>If the people don't decide to leave, they kind of have to expect to be on their own in the event of extreme damage.

Dave's got it right. A lot of people in New Orleans are EXTREMELY poor. And then there are the people who are handicapped or too ill to move so far. And even those who could go might have tried and not made it. There are something like two major roads out of the city, aren't there? I'm sure that a lot of people got stuck in massive traffic jams and just turned back. Yeah, there are some people who stayed because they were stupid, or because they expected the storm to veer and deal a minor blow (which has happened in the past; an acquaintance who lived in the city wrote on her blog about how one year everyone was told to evacuate and then the storm went in an unexpected direction and hit the place where everyone who had evacuated had gone). But I think that the majority of people who stayed in the city simply couldn't get out. I don't think we should be blaming any of them for their predicament or saying that they should have known better.


~Chrysanthemum~