A failure of command

"Mayor Nagin made the decision to allow looting and told the police to focus on Search and Rescue – but looting hinders S&R efforts (as we’ve seen) and no one I know could believe that decision – it’s emergency management 101, preserving order preserves life. There’s plenty of blame to go around – Blanco deserves her share too – but the real culprit in the aftermath here is Nagin."
CounterColumn

At least now we are all in agreement, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was wrong on the looting question. That said, I have a little personal note. When Katrian hit my area, as a cat 1, the city went into red alert. As that day progressed the city's presents on the street was unmistakable. At 3:30 in the afternoon a very strong band hit the city, traffic was just starting to build, I was on the street and I thought chaos was about to break out, but all of a sudden there was a cop on each corner. I made it back just as it really started to come down. Believe it or not trees fell over and power lines were on the ground at rush hour. the potential for panic was in the air, but the cops were on the scene they manned all the street lights, trees, powerlines, that was down. Traffic moved through the city as if nothing was wrong. People were calm, traffic was moving, everyone was going to make it home with time.
One million people were without power the next morning, all the traffic lights were out in my city for the next three days. But there were cops at every light directing traffic, the city crews were out clearing the streets, the fire department was everywhere. We here in my city did not even see some of the stuff reported at Babalu.
We were well served by our local government during our minor brush with Katrina. Of course the key word is "minor". But I think that whatever damage was possible with the storm was minimized by the rapid response of the local emergency response teams. Thank you guys.