|
National Hurricane Center advised Nagin to evacuate on Saturday
Very long article, most of which has already been covered. Back at the hurricane center in Miami-Dade, Max Mayfield saw disaster coming. He knew conditions were perfect for Katrina to attain the status of a catastrophic storm. Saturday night, Mayfield did something he has done only once in the past: He dialed a public official, in this case Mayor Nagin, and urged him to evacuate the city. "I could never sleep if I felt like I didn't do everything that I could to impress upon people the gravity of the situation," Mayfield said. "New Orleans is never going to be the same." Other experts predicted the doom to come -- broken levees, a flooded city, mass casualties, fires -- though they forgot one: New Orleans' pandemic violence. Sunday morning dawned golden along the Gulf Coast, the clouds sucked away into Katrina, now a monster storm that was on track to become the most powerful ever to hit the United States, with winds sustained at 175 mph. Now Nagin got the message. But the morning nearly passed before Nagin issued the mandatory evacuation order in a grim, steady voice capped with a "God bless us." At first, I ignorantly thought the Feds screwed up royally. As the facts come out, it looks as if they were on the ball, but were constantly stiff-armed by the locals politicos, whom I'm sure will be reelected. Posted by: Jackal 2005-09-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=128676 |