Y'know, I was just doing some thinking...

[joemurphy]

Around 48 hours before Katrina made landfall, there were predictions that it was going to do a direct hit on New Orleans. As it happened, Katrina moved slightly east and the deadliest Northeast quadrant hit Mississippi instead. Accordingly, New Orleans was spared what could well have been much worse.

But suppose the early prediction had been correct. That original scenario had the levees DEFINITELY breaking and New Orleans DEFINITELY being devastated, not only by a hurricane, but also by a massive flood resulting from fractured levees. Presumably FEMA had those original warnings too. Accordingly, FEMA should have been preparing for both eventualities -- the hurricane AND THE FLOODING as was originally being predicted. Helicopters, boats, relief, manpower, communications devices, and other precautionary measures should have been mobilized pro-actively to be ready for the predicted wind and flood devastation that was going to occur in New Orleans.

FEMA thus had all kinds of time to get ready for flooding in New Orleans. Everyone knew it was a Category 5 storm -- a monster. Everyone was predicting the levees would break.

So, given the above, why was FEMA relying on local and state resources in the first instance? Why weren't the Federal relief efforts in place? Was FEMA ignoring all the predictions of broken levees?

So, what boggles my mind is that everything could have been much much worse and if the original predictions had come to pass -- and a direct Cat-5 hurricane smashed into New Orleans -- FEMA would have been even less prepared and the death toll even higher.

Thus, given what he should have been preparing for, Brown's waiting until 5 hours after landfall to ask DHS's permission to put a paltry 1000 FEMA workers on the ground in the hurricane area strikes me as so incompetent as to be almost ludicrous. It would be ludicrous -- Keystone Kops ludicrous -- if it weren't for the fact that FEMA's belated decision to act hadn't resulted in the deaths of so many people.