The way it works over here in the US is that the local level of government has to request the help for it to come. It is not something that can be “forced” on to the local levels because it is something they “need”. One of my friends is the emergency response coordinator for Florida and was ready to send her people over directly post hurricane but could not until requested to do so. She also had to send people over to teach them how to request and whom to request from since many of the local level governments had not bothered to even gain that much knowledge. Our federal government had communicated on a fairly strong level to the Louisiana state government as well as to the New Orleans city government the need to evacuate its people to little effect.

Were they slow in getting there?? Yea maybe, but they had a faster response time than during several storms in Florida.
I have lived in every one of the states that got hit during this year’s hurricane season and can give you a personal observation that the results of the storm in Louisiana were sown many years ago by the people of Louisiana who put up with a corrupt government on every level and let their officials run their state as it pleases them.