Were They Unaware of Any of This?

I'm sincerely shocked that only a year ago New Orleans was able to evacuate 600,000 people, and somehow this time it went so poorly. It's not a new situation, in fact maybe it's almost a boy who cried wolf type of a situation:

An estimated 600,000 people evacuated from the New Orleans area in what some state officials called one of the largest evacuations ever in state history.

Evacuees were upset at the long delays, and officials feared that the mass evacuation could backfire because people may be less willing to get out of the path of a hurricane in the future.

It was also the second time in six years that the city emptied out to only find the threatening hurricane veer off and miss New Orleans. In 1998, people fled the approach of Hurricane Georges.

Estimates show that about 11,000 vehicles an hour were on roads out of the New Orleans area last week. Faced with Hurricane Georges in 1998, about 4,000 vehicles an hour left the area.

I don't know what to make of all that, except that it's creepy to read now. It just seems like the local plan fell completely apart somewhere.

On a side note, for some reason no one needed President Bush actually standing on I-10 directing traffic last year to get the evacuation done. Amazing.