Something I found posted on the Mandeville Forum that I thought you ought to know... I think people were doing everything they could under the enormous circumstances.

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PLANNING.
It's very disturbing to hear that people are placing blame on the federal government for this recovery effort. I want to explain to the readers how Emergency Management Planning is processed.
1. Emergency Preparedness starts with the city Mayor and his Emergency Manager. They are responsible for reviewing all "Worse Case Scenarios" imagined (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, terrorism) to name a few.
2. They determine what logistics, security, evacuation routes, shelters will be needed. 3. They rehearse these scenarios through Table Top and live exercises in monthly, quarterly, & annual events each year. 4. When an emergency takes place, they implement the plan.
This requires enormous modeling and simulation that was not incorporated through the Mayor and the Emergency Manager for New Orleans. Each parish has their own Emergency Manager that plans for this type of event. These scenarios are to be rehearsed/practiced with all the medical, police departments, rescue teams, emergency personnel and National Guard assigned to the parish. The governor provides the authority to mobilize the National Guard and to ask for federal government support.
WHAT WENT WRONG. 1. Logistics: Food, water, medical supplies & transportation - No where to be found. New Orleans had nothing stash away in a warehouse. NO SUPPLIES in storage. New Orleans was waiting for FEMA? Yes
2. Why didn't FEMA move in the city after the Hurricane? They were ready and lined up outside of the city to deliver all the necessities for the citizens, but the plan backfired when the Levee broke and water poured into the city. They were told to stand-down because more lives would be in danger.
3. Next course of action taken by FEMA? Evacuate all the citizens out of the Super Dome by buses to another city. 4. Why didn't FEMA drop food and water via helicopter? The helicopters were being used mostly for rescue operations and being fired upon by the bandits of N.O. New Orleans was not the only Parrish or State in demand or need for immediate help. Also, airlifting food and water takes time and must be properly harnessed and airlifted by proper weight distribution onboard aircraft. Something non-military personnel understand like the Mayor of New Orleans.
PREPAREDNESS: Yes, it could have been much better, I can't understand why a city like N.O. knowing that a category 4 or 5 hurricane could destroy their city did not take Emergency Preparedness serious. Food, water and medical supplies is a "MUST" and it should have been housed and a safe place in the city for the mayor or governor to use promptly before FEMA arrived. I would think that a massive event involving 25% of the United States could not be supported by FEMA alone. It would need the city and state to be self-sufficient.
WHO'S TO BLAME? Everyone - mayor's, governors, and politicians of present and past. The New Orleans citizens - what a joke! Looting is unacceptable. Those folks should have been shot on the spot. New Orleans Police Department - another joke! They are crooks themselves, its been proven many times in the past throughout New Orleans history. The people left behind in N.O. should have taken the food from the Markets and set-up a line and distributed the food and water to everyone. Cops participating in the looting caused everything to get out of control. I'm sadden like so many others that grew-up in New Orleans to see the poor level of planning by the city and state.
REBUILD: Why? Because of the history of the city and for the people. Time: 20 years before the city can be safe again. The city has no revenue from business or taxes anymore. The State of Louisiana has most likely lost 25-40% of its revenue, and I may be wrong, it could be more. My recommendation: Shrink the city in half, save the French Quarter and uptown area. Find and build new housing for those not capable in other parishes in Louisiana. Open all import/export business and reopen and build the oil refineries and keep the revenue coming in to build the 25ft wall that was not built previously because of its cost.
THOUGHTS: It would be nice to teach all school children in their history classes about Emergency Preparedness and what to do. Awareness is always the best solution.
Vulnerability - We are always vulnerable to natural catastrophe and anything in life. We live in a different world today, people do not know what hard times are unless you experience it. I know military veterans have experienced it, and they are prepared, but those that have not experienced it outside of the military will need to wait until another event like Katrina.

Actually, this comment in Donald Sensing's blog makes a lot of sense to me:

Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities – in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency).

There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state – that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality – that person is called the Mayor.

FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need.

Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over.

Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale.

Disclosure: I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency), I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief – believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past.

Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed – of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed.

Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas. So what we are seeing in NO is the result of a convergence of factors:

First, the storm damage was bad, but the flooding has made relief efforts ten times harder than anything they could have imagined.

Second, Mayor Nagin’s performance has been pathetic. This is the worst case of poor planning and criminal incompetence I’ve ever seen.

Like I said, Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit.

That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas.

Mayor Nagin waited until the last minute to call for an evacuation of the city, but the poorest people could not evacuate – why weren’t school busses used to get them out of town?

Mayor Nagin made the last minute decision to declare the Superdome and COnvention centers as refuge relocation points – why weren’t they stocked with water, food, bedding, generators, and fuel? Why weren’t hospitals offered additional resources by the Mayors office?

Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue – but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision – it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life.

There’s plenty of blame to go around – Blanco deserves her share too – but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin.

Eh, I have to disagree. Much of this could have been avoided. The Army Corps of Engineers had wanted to strengthen and raise the levees. They were expecting money from FEMA to do so in 2003, 2004, and 2005 but received none. This was due to the fact that FEMA had been placed in the Department of Homeland Security, who reallocated funds. In 2002, FEMA recommended more money for the Corps of Engineers' levees in their 2002 report (after 2 years of cuts due to decreases in money allocated to FEMA), but in 2003 they weren't able to grant it because the money allocated to them by Congress had been taken away from FEMA to be used elsewhere.

Also, Maestri said:
"Before FEMA was condensed into Homeland Security, it responded much more quickly," says Walter Maestri, director of Jefferson Parish's Office of Emergency Management. Maestri has worked with FEMA for eight years. "Truthfully, you had access to the individuals who were the decision-makers. The FEMA administrator had Cabinet status. Now, you have another layer of bureaucracy. FEMA is headed by an assistant secretary who now has to compete with other assistant secretaries of Homeland Security for available funds. And elevating houses is not as sexy as providing gas masks."

On August 1st, the Louisiana National Guard requested that their emergency equipment which had been sent to Iraq be returned or replaced. They were denied this request.

Additionally, Nagin did not wait until the last minute to evacuate people. He asked people to evacuate well beforehand, first people who had a place to go, then people who lived in low-lying areas, then anyone who did not need to be there. My ex and daughter got out in plenty of time, because they had the means. 30% of the people in New Orleans live below the poverty level. Some very far below it. A lot of them could not afford to get out, especially since there were not sufficient buses. Then made it mandatory when it was clear that the hurricane was going to hit. THe 500 buses which he had requested for evacuation have still not arrived. The highways were backed up, it took 7 hours to get 60 miles outside of town.

Nagin even forced bars on Bourbon street to close and he personally helped board up windows on those which refused, so their customers would think they were closed.

The size and intensity of the hurricane were unexpected. It had the highest surge wave since at least 1900 (I'm not sure how high the Galveston hurricane's surge was). Areas where levees didn't break were even flooded by the surge, though temporarily. Because of the 3 levee breaks (all of which were lower and weaker than they should have been) 80% of the city is underwater, 20 feet deep in some parts. Nagin has done an amazing job under this kind of pressure. He is a bit frustrated because FEMA took awhile to get to there, because the buses which he requested aren't there, and because his city is demolished. Friends and relatives of his are missing, his house and possessions were seriously damaged, etc.

As for warehouses of food... there were plenty of them. The storm destroyed a number of them. Many of them are inaccessible. Remember, 100% of the city was hit. 80% is underwater. Higher ground was hit by wind, lower ground by water. Food which has been retrieved is difficult to distribute because of all of the chaos.

Hey Geoff,

I don't know how they do things in New Orleans,(wait, yes i do) but here in Florida when we open shelters for people thats where we put the food and water. And as for as the busses go, i seem to recall a picture of about 200 of them sitting in a parking lot surrounded by water. I'm guessing that before the storm hit those busses could have gotten some people out of town, or been used to bring the supposedly warehoused emergency supplies to the dome and convention center.

Just a logical thought,
Mercl8