Observations on Katrina response from Saturday

Below, with slight amendments and corrections, are points I made in an email to a net acquaintance on Saturday morning. That person was circulating an essay on these subjects which I thought was too freighted with psychobabble about the role of the “culture of dependency” in aggravating the difficulties of New Orleans.
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First, the looting was entirely predictable. The criminal element saw the same news coverage of the approaching storm that everyone else did. They just read a different message. The message they got was that owners of valuable stuff were leaving town without their stuff and the police would be gone, too. This was an incentive for the criminal class to stay. Later on, hunger and thirst would cause otherwise law-abiding folks to join in.

Second, correctly apprehending that the cops would be gone, some people stayed to defend what little they had; although I don't think they anticipated that it would be so long before the regular forces of order would return. Remember, that for the poor everything they have is around them in their homes and they don't usually have much insurance. For the middle class, we have so much stuff, we rent storage lockers in the suburbs, we fill up attics and cellars at the summer house in the mountains, we have bank accounts, investments, and lots of insurance. 

Third, not nearly enough was done to facilitate the escape of the poor who wanted to evacuate but had no means to do so. This means (and I don't know whether it was done) using the city's transit buses to move people to the stadium and the convention center, even using ambulances to assist in moving the infirm. Diabetics needing insulin, people on continuous oxygen therapy, those on dialysis, and any others needing regular care should have been moved to shelters out of harm's way, and providing buses for the poor who wanted to leave to go on to shelters outside the city. Seeing those 200 or so school buses sitting in their parking lot, now up to their bumpers in water, unused, reminded me of the entire squadrons of French fighters which sat out the German invasion of 1940 at their bases in western France.

Fourth, they should have anticipated that thousands of people who rode out the storm at home would turn up at the shelters after the storm looking for food and water, etc. Planning for sheltering residents in the stadium and convention center should have included substantial stockpiles of water, rations, baby food and diapers. Portable chemical toilets should also have been provided at shelters in anticipation that flush toilets would fail in the fairly likely event the water system and pumping stations failed.

Fifth, the people should have been told that the city police and their NG backup would ride out the storm within the city and be on the streets as soon as the winds died down. If the stadium and convention center were good enough for the poor, they should have been good enough for cops and soldiers. This would have discouraged a few would-be looters and made it possible to catch a lot more in the first hours after the storm passed.

This only scratches the surface of the apparent failures of the response system.