John Quiggin observes that,

Ten days after the New Orleans disaster, the US has accepted offers of foreign aid totalling $US1 billion, but most of the assistance is not getting through because of red tape.

In contrast, he notes that some aid reach…

Careful! That kind of talk gets you fired from the Bush economic team.

So your contention is that the dead people would have died anyway?

Regarding the bottom line in the number of lives saved, something that should be a consideration in any disaster planning, I question whether a highly efficient response team in charge of activities immediately surrounding landfall of hurricane Katrina would have resulted in a great number of saved lives.

It can be assumed that, theoretically, there is, for this hurricane or any other, an optimal solution for the evacuation and rescue logistics and implementation. No plan can anticipate such a solution because a plan, by it’s nature must be prepared for a great number of possibilities. It is an open question whether such an optimal solution would have saved all lives.

Clearly, the evacuation process gives the greatest opportunity for increased safety. Yet, a massive transport of scared or unwilling, unprepared, or extra needs people is a lengthy process that only works beautifully during drills when healthy high school volunteers play the victims. The curious delay between storm surge and flood may have changed the response. There was an opportunity for some evacuees to return to the city and for rescue efforts to be put on hold. After the flood, all focus was on rescue efforts and with victims scattered and hidden this was an understandably slow and tedious process. Time zero for NO was after the levee was breached.

(I tend to dismiss the event that most people are latching on to as evidence of a botched rescue effort; the apparent delay in getting water to the super dome or convention center. This is not a callousness, but a realization that there is no evidence, so far, that anybody lost their life because of that delay and as the people in those centers have been rescued it’s a non-issue.)

The difference in lives saved between an optimal response and the actual response is not known. Estimates will no doubt be forthcoming. Intuitively, it seems that everything should have gone much better. But chaos is inherently a result of disaster. This is not the same as saying “shit happens”. It is saying that shit is the result of certain circumstances. It’s a result of massive hurricanes.

OTOH, the US should damn well pay the $1 million.

It’s data. Working how to make sense of it is up to you.