You have to prepare for disasters - you rehearse and you have drills and it's a pain, but that's what you do.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a single city in the U.S. with an escape plan for a storm/disaster of this magnitude." Very likely true. If so it's a clear case of "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad" (Euripides back in the fourth century BC)

When a major city is built below sea-level in a place where hurricanes are an ever-present possibility, there is a certain duty on those in authority to respond appropriately to that situation. And, as they used to claim to believe, "the buck stops here", in the White House.