I’ve been offline and off-television most of the day, so I really don’t know how the blame game is shaping up – things change so fast that the conventional wisdom yesterday is a tired-out meme today.

When we discuss responsibility for the present situation, what are we talking about exactly? Not the hurricane, itself, for that is beyond our control. The destruction? Not exactly, although there’s some of that: the strength of the levees, the wisdom of building on the coast and the incentives for doing so – those are part of the human element in this tragedy.

No, what we’re talking about is the impact of the destruction on human beings: who was affected, in what ways and how seriously. The arguments seem to be falling into three areas:

1)Evacuation

2)In relation to New Orleans, the security of the city in the aftermath

3)Recovery efforts

There are many points to be made and really, countless failures – which are still continuing as we speak. Even with the terrible scope of this particular storm and the unique geography of the New Orleans area which makes evacuation a challenge, there were terrible misjudgments, it’s clear. And whether anyone can be honest about these failures and if any heads will roll…will be something to see. I doubt it will be seen, however. The inability to get supplies into folks at the Superdome and at the Convention Center, and the inability to get them out sooner will continue to boggle the mind – I mean…if Shepherd Smith can get in there, why couldn’t ….oh, never mind. It just makes my brain hurt.

However, one thing that I thought about a lot today was a quite simple question: could it have been otherwise? More bluntly, what provisions do  the emergency and evacuation plans for large urban areas make for those, especially the poor, the elderly and the ill who don’t have access to personal transportation? We’ve all seen the photos of the submerged buses, ( Basic blogpost intro to the problem here)and the question has loomed large in my mind, "What about those who can’t self-evacuate?" I really have been wondering if these plans just write them off as acceptable and unavoidable losses.

This cached document from Loyola U indicates that the city did, supposedly contract with bus companies to evacuate residents of nursing homes, etc. But weatherblogger Jeff Masters has a lengthy post here that points out the difficulties of whatever plan existed. And really, I am left wondering if, in the realities of these plans, if those who can’t self-evacuate are simply written off in the final calculation. Are they?