1. I did evacuate as did almost every middle to upper class friend I have there. 2. About those busses. I don't know the exact story of why they weren't used but I can tell you why they probably weren't. As you may recall, up until Friday evening Katrina was supposedly going to Flordia. That meant that the city had the same problem I had (only magnified a thousand fold) - contacting drivers, convincing them to take a truck instead of their own vehicle and deal with their family needs and then coordinating this all before Sunday noon. As early as Saturday the phone lines were so jammed up it generally took me about 5 tries before I could get a call through. And then you're talking to someone who's going, "Oh my gawd, it's a cat 5 and my wife insists we take care of our own needs first." With that kind of time frame on a weekend it doesn't surprise me that those busses sat. Disappointed, yes. Surprised, no. 3. I have found that one of the hardest things for most of us to do is to understand how different the world looks (and is) to someone living in very different circumstances. Why is it that it was overwhelmingly poor people who "chose" not to evacuate? Isn't that odd if it was just a "bad decision"? More likely the decision looked very different to those of means than to those without. For instance, I was able to evacuate my dog and cat because I have friends in Baton Rouge who would take us all. Almost no shelters allowed pets. If you could not afford a hotel, where would you go? If you owned a car, how reliable was it? Did you have money for gas? Food? Bottom line is that there are reasons poor people often make different decisions. Until we understand those reasons we will simply have "no sympathy for them".