[quote name='trq']Points all well taken. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and if you aren't 100% sure how bad things are going to be, I can understand being reluctant to leave. But the severity was no surprise. Even before Katrina hit Florida, bad things were being predicted for NO.
http://www.local6.com/weather/4905994/detail.html
"The hurricane's landfall could still come in Mississippi and affect Alabama and Florida, but it looked likely to come ashore Monday morning on the southeastern Louisiana coast, said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. That put New Orleans squarely in the crosshairs.
"If it came ashore with the intensity it has now and went to the New Orleans area, it would be the strongest we've had in recorded history there," Rappaport said in a telephone interview Sunday morning. "We're hoping of course there'll be a slight tapering off at least of the winds, but we can't plan on that. So whichever area gets hit, this is going to be a once in a lifetime event for them."
He said loss of life was "what inevitably occurs" with a storm this strong.
"We're in for some trouble here no matter what," he said.
The storm had the potential for storm surge flooding of up to 25 feet, topped with even higher waves, as much as 15 inches of rain, and tornadoes.
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin was exploring the idea of ordering a mandatory evacuation.
Katrina formed in the Bahamas and ripped across South Florida on Thursday as a Category 1 storm before moving into the Gulf of Mexico where surface water temperatures were as high as 90 degrees -- high-octane fuel for hurricanes.
Nagin said he spoke to a forecaster at the hurricane center who told him that "this is the storm New Orleans has feared these many years."
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a test. This is the real deal," he warned Saturday. "Board up your homes, make sure you have enough medicine, make sure the car has enough gas. Do all things you normally do for a hurricane but treat this one differently because it is pointed towards New Orleans."
Some tourists heeded the warnings and moved up their departures, and lines of tourists waited for cabs on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street.
But plenty of people in the French Quarter stayed put, and bars were rocking Saturday night.
"The only dangerous hurricanes so far are the ones we've been drinking," said Fred Wilson of San Francisco, as he sipped one of the famous drinks at Pat O'Brien's Bar. "We can't get out, so we might as well have fun."
New Orleans' worst hurricane disaster happened 40 years ago, when Hurricane Betsy blasted the Gulf Coast. Flooding approached 20 feet deep in some areas, fishing villages were flattened, and the storm surge left almost half of New Orleans under water and 60,000 residents homeless. Seventy-four people died in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.
Katrina could be especially devastating if it strikes New Orleans because the city sits below sea level and is dependent on levees and pumps to keep the water out. A direct hit could wind up submerging the city in several feet of water."
Heck, even before Katrina, it was pretty obvious that NO was especially vulnerable to this sort of thing.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/new-orleans.htm
"New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen, with the Gulf of Mexico, a large lake close by, and a river running through town. This type of construction has spread from Maine to Texas as we convince each other that we must live closer to the ocean. Eventually a mature hurricane will strike, and the storm surge will inundate everything in its path.
The hurricane moves ashore. In the above example, a 15-foot surge added to the normal 2-foot tide creates a storm tide of 17 feet. This mound of water, topped by battering waves, moves ashore along an area of the coastline as much as 100 miles wide. The combination of the storm surge, battering waves, and high winds is deadly.
The storm surge claims nine out of every ten hurricane victims. This great dome of water sweeps across the coastline as the storm makes landfall. Spectators, who should not be out there, are caught by the surge as the giant wave carries away everything in its path."
Note: above significantly snipped for repetition.
As I applied some Google-Fu for all this, I turned up one more sad bit of info: homeowners' insurance doesn't cover flooding.[/QUOTE]
But any information that was not readily accesable to the population should not be expected to be general knowledge. What you can find on google is not indicative of what the average person knew or was told. I've posted warnings that government officials failed to act on, but this wasn't info the general population was expected to know.
Even in your first link, many poor families, with no mode of transportation out, assumed it would be like the previous hurricanes. Even if it was a repeat of camille, new orleans was expected to stand like the last time. It was not a sure thing, or expected thing, in peoples minds. Your talking about many people which, if they had left, would have had no place to go to, as they could not afford shelter. And, again, the most important thing to note when understanding what those people thought is evident in your first link, NO always withstood the flooding.
You also have to keep in mind that the information brought up on google is very different from what the average person was told and expected, in new orleans and throughout the country.
ing nauseating. As long as they're keeping up with "Survivor," I suppose.
... Oh... you're serious. 
