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I'm an LSU student and I'm from New Orleans. The semester before Katrina hit, I declared Disaster Science and Management as my minor. Truth is, there is nowhere in the country that is not at some constant risk of a major disaster. Yellowstone National Park is a gigantic volcanic crater, any coastline is at potential risk for a tsunami, both tornadoes and earthquakes can happen just about anywhere (yes, there is a faultline closer to the Gulf Coast than the San Andreas out in Cali), and of course, all of us here along the Gulf know hurricanes are fairly commonplace. The trouble always happens because people become complacent and stop testing and improving their response plans or rely too heavily on technology(when the power goes, you're screwed). This stuff is going to happen, we're always a lot closer than we like to think to the next big disaster. I got really angry when there was talk about not letting people rebuild in certain areas. It's everyone's responsibility to be prepared and the failures during and after Katrina were not entirely FEMA's fault. A lot of that was on the local agencies. I'm not worrying about Gustav yet, it's way too soon to really be able to predict where it will make landfall with any kind of accuracy, it could head to Mexico as easily as it could hit the Gulf Coast.
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