The city of New Orleans followed virtually no aspect of its own emergency management plan in the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans officials also failed to implement most federal guidelines, which stated that the Superdome was not a safe shelter for thousands of residents.
The official "City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" states that the mayor can call for a mandatory citywide evacuation, but the Louisiana governor alone is given the power to carry out the evacuation, which Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has yet to do. She "begged" people to leave before the storm and is still asking the few thousand holdouts to evacuate the flooded city.
Small-scale evacuations, according to the plan, are to be handled under the standard operation plans of city firefighters and police officers.
"However, due to the sheer size and number of persons to
be evacuated, should a major tropical weather system or
other catastrophic event threaten or impact the area,
specifically directed long-range planning and
coordination of resources and responsibilities must be
undertaken," the New Orleans plan says.
The plan does not say how such an evacuation should be
executed, but states that a full evacuation of the city
would take 72 hours, and that the city knows that there
are "approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans [who]
do not have means of personal transportation."
The guidelines of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, which has little jurisdiction to act on its own
but is designed to work with local authorities, suggests
that local evacuation plans "coordinate the use of school
buses and drivers to support evacuation efforts."
Neither New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin nor Mrs. Blanco
ordered buses to take people out of the city before the
storm. Two days after the storm hit, the governor issued
an order for buses to roll, but by then hundreds of buses
in New Orleans were underwater and useless.
Both the mayor and the governor asked residents who couldn't evacuate themselves to go to the Superdome, which in the days after the storm was a scene of chaos and violence as it became an island in a submerged city.
Former FEMA Director Joseph Allbaugh told Fox News last
week that when he headed the agency, he refused to allow
the Superdome to be used as a shelter during hurricanes.
The city, however, ignored FEMA guidelines that designated
"supershelters" should be located outside of floodplains
and outside of Category 4 storm-surge zones.
FEMA has been harshly criticized by Democrats in
Congress, who have demanded that Director Michael D.
Brown resign. But FEMA was in place as the storm
approached and the Louisiana National Guard delivered
seven trailers with food and water Aug. 29 and another
seven truckloads on Aug. 30 to the Superdome to help feed
the 25,000 people inside.
Confusion reigned in Katrina's aftermath. A state-of-the-
art mobile hospital developed with Homeland Security
grants to respond to disasters and staffed by 100 doctors
and paramedics was left stranded in Mississippi because
Louisiana officials would not let it deploy to New Orleans.
Red Cross officials say the organization was well
positioned to provide food, water and hygiene products to
the thousands stranded in New Orleans. But the state
refused to let them deliver the aid.
"Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National
Guard and local authorities, and while we are in constant
contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans
against their orders," the Red Cross said last week on
its Web site.
