>The letter was to governments, not volunteers. They should have had all this stuff worked out long ago. It's the downside of political patronage. They put "connected" people in key places instead of "competent" people.

Speaking Serbian, "it's not connected to the brain".

I'm getting droves of deja vus over this. I've seen this positioning of loyal or connected people to key places, while the people who'd merit such places were pushed down, throughout the socialist countries, specially mine (well, having been closer made me see better). The practice of punishing screwup managers of anything by positioning them as managers of anything bigger was time-honored (and probably cost us billions).

But then for really important stuff, like security, army and emergency response, there was no kidding. Those worked silently and well oiled. The Army would be in place within hours, probably the local reserve would be lifted as well, there was also the Civil Protection (which just meant the citizens themselves were already organized and knew what to do) which had some resources under its command... so in any earthquake, flood (which we did have) the people did get evacuated, sheltered and fed within hours. We also had three levels of government (municipal, state, federal), but I don't remember a single case where their jurisdictions mattered any.