> The thing that I can't get over, moreso than the failure of FEMA and other disaster relief agencies to take control of the situation, is the fact that apparently New Orleans city government and Louisiana state government didn't already have some sort of plans and contingencies in place for something like this. This was GOING TO HAPPEN some day. This wasn't planes flying into buildings out of the blue. This wasn't a freak storm in a place that doesn't usually get them, or a freak earthquake in a normally non-earthquake zone. This was freaking New Orleans, a city mostly UNDER SEA LEVEL, built right near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where hurricanes hit every single year. This is certainly a tragedy, but it was also an INEVITABLE tragedy. It was going to happen at some point, and the fact that local and state governments apparently had zero contingency plans in place to deal with it seems ludicrous to me.

You know, everything that you said can apply to many cities, such as those located in earthquake-prone areas or near volcanoes. Everyone in those cities knows that sooner or later, they will face a natural disaster that will wipe out the city. But in most of those cities, they aren't making preparations that are anywhere near adequate to deal with such a crisis, even though it is bound to occur. Perhaps they think that the chances of it happening during *their* lifetimes, or during *their* terms of office, is remote enough to not be worth the cost of such preparation, or perhaps they simply don't like to dwell on the inevitability of disaster. Of course, both of these are bad reasons for inaction, but reasons nonetheless.

knivetsil