The whole point of this thread is for all the armchair experts to give an opinion as to what do due ahead of time with close to 5 days of warning and not point fingers after the fact.
I believe seeing what has happend with Katrina has some areas getting the ball moving a lot earlier than normal.
I took a Cat 5 hit and one of the last things I did before the hit was to get my vehicles on the highest ground I could.
I had one small window of opportunity to evacuate and I foolishly passed as it was forecast to miss by over 100 miles to the NE. Was supposed to be this big turn to the North that never happened.
Little over two days to impact, who should be evacuating now?