What's it like to be the mayor of a large city with no residents? If total evacuation orders are fully carried out, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will find out.
orleans-ray-nagin.jpg Most of his residents are being taken in and assisted, housed, sheltered and fed by armies of emergency workers and agency personnel from other states and cities, the federal government, non-profits, churches and good-hearted individuals. Houston has announced that its schools are open to all the evacuated children who ended up in the Astrodome and are likely to be stuck in Texas for awhile. School districts in
Fort Worth and other cities are also seeing refugees turn up in their classrooms.
Evacuated New Orleans residents are already spread over at least a six-state area and farther afield as many who lost their homes likely headed for relatives throughout the country. Let's hope for New Orleans' sake they come back when the flood waters recede.
At some point Mayor Nagin turns from dealing with the rescuing, the looting, the evacuation and the collection of the dead to working with federal, state and local officials to rebuild his city from the ground, or in the case of New Orleans, below sea level, up.
It's one of those things they just don't teach you at the Kennedy School's classes for new mayors.
The nation surely wishes the mayor the ultimate in patience and wisdom in navigating the future.
Ellen Perlman was a GOVERNING staff writer and technology columnist.
