Are you serious with this last comment? Since when is it the "job" of "local government" to forcibly move nearly half a million people from their homes in under 72 hours?
Name on city anywhere on earth that can and would do such a thing. One.
Actually, it's the citizen's job to get themselves out. It's nice when the city can help out. Hopefully you're not saying that it's the job of the feds to run willy nilly around the country to make sure people get out of the way of tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc?
If it was not local govt's job to evacuate the city, they should have turned it over to the feds WAY back. The mayor called for evacuation, I think. If you assume responsibility, then you have to TAKE responsibility.
How the mayor and governor decided to plan for that was their job. Had they called for voluntary evac sooner (without having to be forcibly shoved by President Bush and the head of the Weather Channel met. team) they would have had fewer people to forcibly evacuate. With that in mind, having a plan to utilize the available school buses (and incidentally save the city's bus fleet) would have been a good idea.
Doubt they would have gotten them all. But they could have moved the sick, the elderly, and the destitute, and a plan that included more encouragement to leave (door to door, leafletting, regular radio announcements) would have helped as well.
Just because you can't move everybody is no excuse to sit down in the road and not even TRY. But I suppose that is what years of corrupt liberal rule will get you.
Screw "the city." How about adults making responsible individual decisions and taking care of themselves and their families.
As for the "city" itself, I note again the picture of dozens of school buses parked neatly in rows with water up to their steering wheels. If buses can evacuate the city now, buses could have evacuated the same people a week ago. For free.