Well, what is there to say? It's far too simple to assign blame to any factor.

People were under evacuation orders, but either refused to leave or did not have the means.

After the hurricane, there were numerous logistical issues to overcome in getting aid to the people still down there. Yes, perhaps the government was slow and underestimated the amount of guard and so forth that should be sent.

However, you have to consider that the rest of Mississippi and (to a lesser extent) Alabama had damage too, and relief efforts have to get -through- those areas to get to New Orleans and Biloxi. For example, from what I understand, the Red Cross had trouble getting in and getting aid efforts started because all the nearby hotels were already full with people who fled before the storm, so there was no where to lodge volunteers.

Another issue is that directly after the storm, New Orleans looked bad but mostly -okay-. It wasn't til the next day that the situation suddenly got worse, when there was a new breach in one of the levees.

Then relief efforts were hampered by people -shooting- at the very people trying to help.

When you add up all of these issues, the government really doesn't carry -all- the blame for the slow response. However, I will add that I certainly do think more could have been done in preparation for the storm. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20. Prior to the hurricane, everything that was being done sounded pretty much like the standard fare. People are told to evacuate, prepare buildings, etc. The soon-to-be affected areas were declared disaster zones. Official shelters were set up in the city. It's kinda hard to look at the Superdome and think "gee, that thing's not gonna make it and it's gonna turn into a madhouse cesspool afterwards".

At any rate, it's a full week later, but people are finally at shelters all over the Southeast. We have some residing at the civic center and a few other places here in Birmingham. Over this weekend, we did laundry for some of the refugees. According to my mother, everything is set up incredibly orderly and nice.


And finally, I want to add one issue that no one seems to have looked at and may actually be quite important. Perhaps part of the problem is that we are simply becoming acclimated to hurricanes. With two -busy- (record-breaking busy) seasons in a row, you get used to "here comes another one". It becomes increasingly easy to compare storms to past ones, and to underestimate the true threat that any one storm may pose. This is especially true when several really hyped-up storms end up not delivering the feared level of damage.