I Called It

The rehabilitation of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin begins.

Louisiana had a "well thought-out exit plan" in the days before Hurricane Katrina, and many more lives would have been lost without it, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Sunday.

"There was not a single individual taking a slow step in our state," Blanco said at the Reliant Center, where more than 2,000 evacuees are living after fleeing the devastation in New Orleans.

City, state and federal governments have been criticized for delays in evacuations and delivery of supplies, widespread communication difficulties, and law enforcement breakdowns in New Orleans that led to looting and violence.

Blanco insisted the state had an evacuation-and-rescue effort that prevented thousands more deaths.

"Were there lessons learned? You bet," she said in a tense 14-minute explanation after being asked to elaborate on Louisiana's storm plans.

"We did a massive evacuation, and if we hadn't we would have had thousands of deaths. Right now, the numbers are minimal when you consider the amount of damage."

The fact that more lives weren't lost is an amazing fact. The sheer incompetence at the state and local levels are astounding and they're claiming that they stuck to the plans? That's laughable when you see pictures of the bus depots full of school buses that could have transported many thousands out of New Orleans in the 24 hours before the storm hit. There was inadequate security at the refuges of last resort, which led to unconscionable violence and the failure to stop looting immediately after the storm hit added to the sense of lawlessness and desparation in the city.

So, the next step will be calling Nagin and Blanco heroes for saving as many lives as they did. They may well be heroes, though it happened in spite of their actions, which were such that many thousands were needlessly put in harms way.

And from where I stand, they are not heroes because they did put many thousands in harms way, did fail to execute the evacuation plan that called for the use of all means at their disposal, did fail to maintain law and order throughout the storm and its aftereffects despite knowing that it was a real possibility (Hurricane Ivan), and their passing the buck to the federal government despite the fact that they had the time, opportunity, and manpower to evacuate the city's population that was unable to evacuate on their own.

UPDATE:
Paul at Wizbang has a slightly different take. He considers the evacuation to be a massive success based on the sheer number of people who got out of town. I don't doubt the logistics involved in moving large numbers of people, but when the people who are least likely to evacuate on their own are essentially left to their own devices to get out of town despite the evacuation plan calling for the use of buses and all manner of transportation, there are serious red flags that must be addressed.