An e-mail from Florida:

Not true. We’re very prepared here in Florida. As is the nation. Governor Bush called it a “6 year hurricane amnesia”, but EM services have been drilling in and out for this sort of thing. Emphasis on terror has been a main focus of Homeland Security, but Florida has some of the finest, if not the finest first responders in the nation. Response and recovery will be strong.
The problem, the BIG problem with this hurricane is its trajectory over the “population belt” of Florida (Ft. Myers, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville). For a state with over 15 million people, 2 million now evacuated to shelters, and a bulk (somewhere around 8 million) being in that strip, I’d be worried about life before property loss. You can mitigate for disasters, but you cannot change their course.
(Sorry to flood your box, but it seems like no one in this country thinks Florida is capable of anything after 2000. We may have a problem with hanging chads, but you might wait to question our ability to react, recover, and respond in emergency situations. We are the best.)