Here's some perspective from someone who was involved in the Hurricane Pam exercise...

http://suspect-device.blogspot.com/2005/09/hurricane-pam-where-it-all-started-to.html

"You may have seen mention of the "Hurricane Pam" exercise in press coverage of Louisiana's emergency preparedness, or lack thereof. I was at the Hurricane Pam exercise, and I think maybe I can clear a few things up...

...There was a certain amount of contention, a few turf wars, some loud talk. None if it consequential, in the end, because of the single greatest emollient: FEMA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised the moon and the stars. They promised to have 1,000,000 bottles of water per day coming into affected areas within 48 hours. They promised massive prestaging with water, ice, medical supplies and generators. Anything that was needed, they would have either in place as the storm hit or ready to move in immediately after. All it would take is a phone call from local officials to the state, who would then call FEMA, and it would be done. There were contracts-in-place with major vendors across the country and prestaging areas were already determined (I'll have more to say about this later, but this is one reason FEMA has rejected large donation and turned back freelance shipments of water, medical supplies, food, etc: they have contracts in place to purchase those items, and accepting the same product from another source could be construed as breach of contract, and could lead to contract cancellation, thus removing a reliable source of product from the pool of available resources. I'm not saying I agree with this -- in fact, I don't, and think it's boneheaded -- but the reasoning is that if they accept five semis of water from the east Weewau, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce, the water supplier who is contractually bound to provide 100,000 gallons per day will be freed from that obligation.

The organizers of the exercise -- particularly the former commender of LOHSEP, Col. Michael Brown (not that one) -- insisted that the plans contain no "fairy dust": no magical leaps of supply chains or providers: if you said you would need 500 semis for your part of the plan, you had to specify where the 500 semis were coming from. Everyone tried to keep the fairy dust to a minimum, and they did so, for the most part, despite having big plans: LSU, Southern, Southeastern and other campuses dismissed for the semester and turned into giant triage centers/tent cities; acres of temporary housing built on government-owned land; C-130 transport planes ferrying evacuees to relatives in other states, and so on. Bold plans, but doable, with cooperation. A comprehensive plan was beginning to emerge.

Except that it didn't. A followup conference, to iron out difficulties in some of the individual plans and to formalize presentation of the final package, scheduled for either late '04 or early '05 -- I can't remember and can find no mention of the followup event on the web -- was cancelled at the last minute, due to lack of funding (which agency called the cancellation, I'm not sure, although the lack of funds would take it all back to FEMA, in the end).

So: Louisiana did have a hurricane plan, but was devising a new one, to be based on recommendation from the people who would actually be doing the work. The need to evacuate people from impact areas, including those without transportation or the means to obtain it, was discussed, despite media assertions to the contrary. The possibility of levee overflow was discussed (levee breaching may have been discussed at some point, but I was in the dewatering room, and I never heard it mentioned. A rescue and evacuation plan, including sheltering, was reasonably firm. There were and are officials in Louisiana, including New Orleans Emergency Management, who know the limitations of current planning and who have been trying to come up with a better solution.

The problem is FEMA, and by extension the Department of Homeland Security, which gobbled FEMA up in 2003. FEMA promised more than they could deliver. They cut off deeper, perhaps more meaningful discussion and planning by handing out empty promises. The plans that were made -- which were not given any sort of stamp of authority -- were never distributed or otherwise made available to those who most needed stable guidance; they vanished into the maw of FEMA and LOSHEP (probably when Col. Brown was removed from his command due to financial "irregularities" -- the project was tainted after that). Adoption of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) would have made most of the plans moot anyway -- FEMA's adherence to the untried NIMS is a primary reason for the chaos and ineptitude surrounding their relief efforts."