Practice, practice, practice

And plan, plan, plan. That's about all I can add thus far to Instapundit's list of lessons learned from Katrina.

Since I moved to the Baltimore area a couple years ago, city officials have had coordinated drills with folks from the Department of Homeland Security at least twice as I recall. And Baltimore city government isn't exactly top-of-the-line. (Three police chiefs have come and gone in as many years. Very high murder/violent crime rate. Schools going broke. Picture New Orleans without the music, food or architecture.)

Hell, when I worked in suburban New Jersey, the local fire departments regularly had joint drills. This was important because the area consisted of more than 70 densely populated municipalities with mostly volunteer fire departments. Sure, occasionally an overexcited firetruck driver ran a red light and crashed into an oncoming car but that's why you practice.

As the story unfolds we've discovered that New Orleans had a plan, sort of, but that they didn't adhere to it: Evacuation was ordered too late and the governor seemed to be unaware of the process involved in getting federal authorities to respond. A plan and a couple of drills might have avoided that.

Planning and practice are particularly important as regards evacuation. We know that the city was aware that more than 100,000 of its residents had no transportation of their own and that the Red Cross had no emergency shelters within the city proper. The city's plan seemed to have consisted of keeping its collective fingers crossed and hoping for the best. A half-hearted attempt was made to recruit local churches to help in the evacuation, but nothing was nailed down.

We also know about the infamous deserted school buses. How about using the Superdome and/or the convention center as staging areas for residents to wait for the school buses or other transportation? The residents who they couldn't get on the buses would have to stay in "the shelter of last resort" (stocked with provisions). This would require some pretty meticulous planning, backed up by regular drills.

But how can a city that sits below sea level and is surrounded by water not have a well-rehearsed plan to get residents out?