I think it is a little unfair to blame the feds too much for being slow. The "army" is constitutionally prevented from going in and declaring martial law. The National Guard works for the governor of the state, not the feds. Those guys are just citizen soldiers
and they just went through a hurricane themselves.
The rest of the gulf coast had a hurricane and the response was reasonable under the circumstances.
NOLA was a different type of disaster that nobody was really ready for. You can probably blame the "social engineering" and the fact that there were as many people with no personal resources in that "bowl" as any civil engineering failure.
Most of us would have swam, walked or crawled up to the first place that took Visa and got the hell out of there. These folks were just stuck with no where to go and no way to get there.
BTW where were the Coast Guard BOATS? Helicopters are probably the least efficient way to evacuate people from a flood.
Personally I think they left those people there because they ran out of places to put them. Also, why send them all to Houston? Why not spread out the refugees to towns all over so each one has less impact on their infrastructure. You are just transplanting the disaster, not mitigating it. If every town within 300 miles took a busload or two they wouldn't have a problem finding shelter for them.
