One of the sad things about the response to Katrina, which comes through loud and clear in the documentary, is how much indecision there was by the various government agencies and how much buck-passing there was between them. What was needed was for someone to step in firmly and say we're going to do this, this, this, this, and this, and then make sure they got done. Nobody did that. To me the feds come through worst of all. Four or five days after Katrina hit they were still saying they had no idea how bad it was. How could they not have known?! It was all over TV 24 hours a day.

What you say about not rebuilding New Orleans where it is makes a certain amount of sense. When you have a major metropolis sitting below sea level in a hurricane zone it's not a question of whether disaster will strike again, it's a question of when. Still, it's hard to imagine people agreeing to such a proposition -- New Orleans no longer exists, everyone please pick up and move 50 miles upstream. IMO that isn't in the American character and isn't in the New Orleans character specifically. There certainly is no precedent for it in this country. We don't walk away. We dust ourselves off and rebuild. Another obstacle it's hard to see past is that the oil refineries and docks are such a big part of the local economy. How is that supposed to work when your labor pool is 50 miles away?

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>I do get HBO so I'll have to check out the times it's being rebroadcast.
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>One shot in either the show I mentioned or another recently that was on "Reengineering NO" showed the majority of the NO bus fleet sitting in a parking lot with water about 1 foot below the tops of the busses. The NO mayor griped about the FEMA promised busses that didn't get there, but why the heck were their own busses going unused to begin with and finally unusable at all?
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>This reengineering progam pointed out that parts of the city have sunk 17 feet in the last 100 years because of the pumping of the water out of the bowl. That's an entire single story home level worth of making the flooding problem worse. The whole city should be moved 50 miles up river and let the river and ocean reclaim the land that they need and will ultimately take back one way or another. How much more does this country need to pay because of a stupid place to build a town some French explorer picked out 340 years ago?
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>>Dave, please watch the show. I think it will leave you with a more nuanced view. Some of those caught in the storm should have evacuated, agreed. (Given that an estimated 25% of the N.O. population was unable to evacuate due to infirmity or lack of access to transportation. And add to that the thousands who went to announced bus pickup points along I-10 and waited for days -- DAYS! -- before any buses came). Others stayed out of a New Orleans native's sense of joie de vivre or fatalism, take your pick. Spike really captures the city's history, particularly the melting pot within a melting pot -- whites, blacks, creoles, French-Canadians, Native Americans all mixed together -- and the pervasive sense of music in New Orleans culture. In a sense he gives a civics lesson on the sly, distracting us with a documentary about a hurricane and a flood.
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>>What I liked most among many good things was the voices of the ordinary New Orleans residents who drive this oral history. There are a few famous figures, including some highly criticized public officials like the mayor, the governor, FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers. (Spike, who remains off camera throughout other than one interjection, must be a sweet talking dude to have gained their participation). The ones who stick with me are ordinary New Orleans residents who pop in and out. By the end of the four hours and 15 minutes you feel like you know them, and want to know them better. They come from every walk of life, high and low. Through them we sense what it was really like to be there. It ends sweetly with all the interviewed participants introducing themselves in front of picture frames. The most common phrase by far is "Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana."