Private Enterprise
April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration’s goal of privatizing much of FEMA’s work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program.
June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq.
Complete evacuation is impossible (although the Chinese seem to be much better at this!), but the inability of 2nd and 3rd tier emergency responders to quickly follow behind the storm’s wake and impose order and services behind the storm is what made this a man-made disaster. Coupled, of course, with a criminal lack of coordination.