Don, not a good example to talk about emotions and brains when you pick up on the number 600,000 for New Orleans alone....which someone must have made up. I would think that after years on this page you were better able to evaluate what information to believe and what is nonsense. It might be 100,000...that is the number I have heard the most. O>...let's say a bus can do 2 round trip to Houston in 24 hours. And, there were only 30,000 people ready to be picked up at Superdome. That is 250 busses. If is was 1000 buses, they should have gotten 1000 busses (one or 2 "s"s?). They might have had to have school busses to do this quickly. As for Canie's comment as to whether I would have done a better job....the answer is probably no, and that misses the point entirely...if you are the governor of a state, the director of FEMA, or the president of the United States, it is your job to deal with stuff like this. You are supposed to be prepared. I lived in New Orleans for 2 1/2 years in the early 80s, and worked right across the street from the Superdome. We were talking about this disaster back then. The director of FEMA said that New Orleans would NOT fill up like a bowl. We knew in the early 80s (I'm sure much longer) that it would fill up like a bowl...it is a bowl. Someone in charge of a local part of the Army Corp of Engineers said that they knew the levees would be overtopped but not breached. Of course these earthen levees would be breached if overtopped (I'm not sure which levees have any cement core). It would have been worse if the storm surge was high enough to overtop...the levels would have been much higher.

Yes, we do need to be talking about this here. I was not impressed hearing Louisiana's Governor talk...she was in charge of the Louisiana Nation Guard (the part not in Iraq) and they did not respond fast enough. I found out later she is a Democrat. People involved in the who are incompetent should be fired. Elected officials who are incompetent should resign, be impeached, or be voted out of office next chance. We need to be sure that the U.S. can respond to a disaster of an even larger scale...faster, better...could be M7.3 under L.A., could be terrorist (nuclear) attack. And, yes, I guess Petra's posting over the years about preparedness is on the ball.....you would certainly want to have, say, 5 gallons of bottled water/person...you can live without food for extended period (unless you are an infant) but not without water.
Chris