The situation in New Orleans is both an incredible tragedy and, it appears, a stunning example of poor planning.

Clearly, the priority now should be on keeping people alive and restoring basic services to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

However, at some point in the near future, reasonable people will demand answers to several questions.

First, why were officials apparently caught off guard by the scope and scale of the problem? Some might say that the disaster was both unforeseeable and unpreventable. But it isn’t clear that this was the case. According to a NYTimes report:

Martha Madden, who was the Louisiana secretary of environmental quality from 1987-1988, said that the potential for disaster [in New Orleans] was always obvious and that “FEMA has known this for 20 years.”

“Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent, in studies, training and contingency plans, scenarios, all of that,” said Ms. Madden, now a consultant in strategic planning.

And:

When Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, returned in January from a tour of the tsunami devastation in Asia, he urgently gathered his aides to prepare for a similar catastrophe at home.

“New Orleans was the No. 1 disaster we were talking about,” recalled Eric L. Tolbert, then a top FEMA official. “We were obsessed with New Orleans because of the risk.”

If top officials already knew about the possibility of disaster, why weren’t the levees reinforced?

Other questions revolve around the local and federal plans for evacuation and disaster recovery. The LATimes’s story describing the plight of the ~16,000 trapped in the Superdome is heartbreaking. Why did the evacuation plan fail?

Perhaps most perplexing, though, is why so little has been done for those still stranded in the city. From another NYTimes article:

“Some people there have not eaten or drunk water for three or four days, which is inexcusable,” acknowledged Joseph W. Matthews, the director of the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.

“We need additional troops, food, water,” Mr. Matthews begged, “and we need personnel, law enforcement. This has turned into a situation where the city is being run by thugs.”

Nearly 13,000 evacuees have already been transported from New Orleans to the Astrodome. Dozens, if not hundreds, of busses were used. Why, when those busses were sent for their initial pick up, weren’t they pre-loaded with water, food, and generators?

Where were the plans?

Do we have the right plans for other potential disasters? For example, are we prepared for what could happen in San Francisco?

More: click here to see AP photos documenting the damage.

Posted by Dan Grossman on Friday, September 2nd, 2005 at 4:08 pm.