New Orleans has a history of classist and racist "evacuations."

"Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes what the historian John Barry calls the 'human storm." David Brooks writes today in the New York Times,  basing his post Katrina analysis on Barry's historical account of how societies have responded to storms.

The mayor announced an evacuation of New Orleans late on Saturday, and everyone was given an equal opportunity to get in their car and drive to a hotel somewhere and save themselves.  This "free enterprise" solution privileges those with means, proves very difficult for those with moderate incomes, but for the hundreds of thousands of poor it was impossible.  America's privileged classes wonder why people didn't evacuate? why do they engage in unauthorized shopping.  Why don't they just sit and wait for the political "leaders" to take care of them?  Why?  America's privileged classes need to take a field trip.  Go visit the America that works in the hotels, the restaurants, the docks and warehouses of our largest port.  The people who make New Orleans and other big cities work.  Perhaps they should try to buy a car on money left over from paying for rent and food when earning minimum wage.  Call it a learning experience.

Since America's privileged are not likely to make that effort maybe a little history instead.  Brooks writes about New Orleans experience in the wake of storms:
"Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans.  As Barry writes in his account, "Rising Tide," the disaster ripped the veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north.
Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease the water's pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the populist anger that led to Huey Long's success. Across the country people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered its preflood vibrancy.
We'd like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. And, indeed, each of America's great floods has prompted a popular response both generous and inspiring. But floods are also civic examinations. Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster - tales of sudden death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease - there is also the testing.
Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come."
It is one week since Katrina crashed into Florida.  She hit again on Monday morning.  The physical damage will last for years.  The human storm will last longer and be more profound than the wind storm.