Specifically, one local government with days and days of warning failed to move its citizens out of the danger zone and into a safety zone, the other with most often less than an hour’s notice moved its people. No local mayor in California rented a hotel room and threw a party in town as the Santa Ana wind driven fire stormed their city. The Mayor of New Orleans did just that, he had a party in the middle of the disaster. California Mayors took the situation seriously from the start.

Both of these events involved elements of nature outside of man’s control, high winds. One event brought wind and water, the other brought wind and fire.

The key difference is the reaction.

People from New Orleans had days of notice of the imminent threat of Katrina. They were warned they were in the target strike zone and with all probability the city’s levees would break causing extreme flooding.  A significant number of people failed to evacuate. In fairness, some did not have the means to flee the danger, but many did and still failed to flee, due in large part to the cavalier attitude of the local authorities.

People in California often had only a few minutes to get out of their homes, run for their cars and drive threw the burning surroundings to safety. Yes, yes there was notice that the Santa Ana winds were coming, but a fire storm is not an event with substantial prior notice to evacuees. The local authorities in California notified their citizens, via reverse 911 calls to flee their homes, and unlike the Katrina folks, the people in the path of the fire fled.

Maybe it is human nature; maybe hurricane wind driven rain and flooding aren’t as scary as fires. But certainly the Gulf Coast has as much deadly history with hurricanes, if not more experience than Californians have with fatal fires. So why did the Californians get up and move, it’s simple… the local government took it very seriously. They did not crack jokes, throw parties and laugh. They sternly told their people to “Get out of harms way, period end of sentence.”

Let’s look at the Federal Government response, with Katrina the disaster declaration preceded the impact of the storm, the President urged residents to flee to safety. The local government did not act and deploy resources, and failed to back up the Feds call to flee to safety.

The aftermath of the New Orleans’ local government failure to take the proper preventative measures to protect their citizens is the true outrage. All reporters and citizens of the United States should focus like a laser beam on this simple truth.

What could New Orleans have done, well with the President’s declaration they could have mobilized resources to help evacuate the citizens who couldn’t leave by their own power. The Governor of Louisiana could have had the National Guard help evacuate people, California used them. The also could have stocked the stadium to ensure people were comfortable.

These simple steps would not have diminished the vast property damage, but the human suffering and loss would have been drastically reduced in New Orleans. The Federal Government is not at leisure to force a State Government to evacuate its people, it’s the State’s job. Think twice before you vote for people who think like those in charge of Louisiana, clearly the needs of their citizens are not a primary concern. Instead they took every action or inaction they could have to maximize the suffering and trauma to their people.

This is not to excuse the Federal Government, who clearly at some point sooner could have flown in choppers to the stadium to help the people, even if they were invading the State against the Governor’s wishes. I think the American people would have been much more forgiving of the Federal Government if they had acted boldly, and would have forgiven them the trespass.

About the shelters, a local reporter in Los Angeles who was in the Superdome during Katrina and at the stadium in San Diego stated simply, there is no comparison. People were trapped in New Orleans by flood waters, because this evacuation site was in the middle of the danger zone and very poorly prepared to house and take care of the people who fled there for safety. There was little to no security and food, compounded by no way out.

Had a local California mayor told his people to flee to a building in the middle of the Fire Zone, I don’t think people would be holding the San Diego evacuation centers out as an example. The key here is moving people out of harms way and into a SAFETY ZONE.

People afflicted by Katrina did not act to get away from the danger and the local government did not sternly warn them and help those unable to flee on their own leave. There was no lack of transportation to help those without means to travel, it just wasn’t used or employed by the city government.

People affected by the fires fled to the Safety Zone, only a very small number of people stayed behind, at one point more than 800,000 people were displaced by the fires... and they did this coming down mountain roads and driving on notoriously congested California Highways in a fraction of the warning time given to the Katrina victims, surrounded by burning brush.