The mayor says "likely, thousands" referring to the death toll from Katrina in New Orleans. This is no "American Tsunami," and it's distressing to hear that phrase because the rest of the country (heck, the world) knew about the hurricane a day or so before it hit, and heard repeated warnings that it was necessary to leave. I think assumptions about stubborness on the victims' part are moot. Poverty, mental and physical illness probably contributed more to these people being trapped than their own recalcitrance. What do you do in the event that you don't have a car and when you're all alone in a city that has neglected you for decades? You can only climb onto the rooftop for so long before the water goes over it. The hurricane lasted a few hours and picked off a few dozen here and there, but it is the broken levees, designed by men in suits to hold back the inevitable, that have done in these victims. Civil engineering arrogance did nothing to stop the Mississippi floods 15 years ago, or to hold together the Bay Bridge in 1989 or the I-5/14 L.A. interchange in '94 or the incessant coastal mudslides of Southern California. We expect nature to submit to our whims when we build cities in places they have no business being (even Las Vegas, like preserved glass in the dry heat, can only last until the next Ice Age). Mostly, New Orleans has filled like the sink it is; its foolhardy pipes have backed up with sharks and sewage in the mix and its basin has overflown. Intransigent nature eventually trumps human stubborness, even if it takes 300 years.