[An.American.Expatriate]

Tourists and hotel managers alike condemned government officials for ignoring them.

You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.

[Howlin]

Amen!

[Siouxz]

You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.

While I agree that a lot of the tourists are partly to blame for their situation, many are there through no fault of their own. If you remember, a lot of tourists were trapped after the evacuation had been ordered because the airlines had stopped running, and there were no rental cars available. If it was ME, however, I'd have been long gone out of Dodge before that happened.

[New Girl]

You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.

---

I had a friend who was staying in the french quarter -- the ONLY reason she was able to get out was because she already had a rental car for her stay there. She took some fellow tourists with her after their cabs and the hotel shuttle buses basically abandoned them. They weren't told that it was going to be bad until Saturday nite and all of the flights were already cancelled and most of the cars were already rented. By the time the mandatory evacuation order came in, you were already screwed if you weren't on the road. It took her 18 hours to get to Houston. Please keep in mind that these people were "tourists" -- it's not like they knew their way around the city and where multiple rental companies were. The tourists are the law abiding citizens in this situation.

[texasbluebell]

You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.

I can tell you this. When we were vacationing in Florida in '92, when Andrew hit, we listened to the first warning to evacuate the island we were on.

We didn't wait for anybody to tell us twice.

We were on the road headed north, and didn't stop till we were halfway up the state.

Although if we had not already had a rental car, I'm not sure what we would have done...that would have been dicey. Probably would have gotten a ride with others who had cars, I suppose.

But I wouldn't have waited around for a second warning.

[meyer]

You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.

The mandatory evacuation order was called after nearly all flights out of NOLA had been cancelled by the airlines. And, rental cars ran out on Saturday. So no, tourists in many, many cases had no means to evacuate. They were put out on the streets to weather the storm on their own, like many others. NOLA dropped the ball big-time. They had the tools to effectively evacuate those without transportation and failed.