Nagin and Blanco seemed to have been victims of their own arrogance and stupidity. That is a harsh assessment, but accurate given what Florida officials have been saying in light of the disasterous response by New Orleans and Lousiana to Katrina. Just read through how all the southern states had problems – but Mississippi was able to admit it needed help quickly, and got it from the great people of Florida [hat tip Drudge]:

One of the biggest differences between how Florida and other states handle natural disasters lies in the degree of cooperation between cities, counties and the state. In Florida, they are in constant communication with one another as storms advance and during the recovery phase. Not so elsewhere, as first responders from Florida discovered at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall. Search and rescue crews from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were poised in Pensacola on Sunday night in anticipation of Katrina’s landfall Monday.

After scouting the Panhandle and determining it was OK Monday morning, Jones said she called Mississippi officials to see if they needed help.

“They said, ‘We don’t know,’ ” she said. “Monday night, Mississippi said ‘We still have not been able to evaluate the damage, so please go.’ So Monday night, we were at the border ready to go, and we were in Mississippi by 6 a.m. Tuesday. So before Mississippi could wake up and say, ‘OK, we have to start doing assessments,’ Florida was in those two counties, in Jackson and Harrison.”

Jones’ crews made the first rescue in Mississippi at dawn the day after Katrina made landfall, and they spent a week in the area, ferrying Mississippi Marine Patrol officers whose vessels were destroyed by Katrina.

Florida law enforcement officials in each county hold monthly conference calls to discuss disaster coordination, but it wasn’t until after the storm hit that these Mississippi officials were making a plan of what to do.

“The biggest frustration for us was sitting down and trying to get all the emergency managers in a county to sit down in their emergency operations centers and talk about a plan,” Jones said.

Part of the problem was that Mississippi officials were in the process of rewriting their state emergency plan when Katrina hit, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lea Stokes said. They hadn’t yet evaluated post-Dennis hurricane response surveys when the Category 4 storm and its 20- to 30-foot surge wiped out 75 miles of coastline.

Deadly unfortunate timing for Mississippi, to be caught in between plans. Unlike New Orleans, which had a plan no one knew or no one followed.

This article really highlights why it the local officials and resources who are responsible for a successful or failed emergency preparation and response. The feds shove supplies to them, people and machines for opening roads and getting water and electricity pack. But the local officials need to direct all this to where the trouble is.

But the most recent Louisiana emergency operations plan doesn’t address how to evacuate in the case of flooding from storm surge, saying simply that “The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area represents a difficult evacuation problem due to the large population and its unique layout.”

It continues, “The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.”

Buses were unable to transport New Orleans citizens for days following Katrina’s landfall. The plan acknowledges that, in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, “the evacuation of over a million people from the Southeast Region could overwhelm normally available shelter resources.” But it doesn’t include a solution to the shelter issue.

Louisiana officials could not be reached for comment this week. Mississippi and Louisiana officials, however, have increasingly decried what they called a slow federal response to the disaster, blaming the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Gov. Bush defended FEMA.

“If we weren’t prepared, and we didn’t do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation,” he said. Natural Hazards Center director Kathleen Tierney agreed, saying emergency planners in the Gulf states should have taken a tip from the jazz legends that made New Orleans famous.

“Organizational improvisation” is essential to cope with unpredictable events such as Katrina, Tierney said. “Research on jazz musicians shows that people don’t just pull stuff out of the air when they’re improvising. These are people with an extremely wide knowledge of musical genres. They have always practiced and practiced and practiced. Similarly, improvising involves a deep understanding of the resources you have at hand in your community.”

Well, we know where Blanoc and Naging pulled their response to Katrina from, and it wasn’t the improvisional agility of jazz. It was the more the loser blaming others for being such a failure.

And David Brookes at the NYTimes illustrates how Louisiana developed the perfect example of how it is not done [hat tip Real Clear Politics]:

The plan (which is viewable online at www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26) begins with the insight: Be prepared. Or as the plan puts it, “Individuals with assigned tasks must receive preparatory training to maximize operations.”
…

The Office of Emergency Preparedness will coordinate with the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness in conjunction with the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan by taking full advantage of the courses offered by the Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Association and other agencies “as well as conferences, seminars and workshops that may from time to time be available, most notably state hurricane conferences and workshops and the National Hurricane Conference.”

The plan, of course, was to take courses and trips to seminars. Maybe Nagin is implementing part of this plan by sending his overwrought staff on paid vacations to Los Vegas?

In addition, the plan continues, the administrative and training officer of the Office of Emergency Preparedness will maintain close communication with the state training officer of the L.O.E.P., making sure workshops are conducted at the Emergency Support Function level, reviewing Emergency Operating Center/E.S.F. standard operating procedures and undertaking more “intensive work sessions with elements of the emergency response organizations in order to enhance unified disaster planning.”

Personally, I cannot see how they failed to succeed? I mean they workshopped and reviewed and went to seminars and did work sessions. Of course they were prepared . They were prepared to do some info-mercials at the very least.

This is what we call in the business being sold a bill of goods. People set up these conferences on every subject in government to make money. Some are valuable, but too many times they are as good as that guy in the hotel telling you how to become a millionaire, in two months, in real estate using the internet.

The paper flow must have been magnificent! The quality of the facilitating must have been surpassed only by the magnificence of the interfacing!

And the Floriday responders where in the neighboring state less than 24 hours after the hurricane’s eye it New Orleans…..