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General To Spread New Orleans Lessons

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The Associated Press

Published: January 10, 2008

FOREST PARK, Ga. - The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced America hasn't learned its lesson from the storm.

As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore gets ready to retire from the Army and hand over his command Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a "culture of preparedness" to prevent another post-disaster disaster.

"There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," the 60-year-old general said at his office at Fort Gillem, just outside Atlanta. "What happened in New Orleans could have happened anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard."

The Louisiana native's next project is still taking shape, but he wants to see civil defense classes for young people that would teach first aid and survival basics. He wants cities to stockpile food and water.

Honore plans to use Atlanta as a launching pad for the project.

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