MOSCOW, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - The death toll in New Orleans, hit by Hurricane Katrina, may reach several thousand, Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoygu said Saturday.
"This is entirely possible. In each city there are people who were not able to leave - single old people, sick people," Shoygu said in an interview on Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy.
The way information was spread in advance of the hurricane was ineffective - "The complete truth should have been told, and the city entirely evacuated. All homes should have been visited, and an all weak and disabled people registered," he said.
The electricity should have been shut off after all the people had been informed, he said.
In such a hot climates, there is a heightened danger of epidemics - to prevent them, there should always be reserves of water-filtering, disinfecting, and decontamination and equipment, he said.
Shoygu expressed his surprise at the poor level of preparation among the U.S. services following the disaster. He suggested that creation of the Department of Homeland Security after September 11, which consolidates all the agencies responsible for such a disaster, may have been in part the cause of the disorganization.
Shoygu agreed with a report released a year ago in the U.S., saying that the smaller structures have been swallowed up in this hyper-department, and most of them have ceased to fulfill their functions.
