So what really went wrong in NOLA?

Today's WaPo takes a detailed look at what went wrong in the response to Katrina. I have my own ideas on the subject.

Clearly the end result was a failure of government to protect its citizens starting at the mayor's office and ending at the Oval office. That New Orleans wasn't evacuated sooner is clearly a mistake in retrospect but consider this. Predicting weather is in inexact science. If we evacuated cities every single time a disaster might strike, we would be spending all our tax dollars on a constant state of evacuation over false alarms. Every area of the country is subject to some kind of disastrous weather and how many of us really take the warnings seriously when they tell us to stay home or flee? No one can suspend their life based on the weatherman.

With that in mind, I submit that Nagin was right in delaying the evacuation. Indeed it would appear at first that NOLA was spared the worst of Katrina and Nagin's gamble had paid off. However, once the levees were breached, Lousiana's legislators appropriately recognized the seriousness of their plight and turned to the FEMA for help. That's the way the system is supposed to work and FEMA is pledged to the American people to deliver assistance within 72 hours. Not only did they not deliver, they prevented those who could render aid from doing so.

The real failure here was at the federal level. This quote says it all.

By Friday, FEMA's emergency headquarters for Katrina was already running; technically, the agency was at level one, its highest level of alert.

But as the headquarters staff came in, there was a strange sense of inaction, as if "nobody's turning the key to start the engine," said one team leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. For his group, Friday was a day to sit around wondering, "Why aren't we treating this as a bigger emergency? Why aren't we doing anything?"

Katrina exposed the fatal flaw in Bush's vaunted ownership society. That it has created a windfall for owners that was built on the backs of those who own not. Further it exposed the moral bankruptcy of an administration that puts political damage control and protection of corporate interests over the well-being of its disadvantaged citizens.