they must need bears

Because it's easy to evacuate if you don't have a car or money for a motel, or if you're too ill to travel.

Not to mention that as recently as last night, the highways were jammed with cars that could go nowhere.

I have the Earth movie on loop.

I'm seriously leaking from the eyes, looking at all of us. I feel like we should send ourselves a postcard or something, saying "Thinking of you, hope you are doing well. Love, us."

Looks like susiesplace_new saw the same CNN reporter you did and had a similar reaction

Thanks so much for these links.

I was so horrified when I realised how dificult it was going to be for many to evacuate, and so pleased that the storm has lessened in severity to merely devastating.

I can kick and scream about people who could have left but didn't. I will shout and holler about the people who were told by local hotels, when they called and asked in they should consider cancelling trips to New Orleans "Come on down"--I know they hate to lose business, but there's a limit. Maybe the hotel chains should add some disaster business ethics training for their staff.
But those who were just plain stuck there? I've worked in the wonderful world of welfare for too long to not grasp that some people just don't have a choice. Besides, the tornado we had here in Nashville in 1998 went right over a couple of small nursing homes, and was that ever a learning experience. How do you evacuate a nursing home, Miss CNN Diva? What if the people can't sit up unaided? What if they need oxygen? Or feeding tubes? Or urinary catheters? Or, good forbid, a respirator? What if they suffer from dementia? What about the blind and the lame? Oh, and the homeless. Of course, the poor, the old, the disabled and the homeless are all pretty much invisible from certain angles in this country. Then there are the emergency personnel and the medical personnel who have stayed--a good many of the doctors and others could have left, but stayed because they saw it as their duty. I doubt they're complacent.
No doubt most churches pressed their Sunday vans into use for evacuation, but how many people can you fit into one? Probably not every person in the congregation who needed a ride. Even if all of the public transportation authority's buses, all of the local school buses, every hearse and funeral car, every limousine, and all the moving vans in town (and imagine that evacuation ride, friends and neighbors) was in use, you still can't get every last living soul out, in any degree of safety. Oh, and where do you take them? A population of over a million is not as easy to move as your kid's soccer team, and is a lot more likely to include people with problems that make transporting them, um, challenging. Mayor Nagit was right--getting 80% of the city population out was excellent. I haven't heard how high a percentage of the population in the general area has been evacuated, but I imagine it's similar.

The state and local authorities could have done some better planning, no doubt--but even with that there's a limit on what they could hope to accomplish.

NPR interviewed someone who's sitting out the hurricane, a teacher who stayed because he doesn't have a working car. He mentioned that some of his students had left - because he'd given gas money to their families, money that made the difference between being able to leave and not. The reporter was surprised: "You mean for some of these people fiftyy dollars of gas money made the difference between being able to get out and not?" "Or having a working car," he answered.

I think I understand why this man can't afford to get his car fixed though. May it be accounted unto him for righteousness.

Every time I hear phrases like "some people have chosen to ride out the storm," I grumble.

There are always stupidheads who stay behind on purpose, but they don't seem to be in the majority of those being interviewed, this time around.

Initial reports are that the worst-case scenario has not materialized. The eye is passing 20 miles east of NO, which means that the Big Easy gets the gentle side of the storm

Yeah. We dodged the bullet on this, only I think for a lot of people it hasn't sunk in yet (not minimizing what's happening or what's to come -- it is, and is going to be, Bad. But it's not going to be as BAD as it could have been if NOLA had faced a Cat5 head-on).

I got super-annoyed at the CNN reporters who were interviewing people outside the Superdome and inevitably started off with "Why are you still here? Why didn't you LEAVE?" and the victim inevitably looked embarrassed (I would've snapped back, "Well, YOU'RE still here, aren't you?"). The level of self-righteousness and entitlement ("Well why didn't 'those people' just leave?") is astounding.