Trust no one makes helping hard.

Still, New Orleanians learned a valuable lesson from Katrina: Trust no one and nothing. They're not counting on the levees to hold or the government to rescue them this time. from Time

So last year was the year of the great failure. This year, we get to see the great miscommunication. Because mistrust (and boy hullabaloo is there mistrust) is like a virus in the network. In a disaster response (goes the theory from Flirting with Disaster, the breadth of the trauma is described by the distant between the government's expectation of what the victims will do, and what they will actually do.

Mistrust complicates that equation or, really, invalidates it.

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Because a “self-sufficient” New Orleans will neither believe the government's offer of assistance nor expect it.

Are things going to be as bad as last year? No, too much mitigation has gone on. Too much engineering, etc. But could there be a clusterfuck of the first order. Sure.

Because right now FEMA is like a player at a the table with every ex-girlfriend he's cheated on. Might his intentions be good? Yeah, but who's going to trust him until he has the chance to screw the drunk bride and doesn't take it.

I might've let the metaphor get away from me.