In the run up to Katrina there was a mandatory evacuation warning.
Officiclas would know that there will be people who insist in staying
and take their chances. What wasn't anticipated was that many would
stay and that all the services would break down and incapable of being
restrored any time soon. One immediate lesson I can think of is if
people are going to stay there should be widely available information

You mean like this?

http://www.fema.gov/library/prepandprev.shtm

What do you want them to do, come around and staple the ****ing
handout to people's foreheads?

For the officials those half drowned school buses in the parking lot
should have been used for the evacuation. Its an obvious oversight
now but future disaster planning in any district should do that. It
will also be necessary to have a plan as to where to put them at the
receiving end. You can't just bus thousands of people to another town
and expect them to fend for themselves, especially when they have no
car and no money.

And that's the only real failure I've seen, and the problem
is that you can't put your re-location/refugee camps in the
same region as the people you intend to put there, else you're
likely to loose them at the same time. Well, that and that
convincing people to GO to a concentr////refugee camp is
likely to be a tough sell.