By Jim Christie

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 10 (Reuters) - As the man in charge of guiding New Orleans' recovery from Hurricane Katrina, Ed Blakely has a list of "dos" for officials crafting plans for rebuilding California if a major earthquake strikes the state.

It is guided by the Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared."

The list, however, is short because California officials are largely ready to respond to the "big one," the chief of the New Orleans Office of Recovery Management told Reuters an interview on Friday in San Francisco.

California could set aside more cash for disaster spending and improve regional planning, but its officials have long taken the potential for a catastrophic quake seriously and would respond in a way that New Orleans would envy, he said.

By contrast, the Crescent City is paying the price for a failure of imagination.

While the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was widely seen as botched, Blakely said Louisiana officials had failed to consider how their state's most important city would recover from the devastating floods so many experts had long predicted.

Katrina exposed how ill-prepared Louisiana was for crisis in large measure because of the view across the state that a government job is a matter of patronage, Blakely said, adding: "There was very little notion of performance."

"There are still some cities where people come in in the morning and wait around for the mayor to ask for a job," Blakely said. "When it comes to the sharp edge of getting things done, that's not even in the culture."

That attitude is holding New Orleans back and rules favoring locals in contracts has left its landscape much like after flood waters were pumped out of its streets, he said.

"In a disaster you want the best you can find and they may not be local," Blakely said.

But outsiders can also get in the way, noted Blakely, a critic of the Federal Emergency Management Agency because of its paperwork and frequent rule changes. "They've done everything possible to thwart recovery," he said.

FEMA can handle local disasters such the recent collapse of a Minneapolis highway bridge, but it is overwhelmed by regional disasters such as Katrina and has little understanding of city and economic planning -- projects best left to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Blakely said.

But ultimately, Blakely said a stricken city must fashion its own recovery and for New Orleans that may mean a sharp break with its tourism-based economy.

He sees a downtown where hospitals form one of the Southern U.S.'s most prominent health-care hubs and a port where cargo vessels prevail over cruise ships. But change won't come quickly.

"It's a 20-year thing," Blakely said.

AlertNet news is provided by