From the Director of FEMA (added marks and comments mine):
Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.
"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.[and those who couldn't? has he freaking looked at who is being exacuated? the old people in wheelchairs on oxygen? they could have driven out?]
"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said. [I call bullshit. That's exactly what he's doing.]
"And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.[maybe]
"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."
Surely there are some people who could have left, and decided to stay, including those with bad intent and those who wanted to resist. However the vast numbers of people without adequate transportation - whose status the city prepared for by opening the Superdome - did not make that decision.
He might as well have said "Let them eat cake."
UPDATE: After I wrote this, I found this link at Crooks and Liars. Posted by binky at September 2, 2005 09:32 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Natural Disasters
