Reports are saying the 50 to 60 thousand people are waiting for or currently being evacuated from New Orleans. I’m going to go out on a limb and make some assumptions:
1) They’re reasonably accurate on that number
2) That’s not all of the people who are still within the city limits
This means a couple things. One, between 10% and 20% of the city remained behind after the direst of warnings by the Mayor. Two, almost every single one of those people would be dead if the storm had not veered east and flattened Mississippi.
A death toll in America of 100 thousand because people could not or would not evacuate was avoided narrowly.
This is overwhelming to me. Things like this should not be happening in the worlds most industrial nation. I realize that the timeframe of the evacuation was short, but there better be a plan for the next time. I believe it is within the power of the Federal Government to nationalize the assets of the airline industry for emergency troop deployments. Something similar could have been accomplished with buses and railroads and taxis, etc. , if only to remove people from the environs of the city.
There are huge holes in what I just wrote, I know, but if we’re going to have an entire Department called Homeland Security, they better earn their pay, or dissolve and put the Coast Guard back into the Dept. of Interior.