(no subject)

[xiphias]

So I say to Lis: "They did one thing right in the New Orleans situation. I don't know if there ever has been an evacuation of a major metropolitan area that got 80% of the people out, ever in the entire history of the world. Getting 65% out is considered nearly impossible. And they managed 80."

Lis says, "How do we know it actually WAS 80%?"

Does anyone know where that number came from? 'Cause it's a damn good point. If 65% is considered a best-case scenario, how did they manage to beat that by 15%? Is it just that people in New Orleans have been worried about the levees bursting for seventy years, and there are dozens of good songs about the precarious situation that New Orleans has always been in, so it's always been in people's minds, so they took it seriously, and a higher percentage of people had evacuation plans in their heads, and made sure to always have the ability to evacuate during hurricane season?

Or is that just a number someone pulled out of their ass? I can see either as being possible.

Comments

[lietya.livejournal.com]

This is a reprinted AP story using the 80% figure and attributing it to Mayor Nagin :

http://channelone.com/news/2005/08/29/ap_katrina/

No guarantees, and it's obviously an estimate, but that's a pretty solid source for the information. (It doesn't, unfortunately, tell us where he/his staff/analysts produced that number.)