Katrina and contraflow

I am watching the news as I write this - Hurricane Katrina is expected to hit New Orleans, a port city 70% of which is supposed to be below sea level. If the current projections turn out to be true, Katrina will be the second most intense hurricane in American history. The windspeeds are currently 165mph and is a category 5 storm. Katrina made its first landfall in Florida and continued north northwest and this is the second landfall. From that time to now, it has gained enormous momentum.

The city of New Orleans is under 'mandatory evacuation'. And I am just trying to fathom how the evacuation has progressed smoothly. All freeways leading to the city have been closed since yesterday. Traffic is now being allowed in the same direction on both sides of the freeway. That for you, is contra-flow.

The US is an epitome on efficiency, when it comes to handling natural disasters, basically because of the pre- and post-mortem that has been done (for ages now) on each of these occurances. California is earthquake prone, midwest is tornado prone, New England and northern midwest is snowstorm prone and southeast is hurricane prone. I just dread to think of how we'd cope, if this were the case in India.

The aftermath of such hurricanes tends to stretch far inland, typically bringing in heavy rains. Fingers crossed for the long roadtrip coming up... More importantly, I hope the damage is less than anticipated, and there aren't any loss of lives.