happened in NO is beyond belief to some of us, who know what we have been taught about how to handle a disaster.
It doesn't matter Douglas, if in the end they save 99.9% of the survivors who chose to stay in New Orleans despite being told to evac, it won't be good enough.
I'm not at all offended. However, I think you misunderstood my point. No one expects all to be well after five days. Everyone expects, and has a right to expect, basic order to be restored, goods distributed, thugs dead or secured and martial law in place. It took less time to secure Faluja.
we could make this alot better in 2 days, much less 5. if these 40,000 national guard troops were given shoot on sight orders, security would improve very quickly. and that would allow free movement of rescue boats, buses, and helicopters all over the city.