[ music | REM – It’s the End of the World As We Know It ]

For several days before landfall, we all knew Katrina was going to make landfall in the general Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama coast area. one to two days before landfall, we knew it was gunning right for New Orleans. the day before there was an evacuation ordered for New Orleans and surrounding areas, and the entire region was preemptively declared a disaster area. So why are the Navy ships only now being mobilized? Why were they not set in motion Saturday? Why is the National Guard being called up now, rather than just the 200 that were called in for Superdome security? Why did a lot of these things not even get started until 3 days after the catastrophe? We knew years ago that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was going to be a total loss if a major hurricane hit. We’ve had studies done, and found that we should have reinforced and raised the levees around the city, and improved the pumping system, but it would have cost several billion dollars. Well, now we’ve lost potentially thousands of lives, and will be paying tens of billions of dollars. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.