Such a mess. If America can’t properly handle a natural disaster, which by the way we could see coming for days, how much worse would it be for a non-natural disaster? I can’t believe how here in America, arguably the world’s richest and most prosperous nation, the sick and elderly have died, (not to mention babies–babies!) because of the lack of medicine, water, and basic resources at the Superdome, which was supposed to be a place of refuge. What the hell? Given the recent increased spending on terrorism and other security related issues (like Homeland Security), shouldn’t this kind of thing have already been figured out before hand?

Well, sort of.

Government officials, scientists, and even media journalists have been saying for years that New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen¹, so where was the ‘war game’ plan that could be put into action immediately? Well, there is such a plan, but given what has happened, either the plan was not followed or was woefully inadequate.

For FEMA to say that they were “surprised” at the number of people that stayed behind, almost to the point of blaming them for staying… well, look at the pictures, practically everyone that stayed is poor. Even if they wanted to evacuate, they simply didn’t have the means to.

The federal government has been taking a lot of heat for the slow response, and rightly so IMHO, but the local officials share that blame too. Bush personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation, but the local government didn’t do much to help people get out (see flooded school buses which could’ve been used).

I know everyone there is doing everything they can, and it’s easy for me to sit here and criticize others in an impossibly difficult situation, especially since hindsight is 20/20… should’ve would’ve could’ve… but come on… This is America. The hurricane was on Monday, and it’s taken till Saturday (6 days!), to finally evacuate everyone from the Superdome.

Ugh.

The blogosphere is full of discussions and first hand accounts of the aftermath of Katrina. Here’s a quick selection, or do a search on Technorati to see what people are talking about.

• The people of Houston, TX are stepping up. Here’s a first hand account from a volunteer at the Astrodome. In the last part he kind of goes off in a rant against Bush, but it just goes to show the amount of frustration and helplessness people are experiencing.
• Colleges and universities offering help with transfers, admissions, and in some cases even free tuition, to students displaced by the hurricane.
• Interview between Ted Koppel and Michael Brown (head of FEMA) (video) - Paraphrase: “We’ve been reporting on the crisis at the Convention Center for alot longer than just today [thursday], but you say that you only heard about it today?”
• A really neat application which utilizes Google maps to allow people to plot bit’s of information right on the map. There’s even information for individual houses. Also, Google Maps has added satellite pictures of New Orleans taken in the last few days. All the grey spots are now dark blue
• As mentioned before, here’s a live as-it-happens blog from a guy in charge of keeping a data center for some servers running in downtown New Orleans. There is also a live webcam feed he puts out.
• Discussions on the keyword “Katrina” from Technorati
• Photos tagged with “Katrina” on Flickr

¹Drowning New Orleans - published in Oct 2001. You could literally change the publish date to today, and the article would be describing everything that’s happening.

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On a completely unrelated note, I think my trusty powerbook is starting to have issues. Had to perform a reformat and reinstall of OS X because of a corrupted hard disk. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come…..