Washington is helping out at least with Washington residents...
I think they have neglected their part to be honest in disaster planning, in education programs that teach teachers to teach students "to be useless" as my former department chair said. I call for anyone in higher, lower, middle education to take this as a call to action. We can't afford to play dumb after this.

Here is what I just wrote to our university president after getting a message he sent out.

Dear _____:

I appreciated your email and am glad to know that we will be taking in students and are encouraged to contribute financially.

As a major agricultural university, I will say we need to do way more. We need to be coordinating with government officials and asking why are we still paying farmers to grow or not grow tobacco when we obviously do not have the stores of surplus food that we need for emergencies.

We need to have all departments involved with architecture, construction, and perhaps most of all, transportation planning, get really serious about all of this. Perhaps they are..I just do not know.... but if as a country we can't drop a few hundred plastic rowboats into shallow, calm water so people could help evacuate each other to various points..we haven't been doing something right. If in bayou country we can't mobilize and commander private boats, barges, cruise ships etc., we are pretty well doomed as a country.   

Where were the school buses? Where were the trains?

Departments of education throughout the country need to get serious about the world the students live in, and prepare them for disaster. First of all, skills need to be distributed throughout the population, regardless of employment opportunities afterwards..this means a return to serious vocational education for all students. Our high school students, at least juniors and seniors, should be able to set up tents, administer first aid, run radio equipment, do some construction, get flooded cars going etc. One hero of this situation is the high school student who took over an empty bus and drove 100 people out of New Orleans to Houston..

There has to be a way, and your data departments can figure this out..for people to know where their family members are. I have not heard of an official web site or whatever...who is responsible for collecting lists of who has died? Who is in what hospital or campground?

Anyone in the public services has to realize that there will be chaos, there will be looting, etc. They have to figure out how to set things up to minimize this...for one things, good video equipment or even disposable cameras so criminals know they are going to be caught...Martial law has to be declared immediately.

Communications are rotten. They are using National Guard runners to run messages here and there..or so I heard. They were joking about balloons and carrier pigeons. The day might come...

Construction needs to be less idiotic...more cement, higher living spaces...no wood in hurricane alley...

Well, I could go on. I think this is beyond a wake-up call. I encourage you to get the whole university thinking about this..I live in Long Beach on a sand spit and I think all of the time of what can happen here and I pretty much know...

Let us use these horrible experiences that people are having to take our collective fingers out of the sugar bowl before it is too late..and before the terrorists etc. have seen very clearly just how non-responsive we are. Mg