New Orleans - 80% evacuated before Katrina hit

[DoYouEverWonder]

Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were able to evacuate 80% of the people in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina came ashore.

In exercises and planning, the models showed that the most they could hope for would be 60%. That means that in 1 year local officials made enough improvements to save another 20%. Statically that is huge.

Add to that the complete failure of the Federal government to respond appropriately and that number is even more significant.

The Mayor and the Governor moved an incredible amount of people out of the disaster area and all without the help of the Federal Government.

Don't buy the party line that these people are anything less then heroes. Rudi doesn't hold a candle to their heroism.

[ET Awful]

1. One small edit you need to make . . .

in the models they ran, most they could hope for would be 60%, not 80%.

Just to make sure it's clear :)

[malaise]

2. That 80% is unbelievable

Doubt if that has ever been done before outside of Cuba.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Thanks - fixed

The models said 60%

[whatelseisnew]

3. Should that be 60%?

"...most they could hope for would be 80%. "

[fasttense]

4. What percent did Rudi evacuate out of the buildings before they fell?

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. They could have saved a lot more if the Port Authority folks

didn't tell the people in WTC2 that it was OK TO GO BACK to their desks.

At least 1000 more people died then was necessary.

This time because of the incompetence of the Federal Government 25,000+ have died unnecessarily.

[JDPriestly]

7. I think the death toll will be lower than expected.

I think a lot more people left than they realize. 25,000 seems very high to me. I don't mean to say it will be as low as it should be, but I don't think it will reach 25,000. I suspect it will be a few thousand i NO. Of course maybe they are including the whole region in the 25,000 request for body bags. I hope the number will be lower than 25,000.

[lateo]

8. Is there a link to this information? nt

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Of course

The sweltering city of 480,000 people — an estimated 80 percent of whom obeyed orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend — also had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be out for weeks.

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08_31.html

[JDPriestly]

10. So that left about 96,000 in NO.

Some areas of the city had water, etc. and were not flooded. Let's say that 60% of the 96,000 lived in the protected areas. That leaves 38,400 in vulnerable areas. Let's say 20,000 got out by hook or by crook or have been evacuated. That leaves about 18,400, 10,000 of whom were left in the city a couple of days ago. The NO death toll would be well under 10,000, maybe even under 3,000, but that does not include the hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of people who died in Mississippi, Alabama and other areas of Louisiana. I still think the total will be nowhere near 25,000, possibly considerably less than 10,000.

We should not exaggerate how many died. Because, we will find out about most of the deaths. It may take some time but all who died with the exceptions of the few whose entire families were wiped out and the very small number of those who had no family ties to begin with will be accounted for. And if we are wildly exaggerating the number, the Bushies will accuse of us being hysterical and pointing our fingers to make them look worse than they for political reasons. Wait on these estimates.