This is from the comment thread from Brendan Loy's post below:

Brown is incompetant. And did cost lives. No chain of command exists. I worked the rescue boats on Wednesday. It was impossible to get large boats across the railroad between south of 610 and north of I10. We carried small boats across but if you put a boatman and two LE in a boat then you only have room for 4 or 5 refugees, if someone bails. We could have crossed large boats with the help of an excavauter or backhoe that drove along the tracks from the high ground westof Metarie. When I told this to the search and rescue team leaders on site they all thought that it was a good idea. They recommended that I tell Mike Brown. Are you kidding me? I am a 1SG in the USAR. If I have an idea on how to save lives in a combat situation I don't wait to talk to Donald Rumsfield. Government is not the solution. We had over 300 boats from Acadiana and 75% were turned around at the launch site. A local politician (state senator) organized the boat lift but when asked if he was in charge he denied it. Enough screw-ups to go around. If I hadn't been so anxiuos to get my boat in the water and had done a recon we may have accomplished more. When the pol backed away from leadership I dismissed him. I should have used him to get me in for a recon and then to meet with some official instead of tearing off to another launch site. Eventually I put twenty of our boats in the water with a SWAT team from OPSD. We crossed small boats over Orleans canal and Airboats over Bayou St. John.
Bullshark | 09.04.05 - 6:54 pm | #

Again, I'm not trying to be hateful or assess blame, but you've got a crew of 100 medical personnel who are told to watch CNN for information, and a guy in the field who's supposed to call Mike Brown.

For an emergency that has been expected for decades.