They’ll tell you straight up, if you stay behind, write your social security number on your arm, so we can identify your corpse.
That is the very same thing that Kathleen Blanco said at a news conference in the days before Katrina. It scared the heck out of my husband and I. Any hesitation we had about leaving was over. Along with our daughter and my mother-in-law (in her nineties), we took a twenty hour drive to Alabama. We didn't get to come back to our house for almost a month.
As it happens, I also remember C. Ray Nagin saying that anyone who stayed should have an ax handy so that they could chop their way out of the attic when the water rose. That way they could better get on top of the roof. He may be crazy but, as local events unfolded, that call wasn't too far out of line.