Cuba handles hurricanes better than the US. (Recently, Hurricane Dennis hit Cuba: one million people evacuated, 16 people killed. Compare and contrast.)So I looked it up.
Cuba evacuated 600,000 people in preparations for Hurricane Dennis according to Wikipedia. Also according to Wikipedia, "The 2000 census put New Orleans's population at 484,674 and the population of Greater New Orleans at 1,337,726." (I added up the populations of New Orleans and the parishes that were ordered evacuated and got 1,354,638.)
Wikipedia says that roughly 150,000 people did not obey the order to evacuate (mostly because they couldn't). So the number of people who did evacuate appears to be more than those who evacuated in Cuba. On the other hand, the people in American basically evacuated themselves whereas, according to Reuters, "Storm fatalities are rare in Communist Cuba where the authorities can muster all state resources to evacuate hundreds of thousands from the path of hurricanes."
Only ten people died in Cuba during Hurricane Dennis (a category 4 storm at the time).
3 comments:
Again, the people of NOLA could have been evacuated in greater numbers, provided that NOLA officials followed their plan:
http://www.cityofno.com/SystemModules/PrintPage.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26
In particular, go down to Sec V, part D, which details the tasks of Regional Transit Authority - they were supposed to use evacuation busses, which were not apparently used. (Conservative estimates indicate this should have saved upwards of 15k people from waiting out the storm at home).
(It also should be noted that the Superdome is not a listed shelter.)
There is one other, main difference between Cuba and NOLA (indeed, between NOLA and Biloxi) - NOLA had come through largely okay until the second levee broke, causing the flooding of almost 80% of the city. Sans flooding, NOLA would be in much better shape, and the casualties would be an order of magnitude lower.
I do question the Reuters analysis - it's not so much that the US cannot muster the full resources of a state or the federal gov't - it's just that, I suspect, few people really want the National Guard (or the military) forcibly evicting people from a hurricane zone. It just doesn't sit well with the American psyche.
Garou,
I don't disagree with anything you said except that Reuters didn't really say anything about America's ability to muster federal resources. I made a contrast there, and I wasn't talking about men with guns hauling people from their homes, just somebody paid in taxes offering a ride.
I agree that the city could have done a better job on its own evacuating people, and that would have averted much disaster. That having been said, once it's a fact that there are thousands stranded and no city to speak of that can help them, it's up to the feds to step in and do something. In this case, it appears that Governor Blanco had her ducks in a row, but DHS and FEMA dropped the ball.
I'm not sure that FEMA really "dropped the ball". IIRC, the FEMA response time to Hurricane Andrew in the early 90's was 9 days (give or take). FEMAs response to Katrina was 3 days, and in far worse conditions. It just looks really bad because FEMA is having to come in to an area where an initially poor response has been exacerbated by the failure of the levee. FEMA is not intended to be a first-responder; it's supposed to start coming in once the disaster has passed, and assume control about 72-96 hours later.
There actually were people paid in taxes who could have offered a ride; the same people who normally drove the busses for a living. Those busses should have been used - even if the people were evacuated to tent cities in northern La., it would have been a drastic improvement over the Superdome.
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