Unbelievable
No idea if this was posted before, but it's unbelievable
Van Heerden says the federal government didn't take it seriously.
"Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me," he says. "Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."
More under the fold
What's more, it appears that the federal government did not follow up on an exercise last year that mostly predicted what happened in New Orleans -- devastating flooding and hundreds of thousands stranded.
The scenario was dubbed Hurricane Pam: 120 mph winds, a massive storm surge, 20 feet of water in the city, 80 percent of buildings damaged, refugees on rooftops, possibly gun violence that would slow the rescue.
"What bothers me the most is all the people who've died unnecessarily," says Ivor Van Heerden, a hurricane researcher from Louisiana State University who ran the exercise.
Van Heerden says the federal government didn't take it seriously.
"Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me," he says. "Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."
I'm trying not to violate copyright law, so i'm leaving out the parts about how FEMA has NO EXERCISES for Hurricanes, other than terrorism during hurricanes.
They're a bunch of bureaucratic jackasses again.