FEMA ought to have had in hand a plan prepared by local officials. Apparently there were none.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0905/01edwitt.html
We have the resources. On Wednesday, it seems FEMA found 475 buses to help with the belated evacuation effort. Unfortunately, when it comes to looking after the carless, homeless, the aged and infirm in our country, we — in our quest to become an ownership society — seemed to have allowed our good senses, good will and compassion to go on vacation.
KAYE: What type of planning have you done, because from what I understand, you've been planning for the big one for a long time. I mean, this is a storm that would force the gulf waters up the Mississippi delta, over those levies that you just mentioned, which protect the city. So what type of planning is in place for this?
NAGIN: The main thing we do is concentrate on the people issues. How do we plan in a manner that evacuates as many people as possible, and secondarily, we deal with individuals who have special needs. They may have medical needs or dialysis or what have you, and then thirdly, we have about 100,000 residents that rely upon public transportation solely. So we have to have a strategy for dealing with the individuals that cannot evacuate and that's the mode that we're in right now.
KAYE: We've seen a lot of pictures of the sick and the injured being evacuated. What about people who don't have any means, people without cars, people who are tourists who can't get a rental car or can no longer get a flight out of there. What's being done for them?
NAGIN: The tourists is a different issue. The mandatory evacuation basically exempted any hotels because we know tourists are having a difficult time getting out. As far as residents who cannot leave because they don't have the financial means, we have provided free bus services this morning where we have about a dozen sites throughout the city that are picking up individuals for free and transporting them to the Louisiana Super Dome, which is the, you know, the facility of last refuge.
KAYE: What about the elderly and those too frail to get out on their own. Is there any effort to go door-to-door and make sure these people aren't lost in the storm?
NAGIN: Yes. Since the mandatory evacuation was issued, we have our police and fire units going throughout all the neighborhoods with their loud speakers and their sirens and they are assisting senior citizens in getting to the pickup places for our public transportation.