Why were so many people left in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and who is to blame for it?The answers to these questions came with the 120 M.P.H. winds of Hurricane Rita.

To hold the president of the United States accountable for the unfortunate people of New Orleans was the first instinct of some.People said he should have helped more with the evacuation. Some, like entertainer Kanye West said, “Bush hates black people.”

In the same respect, why didn’t Bush get praise for the successful evacuation of Houston and Galveston?Hurricane Rita made it obvious that the president had nothing to do with either evacuation because it wasn’t his responsibility. I didn’t hear anyone say, “Bush loves Hispanic people” after the evacuation of Galveston. Local governments of Galveston and New Orleans gave similar warnings and evacuation plans before Katrina and Rita hit, respectively. The Galveston evacuation for Rita was extremely successful.Neither evacuation for the city of New Orleans was successful.Why? Maybe the failed evacuation plan was the fault of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who secluded himself from communication with city officials before the storm. The number of people who did successfully evacuate the city of New Orleans implies that Nagin may have responded appropriately to the coming of the storm.

The question remains unanswered.Who is at fault? The people who chose not to evacuate, is the answer.The population of Galveston, 22 percent of which are 55 or older, evacuated prior to the hurricane according to the proposed evacuation plan. The population of New Orleans, 20 percent of which are 55 or older, didn’t have a successful evacuation.Not only for Katrina, but also for Rita which came a few weeks later. Being elderly and disabled didn’t have much to do with the situation. The populations of both cities have nearly the same amount of senior citizens. The people who did not leave New Orleans chose not to leave.No one is to be held responsible but these people.They had sufficient warning and the same amount of planning that the occupants of Galveston had. It is possible that family values may have been absent during this time.Most who evacuated New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina considered it a responsibility to account for their families. Values and morals seem to be slipping in areas of modern America. This became evident when some citizens of New Orleans began shooting at the hospital helicopters, looting and setting fires. The city of Galveston didn’t have any of these problems.Do citizens of Galveston have a different set of morals and values than citizens of New Orleans? Being from New Orleans, I assumed that the prideful cajun citizens of the city would join together and lean on one another for support during a time like this. Instead, I was let down by a horrendous exhibition of greed and violence. I feel no sympathy for these people. Sympathy for the abandoned is human, but prolonging the inevitable deaths of the weak and helpless is not.