September 7, 2005

Nagin's Failures: Perspective

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's failure to evacuate tens of thousands of his city's poorest residents by using the hundreds of school and transit buses available before Hurricane Katrina is - finally - drawing a growing amount of scrutiny in the media.

Will Bunch, a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News also wonders why Nagin didn't use the city's hundreds of large transit buses to evacuate the poor in a post at AlterNet that also includes sections of a story he wrote a few days ago in the Daily News:

In the months leading up to Hurricane Katrina, it became increasingly clear to local officials that in the event of a killer storm, the No. 1 problem in a city with a 30-percent poverty rate was some 134,000 residents who did not have a car. They knew these people had no way to get out of town -- and that a Category 3 hurricane or stronger would likely bring a flood of Biblical proportions.

And so the plan was...to do nothing.

Well, almost nothing. This summer, as local officials were streamlining the counter-flow interstate traffic plan so that better-off New Orleans residents could leave more quickly, they also prepared a DVD for local churches and civil groups urging the poor to find a ride out of town.

They didn't say who from. They only said who it wouldn't be: The government. Even more amazing, the mayor of New Orleans took the city's buses - the most viable means for getting poor residents out of town - and used them to bring people to the Superdome, even as he was acknowledging that conditions there were bound to deteriorate.

Indeed, as Katrina bore down on New Orleans last weekend, Mayor Ray Nagin marshalled a fleet of city buses -- not to take the city's poor out of town but to the large shelter at the Superdome, where civil order would fall apart as the week progressed.

"Keep in mind, a hurricane, a Cat 5, with high winds, most likely will knock out all electricity in the city, and, therefore, the Superdome is not going to be a very comfortable place at some point in time," Nagin warned on Sunday. "So we're encouraging everyone to leave."

"It's almost as if the planning stopped at the flooding," said Craig E. Colton, a geography professor at Louisiana State University, wondering as many have at the lack of foresight.

Why did this have to happen? Why was the issue of getting the poor and the car-less out of New Orleans treated like there was no solution, when there was so much that could have been done?

Why were the municipal buses, as well as the hundreds of school buses that transport children in the Greater New Orleans area, not used to take the most helpless to those out-of-town Red Cross shelters, especially when the Red Cross had pretty much acknowledged that a hurricane would make the city uninhabitable?

Why was there no thought given to using the city's rail lines (there really is a train they call The City of New Orleans, you know), to ferry the poverty-stricken to higher ground?

Also weighing in on the unused buses, the Orange County Register with an editorial citing Nagin's failure to use the buses as one of the many mistakes made at all levels of government in responding to Hurricane Katrina:

This is not to say state and local officials are blameless. New Orleans had an evacuation plan involving enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000 people per run, but Mayor Ray Nagin did not use them. State and local authorities kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans in the first days after Katrina.

The BBC's summary of the disaster also mentions the unused - and now flooded - school buses:

It was already clear on the Sunday that the evacuation would not cover many of the poor, the sick and those who did not pay heed.

The mayor said people going to the Superdome, a sports venue named as an alternative destination for those unable to leave, should bring supplies for several days. He also said police could commandeer any vehicle for the evacuation.

But how much support was there at the Superdome? And how much city transport was actually used? There is a photo showing city school buses still lined up, in waterlogged parking lots, after the hurricane.

There are questions for the mayor, dubbed heroic by some, to answer.

...Nor does Governor Blanco escape criticism. It took until Thursday, for example, for her to sign an order releasing school buses to move the evacuees.

He didn't. Instead he ordered his citizens to evacuate, but gave the poorest residents no way to do so, consigning them to whatever fury and fate Katrina had in store. Many died as a result.

Jackson Clarion-Ledger reader Mike Walker of Brandon, Miss., asks:

I have to ask what plans New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had in place before the onslaught of Katrina. All I have heard from him is accusations and talk best reserved to seedy bars and bordellos. A mandatory evacuation using city and school buses would open the way to safety, asking for next of kin of those selfish enough to stay.

The worst mistakes were made by city authorities in New Orleans and state authorities in Louisiana. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin didn't use transit and school buses in the evacuation and didn't even move the buses to higher ground, so they were flooded and couldn't be used later. Similarly it was his responsibility to provide in advance food, water, sanitation and security personnel for the Superdome, where he directed people for shelter, but it wasn't done.

The Governor of Louisiana did not activate emergency plans and refused to give Washington authority over the state's National Guard.