My friend and colleague Gerard Braud, one of the evacuees from New Orleans, forwarded this message to me with permission to post it here. It speaks for itself.

D’Nile—A Lake in New Orleans

Those of us from New Orleans will have lots of crisis communications lessons to share in the coming weeks. Since I specialize in crisis communications and write crisis plans, I’m about to die, seeing how unprepared my own home town is to communicate. My heart aches and I am sick so deep down inside that it is hard to put into words. Yes, I’ve previously offered to help, “but it’s too expensive” and “we don’t have time” were the responses. Those, by the way are the standard responses of most government agencies, most business and most other institutions.
Yes, the City of New Orleans contacted me 3 years ago to write a crisis communications plan for them, and the job never got funded.

Ironically, in 1990 I did a television series called, “When the Big One Hits”, that foretold all that we have seen unfold this past week with Hurricane Katrina. When I did the series, city leaders told me I was sensationalizing what might happen. I have so many secrets I could tell about how so much of this could have been avoided.

The biggest lesson I can share with my IABC colleagues is to stop being in denial in your companies and agencies. It can happen. It will happen. Maybe in a year-maybe in 50 years. Are you ready?

D’Nile isn’t a river in Egypt, but it is a large lake in the city of New Orleans.