Katrina: Kevin Drum's perspective

The Washington Monthly: EVACUATING THE POOR.... Why did so many people who lacked the means to evacuate New Orleans get left behind?

Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's "low-mobility" population -- the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people. At disaster planning meetings, he said, "the answer was often silence."

It's not that no one had thought of this problem. They just didn't consider it important enough to spend any time on.