Reply #4: My point is, it's a gamble. People paid the price.

[Brotherjohn]

It's easy to Monday Morning Quarterback and say "they should have evacuated N.O. earlier". But that dismisses any possible risk to evacuating.

I'm not saying you should wait. I'm saying a mandatory evacuation of an entire large city is not to be taken lightly. The people in low-lying areas near the coast are going to leave anyway (whether by order or not), if they have any sense. I'm sure most of the people of Galveston and Beaumont were ouuta there. But the evacuation of nearly the entire city of Houston greatly complicated matters, and I think unnecessarily. It also resulted in a lot of deaths. It was, in short, an over-reaction.

Even if NO ONE had evacuated the coast, it is arguable that the total death toll would have been on the same order or less than what the evacuation resulted in in this case. Galveston did not take a direct hit. Beaumont and Lake Charles are not directly on the coast. Only the small communities very near the coast, in low-lying areas, would have had many fatalities. The storm surge is the big killer, and this storm only ended up being 120mph (been through several, it ain't that bad).

And those people, again, have common sense. They know where they live. They weren't gonna stay for a minute.