>> people will get out of dodge next time <<

Maybe you're right. I still disagree, tho I wish it could be otherwise. Here are some of my thoughts on this:

Many people did leave NO. Perhaps a few more will try to evacuate in another time/place. But I suspect that most of the folks stranded in NO had no means by which to leave and/or had nowhere to go. If they had simply walked out of town (a daunting task on many levels!), they may have simply died in the open a little farther inland. Complete evacuation of large metro areas has been an impossible nightmare to plan for for nearly 50 years. It's simply not logistically practical; do some "evacuation calculus" and you'll see what I mean.

And in 24 hours or less, where do we put a half a million folks evacuating a city anyway? (The number should have been much greater - maybe more like a million).

I wrote an evacuation plan that two years later was actually used successfully. But it was a small militray installation and the reason for evacuation was wildfire; it was a fairly localized situation and it was not really a cross section of ordinary urban folk - military and their families. Everyone owned good working vehicles sufficient for their families plus there were military vehicles there plus more available from a larger installation a little over 100 miles away. And we had no hospital patients because there was no hospital there. No elderly. Etc. A small town of, say, 10,000 souls could substantially pull it off if everyone worked together, sure. A city of 100,000 or more? Forget it - it's not going to happen very well.

Now that I've flogged the dead horse... it IS time for civic leaders everywhere to carefully and realistically examine how to evacuate their community with no outside help, make plans, and share those plans with their citizens. I don't expect many citizens will read the plans and comment. Also, any plan that does not factor in the helpless and hopeless is not realistic

Regards,

Tom