I went to New Orleans a couple months ago to visit a good friend who was ill and it's like nothing I've seen ... and this was 9 months after the hurricane.
The place still looks like the ruins of some kind of science fiction movie. Everyone, the mayor, police chief, Brownie, Bush, everyone was in over their heads. I suppose people can point fingers and blamestorm and that's a natural reaction in our highly politicized times but I don't see how you can prevent something that you cannot imagine happening.
If you've never been through a hurricane, you're not missing anything good. We had Wilma go through our neighborhood last year and the only way I can describe it is to say the sound is as if a train is running past your front door, except the train is six hours long and durng that time you can feel your home being hit by sections of your neighbors' houses that have been ripped away.
We were not able to evacuate due to elder care issues and while we were out of power for 12 days we were fortunate to have a generator as well as food, water, cash and gasoline. While my wife took care of her 85 yo father, I spent the better part of 10 days helping in the community. It was incredibly disheartening to see the devestating effect the hurricane had on the poor and the elderly.
To me, that's the story, not who is to blame for it happening.
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