Actually, I'm reading it the other way. In Texas, the Government *is* trusting us, the people, to get the job done. They trusted us to evacuate while they evacuated the people who couldn't get out on their own and then rendered what aid they could to the rest of us. There were some problems, but it would have been impossible to better the results.
Now they will trust us to clean up and get life moving again. Houston will be fully functional by the end of the week, as will 90% of the strike zone in Texas. In a month or so, you probably won't be able to tell a hurricane went through at all - except for the monument we'll erect. We like monuments, and we'll probably put one up to mark the largest successful evacuation in human history.
Regarding the Feds, after Katrina and having to deal with the incompetence and corruption in LA, would *you* want to trust local government?
Houston is, IIRC< the only major city that doesn't regulate land use via zoning; so yeah, I agree to an extent.
I still think government in general needs to be kept in check, and that people in governmnet positions tend to look down their noses at the little people.
Regarding the Feds, after Katrina and having to deal with the incompetence and corruption in LA, would *you* want to trust local government?
Having dealt with government on many levels, I wouldn't count on it to do anything right. They might, and they might not. And no, I certainly wouldn't trust Blanco of Nagin. They are a pair of shysters from the get go.
In the way you suggest, the government does trust you.
However, there are issues beyond trust. These are simple reality. Human beings eat, and a certain time later, they excrete. In the absence of any public sanitation measures, the health risks follow an exponential curve. During the Katrina aftermath I calculated it would require 300 portable toilets to service 30,000 people at the Superdome.
Per day.
Several million people is a whole different order of magnitude. Add that to a shortage of drinking water, and the risks increase yet again. It isn't a matter of trust, it is the logistics of literally tons of human waste that needs safe disposal. If 5 million people each generate a quarter pound of waste per day, that comes out to 625 tons, or better put, 15 or 16 tractor trailer loads per day. It doesn't just vanish, not without impact.
The other simple reality is that there are only so many freeway lanes, which each only hold so many cars.
In short, moving a couple million people back into the city requires either a little advance planning, to check the operation of basic services and to allow for orderly transit, or else it requires outright negligence if none of this is done.
No government worth having would choose the second course. They know a certain percentage will make their own decisions. You won't see them prosecuting the blockade runners after the fact, though they may chase a few down to make a point. Their big concern is for the bulk of the population and the policies they are following generally follw the needs of a group that size.
When that doesn't happen, then there should be and almost always is, an outcry and resultant change.