Come on, Bill. You can spin better than that.

I mean there's got to be something in the article you can put a real twist on. Oh, that's right, Think Progress' timeline links to the Office of the Governor's original memorandum and the White House's original response on August 27 (via the independent websites). Guess that's too hard to refute so you had to pick buses. AGAIN.

I am not "spinning" anything. I'm dealing in facts.

The bus story is the only component of the Katrina story that I'm focusing on here on my blog. I'm sure other bloggers are looking at the facets of the story that most interest you.

Yeah, Bill. How dare you point out the failures and incompetency of Democrats?

"The [Orleans Parish school] district owns 324 buses"

Are all the buses owned by the school district? Or does it, like many cities, also contract out to private bus companies? If so, then there might be even more buses that could have been used.

The busses and the lack of an evacuation are the more serious issue regarding Katrina. Only a pre-storm evacuation would have guaranteed the survival of NOLA residents if Katrina directly hit the city, and that is a local responsibility. The failure to implement the prescibed evacuation plan luckily has not resulted in the thousands of deaths predicted, and that is mostly because Katrina didn't hit directly.

"The [Orleans Parish school] district owns 324 buses"

Are all the buses owned by the school district? Or does it, like many cities, also contract out to private bus companies? If so, then there might be even more buses that could have been used.

Bill: TP's picking on FEMA because they didn’t deliver 700 buses on command misses a key point: FEMA delivered 100 buses more than Mayor Nagin did.

I remind the TP denizens of this fact in their comments section. I'll see how they respond.

This story only covers the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated by one pundit that there are 20,000 school buses in the state of Louisiana. Each school district has many. Apparently no attempt was made by the mayor or governor to employ any of these assets either.

I think you missed the point. You're harping on whether the mayor may or may not have not utilized 200 buses.

Over 80% of the city was evacuated, that's a major feat for any city. Then New Orleans waited for promised help to arrive for those who were not so fortunate to get out in time. The help was a long time coming. Communications were completely screwy. The only accessible route out of the city was made inaccessible by police from neighboring cities. People were dying, no one seemed to be coming--and no one did come for 5 days. You're focusing on a moot point to cast doubt elsewhere for the mere purpose of protecting.....what, who, and why?

About Hannity's 2000 buses number, I recall somewhere allong the way that someone quoted that there were 2000 school buses available in the state of Louisiana that could have been appropriated by the governor if she had wanted to. I assumed that Hannity probably picked up that number and was using it (though techniquely incorrect but significant) when talking about the buses. I wish I could recall the source.

"The fact is, the official evacuation plan for New Orleans stated that the city was to mobilize its school and transit buses to evacuate people from the city in advance of a major hurricane. The city failed to do so. Santorum is absolutely correct."

"Perhaps they were waiting for New Orleans and the state to implement its own evacuation plan, which stipulated that city transit and school buses would be used to evacuate the city's poorest residents.

....

Yet Nagin failed to implement the official plan to use his city's transit and school buses to evacuate his poorest residents..."

It's not at all clear that this is the case. In the May 31st, 2005 Times-Picayune they discuss the bus evacuation. The plan wasn't implemented at this time, and from the article, they weren't sure if it would be implemented (they discuss the logistical problems inherent in such a plan, including getting drivers, the long passage out of the city to shelter during an evacuation, etc.)

Also, they opened the Superdome on Sunday morning. If you try to evacuate people the day before the storm hits and they get stuck in traffic on bridges over lakes or bayous as the storm begins to hit....that's big trouble. So instead of taking that risk, the city planned on focusing city resources on getting people to shelter at the Superdome.

More on Mayor Nagin and the schoolbus meme here and here.

This story only covers the tip of the iceberg. It is estimated by one pundit that there are more than 2,000 school buses in the state of Louisiana. I can't verify that number, but it's probably low. This means that there are significant other bus resources in the state, as each school district has many. These resources would be closer than FEMA attempting to bring in out of state buses. Apparently no attempt was made by the mayor or governor to employ any of these assets either.

There are significant additional bus resources in the state in the form of school buses. I don't know how many school districts there are, but each surely has some. That might provide an additional 2000 to 5000 buses.

My question is this... Is it really absurd to think that with a massive storm 3 days out a mayor responsible for so many couldn't at least check with some people and make sure their busses were undergoing repairs and attempt to get a fleet of busses ready to go in the event of the evacuation? Couldn't he do this during the voluntary evacuation, or the final evacuation?

I suppose my question about the busses is, is it that impossible to round up, in a Civil-Defense bullhorn style, several hundred people with CDL's, assume 2-3 per bus to keep the bus constantly running, and give them a map, destination, and pickup location... Something like every corner of multiple of 5 and multiple of 5...

I'm pretty amazed anyone thought they could spin the flooded busses as being a small deal.

How many more buses could they have brought in from Baton Rouge or other surrounding communities?

Leave it to a pinko to change the subject and feel triumphalist about it.

Something that it seems that few have noticed regarding the AP photo of those 205 school buses.

The shadows reveal that water there wasn't very deep. Those buses probably were undamaged at the time of the photo.

See furthur discussion at: www.aforkintheroad.blogspot.com

The Houston Chronicle also looked at this:

City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan.

Instead, local buses were used to ferry people from 12 pickup points to poorly supplied "shelters of last resort" in the city. An estimated 50,000 New Orleans households have no access to cars, Wilmot said.

Mtn. Girl -

The short answer is that the Governor is asking for services and equipment in her original memorandum but she is not ceding control of the use of those assets to the Federal Government.

Also, if you look through Blanco's list there are extensive references to equipment needed to deal with the aftermath, disaster response items such as 'debris removal'.

What's absent in the runup to landfall is preplanning and recogntion of her role in the process from Blanco. She fails to use her powers as the State's Chief Executive Officer, powers which she later cites in her Executive Orders the week following landfall, to do much of *anything* that prevented the dire situation in New Orleans immediately after Katrina's passing.

So, go ahead and read Blanco's letter from August 26th and note what she's asking for and find out who is going to be controlling the asset once it arrives. But then read Blanco's Executive Orders and her cites to the unlimited power she posseses to commandeer any and all private property in a state of emergency.

Heady stuff.

What's distressing is that Gov. Blanco uses this vast, established power to ask that other school districts create and send a list of available buses. Not the buses ... a list. And not 'pull the list out of the drawer, we need it now' but 'go out and create the list' type of stuff.

That's the sort of thing where a bit of preplanning on the part of the Mayor and Governor could have done much.

fwiw-further complicating the reporting of this story is that the department names of the agencies involved are similiar but very different.

There is the 'Department of Homeland Security' and the 'Homeland Security Department'

The former is the Feds which includes FEMA while the latter is part of the Louisiana State government.

And, Bill - New Orleans has over 100 public schools. It stretches belief to think that New Orleans School District had a total of 250 buses to service 100+ schools.

There may be some parsing going on with buses the district 'owned' and buses reserved under contract.

Regardless, all the buses in the City of New Orleans were subject to Mayor Nagin's authority, if he had chosen to exert it.

So, about the buses, tell me again what are you debunking? Hannity says that NOLA had 2000 buses, ThinkProgress says that there were 254... Well, there were 255... so you are debunking Hannity right? Hmmm...

The bus story is good - stick with it. Follow the money, as they say. Heads should roll.

Bill, you're just a liberal fellater.

Any conservative worth a damn would point to the LA department of transportation web site, which indicates that roughly 21,000 municipal buses of one sort or another are registered in the state, and within reach of Gov. Blanco. This is a much greater failure than Nagin's inability to call out a couple hundred school buses, and his sending home of the municipal mass transit drivers the day the storm hit.

You are clearly a traitor to the conservative cause, and in bed with both Soros, and Al Gore.

And what about the nearby air base? Just because 50% of it was wiped out, flattened, the hospital was flooded and 25 people killed, doesn't mean that Bush couldn't have pre-positioned hundreds of buses, helicopters, and trucks of food and water there. A 50% casualty rate is perfectly acceptable, you traitor to the conservative cause.

F***er!

/bizarro-world Atrios...

Plaquemines Parish successfully employed their emergency evacuation plan utilizing their school buses. This parish has only one four lane road that leads out of the parish. It also is the drop point for off shore Gulf energy workers.

Most of this parish is entirely under water. It's levees have made the flooding worse. They contemplated destorying their levees to alleviate the problem.

Despite all this, they still successfully employed their evacuation plan using school buses.

The question isn't the actual number of buses available but rather the fact that ZERO buses were used to evacuate anyone. As near as I have been able to determine, not a single person was evacuated in a publicly owned vehicle of any kind. The successful evacuation of 80% of the population of New Orleans was a purely private effort undertaken with no physical support from the state or city governments.

Clearly, this was a catastrophic failure of local government. If they had used at least some of the resources and got some people out their actions would be defensible but they did not even try.

In this case, it's "follow the buses". Well done Bill.

Also, New Orleans Parish isn't the only school district in the New Orleans metro area. According to another Times Picayune article (on a completely different subject), they include Jefferson Parish, St. John the Baptist Parish, St. Tammany, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Plaquemines parishes.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/112314077032590.xml

If one school district alone had ~250 buses, how many more did the other six have?

That Nagin utterly failed his duty is obvious to anyone paying attention to the facts. I wonder that he was voted in - not by merit of ability, but for some other agenda. If we continue to hire our leaders (and argue the same tired arguments) based on personal agendas, how long until this tragedy is repeated?

"Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance, Individual and Household Program (IHP) assistance, Special Needs Program assistance, and debris removal."

Direct from the Governor's second request on August 27.

The president enacted a state of emergency under Title V of the Stafford Act. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html Read it here:

http://www.fema.gov/library/stafact.shtm#sec419

Here is a section of it:

1. (including personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and managerial, technical, and advisory services) in support of State and local assistance efforts;

2. coordinate all disaster relief assistance (including voluntary assistance) provided by Federal agencies, private organizations, and State and local governments;

3. provide technical and advisory assistance to affected State and local governments for--
1. the performance of essential community services;
2. issuance of warnings of risks and hazards;
3. public health and safety information, including dissemination of such information;
4. provision of health and safety measures; and
5. management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety; and

4. assist State and local governments in the distribution of medicine, food, and other consumable supplies, and emergency assistance.

(Pub. L. 93-288, title IV, § 402, as added Pub. L. 100-707, title I, § 106(a)(3), Nov. 23, 1988, 102 Stat. 4696.)

She admitted the state couldn't handle it on it's own from the beginning. The president replied, ok, let us help. They didn't live up to the promise.

There were 254 (255?) city school buses.

There were probably a couple of hundred more "school" buses privately owned and under contract to the school district.

There were several hundred transit buses.

What about the school buses from the surrounding parishes? 400? 500?

What about Greyhound?
NO being a tourist trap, there were certainly a few hundred other private tourist buses.

Seems Hannity wasn't far wrong with his 2,000 buses estimate.

What about the Amtrac train that went in to NO to remove Amtrac personel and equipment. They offered several hundred seats on this train for evacuation of citizens, and the City refused the offer.

Because of the nofollow tags this is all a bit useless and search engines might not be able to figure out what this page is about, but:

There were 364 fixed-route NORTA buses.

In June, a school board meeting discussed how to use the buses to evacuate.

It defies rational thought that to this day people are blaming Nagin's failure to use every available asset to help his people evacuate on the Federal Government.

Has _anyone_ on the Left heard of leadership? How many disaster movies have we seen where the women and children are loaded onto any available moving vehicle? In this case 255/254 of them from the school district alone.

Usually, in the movies, the heroic mayor notices the unused assets and in the driving rain sees the last of his charge off. In NOLA's case that would require that the Mayor _actually be there_ and not in Baton Rouge getting face time.

1 picture of 255 buses is worth 1000 mtn girl words, "trying" to debunk.

There is going to be heads a rolling the mayor of NO and the governor of Louisinaa is two of them

Compare those two "leaders" against America's mayor, Rudi and Governor of Florida Jeb Bush - not even on the same planet as those two. Who would you want taking care of your city and state?

The real tragedy of the unused school buses is not that they were not used in the 24 hours prior to the storm's arrival (in case they got trapped on bridges or the highway as the storm hit) but that they CONTINUED to sit there unused after the storm passed but before the flood wall break flooded the parking area they are in and the area around the Superdome and Convention Center. It was during this time that Jabbar Gibson took one of the buses and loaded it with 70 people (some from the Superdome) and drove it himself to the Astrodome in Houston.

You can claim there is good reason not to have used the buses in the 24-hours prior to the storm, but there is no legitimate excuse that anyone can make for not using the buses in the 24-hours after the storm passed but before the flood had risen to 80% of the city. Remember that trained drivers are obviously not needed as it was a trained driver driving a Greyhound-style bus that overturned on the way to Houston.

"If you try to evacuate people the day before the storm hits and they get stuck in traffic on bridges over lakes or bayous as the storm begins to hit....that's big trouble. So instead of taking that risk, the city planned on focusing city resources on getting people to shelter at the Superdome."

By this logic, the 700 buses that were requested from FEMA by the City but allegedly weren't delivered would not have made any difference.

Bush bashers aren't even coming close to making sense at this juncture. The city of New Orleans had an emergency management plan that called for an evacuation of those without transportation.
At the time the mandatory evacuation order was
issued on Aug. 28th, the city had over 500 school and transit buses available Within the city limits. Nothing Media Matters or any other liberal knucklehead has come up with has contradicted that fact. That is because it is a fact.

It is true that the evacuation of 80% of the population of NO was a remarkable feat. However, it is also true that the city had the means to evacuate approximately 20,000 people at a time with just its own bus fleet. With just the city buses, NO could have evacuated 20,000 people at a time. Baton Rouge is approximately 75 miles from NO. That means, even with traffic, they could have made 2 or 3 runs each in the 20 hours or so between the time that Nagin finally ordered the mandatory evacuation and the time that Katrina made landfall. That would have been enough to evacuate the entire Super Dome and then some. Traffic would have been bad, but the highway patrol could have reserved one lane of the six lanes out of town for the city bus evacuation.

Furthermore, the state apparently has over 21,000 buses registered with its Dept. of Motor Vehicles [http://www.bts.gov/publications/state_transportation_profiles/louisiana/html/fast_facts.html]. The Governor issued an executive order comandeering all buses in the state on September 1st. She could have issued her order on Aug. 27th and sent them to New Orleans.

No matter how badly liberals want it to be so, neither Bush nor FEMA are responsible for the failure of the city government to execute its own evacuation plan. NO had the resources to evacuate the vast majority of those stranded and, if it had started on Saturday like President Bush asked, they could have evacuated everyone except those who actively refused to leave.

FEMA did more than it was ever intended to do in the short run and now it's doing everything it was intended to do in the long run.

Mtn. Girl sure spins the facts.

The reality of Blanco's response is this:
She issued the standard state of emergency order before the hurricane; the White House followed suit.

That doesn't in any way give the Feds power to seize total control, especially with regards to military assets. In fact, there have been several articles detailing Blanco's resistance to turn over control to the Feds for political reasons.

In fact, here's the relevant story line:
"Blanco has refused to sign over control of the National Guard to the federal government and has turned to a Clinton administration official, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief James Lee Witt, to help run relief efforts. "

Here's more from the WaPo:
"Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans," the Washington Post reported in Sunday editions.

Gov. Blanco's office rejected the request, the paper said - concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law.

Here's what the NYTimes reported:

Here, Blanco decided to keep control—a decision that hamstrung the Administration legally, as we shall see.As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.

While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

So I guess Mtn. Girl refuses to believe those wonderful liberal papers the WaPo and NYT when even they report that Blanco blew it.

Hah! I can't beleive that the Govenor and Mayor will not be held responsible for this but that is what will happen. Hopefully the voters will know better next time.

For my next comments I will offer my bonifides: I am a retired Army NCO with extensive experience in plans and operations including emergency deployment and contingency planning.

Nagin said earlier this week that even if he wanted to use the buses he didn't have any drivers to man them. This very comment is tantamount to an admission that he and the govenour are criminally negligent. IF you knew YEARS before that the plan included uses buses to move people you should have had the drivers standing by ready to go.

Of course the whinning left will say that you can't force those drivers to work in the face of a hurricane. Perhaps you are correct but you sure can use the National Guard to drive those buses. THose good men and women volunteered for just such a thing. A good percentage of the Guard troops are drivers by their military specialty, in other words they drive for the Army. Additionally every soldier capable of driving could have been trained and licensed to drive. The Guard could have been tasked to do this as part of their support mission.

A unit I supported in the 90's needed to travel half way across the state of PA to train. We used to charter buses to get there until the Clinton Administration cut the budget. What did we do? We tasked each unit to have at least 10% of their strength licensed to drive school buses that the military owned. BTW the military trained the drivers and then trained some of those drivers to train other soldiers to drive. Problem identified and problem solved. 10% of the available strength of the LA Nat Guard would be about 700 drivers or enough drivers to provide 3 drivers for each bus in the flooded parking lot allowing them to run around the clock. IF the Mayor and Govenour had followed their plan and started the evac on Friday then New Orleans could have been emptied by Monday morning.

"Communications were completely screwy."

You're ----ing right they were. Federal aid was requested by barred from the state because Blanco didn't want to relinquish any authority to Bush. I guess maybe she thought it would be the beginning of the HalliburtonCoOilBushitler coup of the states, but it seems to me that if she cared about the lives of her citizens she might have taken the risk.

"The only accessible route out of the city was made inaccessible by police from neighboring cities."

Bush's fault, of course. Well, you know, he's a Nazi and the neighbors are Nazis. Same difference.

"People were dying, no one seemed to be coming--and no one did come for 5 days."

The only way they could get in was to temporarily overthrow the governor and hope she didn't throw another hissy fit and draw blood. And could you imagine how you and yours would be bleating if Bush actually exercised emergency powers...in an emergency? We'd have a civil war.

"You're focusing on a moot point to cast doubt elsewhere for the mere purpose of protecting.....what, who, and why?"

A conspiracy....too vast for your mind to understand. Actually, he's protecting Nagin and Blanco if anything by not going outside this specific incident of incompetence.

"I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance...management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety..."

Yep. All very good stuff. Perhaps you're not familiar with FEMA's 72 to 96 hours rule. That's how long any area must prepare to go without federal aid. They usually arrive near the 72 mark.

Considering the disaster did not fully unfold until the dams broke Monday and aid arrived in bulk late Thursday, despite being blocked for political reasons, there isn't much to be surprised about.

"She admitted the state couldn't handle it on it's own from the beginning. The president replied, ok, let us help. They didn't live up to the promise."

As Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

It is not possible to infiltrate a bean-counting reactionary organization like FEMA with racism in 2005. There is no political identity in its rank and file and it is impossible that directives from anyone regarding race could have spread through the company. Thus, the reality is they were either unprepared or blocked by politicians. Not that unprobably, really. Considering what we've heard about Nagin's whitewashing and Blanco's crying while making demands, (a governor! Crying in a disaster! Go ahead, say something about gender, I dare you to set women's rights back 50 years.) I think the latter is more likely.

MountainGirl:

Over 80% of the city was evacuated, that's a major feat for any city.

But doesn't that represent individual efforts by civilians? Did the government of the city of New Orleans actually, physically, evacuate anyone, or just give the order?

Then New Orleans waited for promised help to arrive for those who were not so fortunate to get out in time.

And that's exactly the problem. The city government mostly just waited, and complained, and dithered, and avoided competent action and responsibility. (And much the same happened at the state level.) And the buses are the perfect evidence of (and symbol of) the huge and critical failure at the local level.

So... here's a stupid question.

How were the 100 buses sent by FEMA employed?

Before the hurricane, there were apparently 21,000 buses registered in Louisiana, though some of these would have been privately owned. Wish I remembered where I found the link.

http://www.bts.gov/publications/state_transportation_profiles/louisiana/html/fast_facts.html

I also remember reading that the Governor signed the required authorization to release Louisiana school buses for use in evacuating NO on Thursday after the hurricane - I don't remember anything about use of Louisiana transit buses. I believe that the official evacuation plan also allowed for private vehicles to be commandeered, if necessary.

There is also some evidence that Mayor Nagin and others had come up with an "evacuation plan" different from that which had been submitted to the State and FEMA earlier - a plan to tell people that they were on their own in finding transportation out of the city. I guess maybe it hadn't been finalized when the hurricane hit.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/new_orleanss_hu.html

"3. provide technical and advisory assistance to affected State and local governments for--5. management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety"

Mountain Girl, you don't even get your own citation correct. This request specifically asks for "technical and advisory assistance" for "management, control" etc. This does not ask the federal government to take control of the relief efforts. It merely asks for technical and advisory help, whatever that is. In fact, as late as September 2nd/3rd, Blanco was still refusing to cede control to the federal government.[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html].

Facts obviously don't matter to Bush bashers.

Shannon Love: I have to correct you. One school bus was used to evacuate displaced people.

20 year old Jabbour Gibson commandeered a school bus as he witnessed looting and shootings in his N.O. neighborhood. He loaded 100 strangers onto the bus and drove 7 hours straight to the Astrodome.

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/09/jabbor_gibson_a.shtml

Mtn. Grl: The key info in Blanco's order.

and that SUPPLEMENTARY Federal assistance is necessary to save lives,

My supplementary guess could be 100% accurate that Governor Blanco did not mean the State and City should do nothing with their resources.

"3. provide technical and advisory assistance to affected State and local governments for--5. management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety"

Mountain Girl, you don't even get your own citation correct. This request specifically asks for "technical and advisory assistance" for "management, control" etc. This does not ask the federal government to take control of the relief efforts. It merely asks for technical and advisory help, whatever that is. In fact, as late as September 2nd/3rd, Blanco was still refusing to cede control to the federal government.[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html].

Facts obviously don't matter to Bush bashers.

Mtn. Girl,

She admitted the state couldn't handle it on it's own from the beginning. The president replied, ok, let us help. They didn't live up to the promise.

Okay, I agree in some respects, but asking the day before landfall to get out 100,000 people is the sign of somebody who is blindingly incompetent. That you can't see this speaks to your own inability to see this clearly.

On your blog you wrote:

Now here's my question: If the president knew the gravity of the situation and ordered federal assistance, why, when it was known by Tuesday FEMA was not responding the way they had been ordered, did he not mobilize another course of action by the military or Homeland Security? Our military is trained to be extremely efficient in the event of disaster. The U.S.S. Bataan was even waiting off the coast with doctors, a full shelter, food, and water, yet they waited for the president to give the order to assist.

Been drinking the Krugman Kool-Aid again. The U.S.S. Bataan began operations on Tuesday regarding hurricane Katrina on Tuesday August 29th. Did you know that most navy ships have their own homepages?

From the Bataan's website,

GULF OF MEXICO – The multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) began service Tuesday night and continued on Wednesday as the Maritime Disaster Service Coordinator for the U.S. Navy's role in the Hurricane Katrina search and rescue efforts in the immediate New Orleans area. Embarked helicopter squadrons have moved over 200 stranded personnel in two days of flying.

Crewmembers from Helicopter Sea Control Squadron 28 based out of Naval Station Norfolk and Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15 based out of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi launched three MH-53 Sea Dragons and two MH-60 Knight Hawks Tuesday night and again at daylight Wednesday to help out where they are needed.

The crews flew off Tuesday night towards New Orleans and were tasked by the on-scene rescue coordinators. “Our first mission was to provide food and water and to take some people to a safer haven and to help with the levee by providing sandbags,” said AS2(AW/NAC) Johnny Ramirez, MH-53 Aircrewman for HM-15. “We weren't able to complete our assigned mission Tuesday night because it got too dark and it was too risky to land anywhere with all of the water and power lines. Instead, we just flew Tuesday night to survey the area.”

On Wednesday, a crew from HM-15 assisted with lifting numerous stranded citizens in a very short period of time. “My crew and I airlifted nearly 100 people from the roof of a building and onto a field where ambulances and busses were waiting for them,” said LCDR David Hopper, detachment Officer in Charge of HM-15. “Ten of those who we rescued couldn't even walk; my crewmen had to carry them.”

Google is your friend and will keep you from looking like such a complete ignoramous.

During an interview with Sean Hannity (on FOXNews), Jesse Jackson said Nagin shouldn't be held responsible for not using the buses because - to paraphrase - what's the point in putting people in buses when there's no place to drive them?

Uh, like, maybe, to avoid dying and because shelter can be found after escaping the hurricane. Ridiculous.

It's this kind of intellectual dishonesty that the Left will continue to advance, just as long as they despise the man sitting in the White House.

Quilly Mammoth: In the movie "Volcano", the Mayor or elected leadership was nowhere to be found. I believe they did use school buses in the movie. However, they were used to be melted by the lava to create a temporary barrier while they used fire hoses to try and cool the lava into rock.

Secondly, you can no longer just depict women in disasters as being loaded into vehicles for their own safety. The women have to be killed in the script if they men are killed in the script. They must play the a key role or THE lead role in disaster management.

BTW, great movie if you like watching paint dry.

If NO or LA officials waited too long to decide to bring in buses from other cities, they would hit the one way flow of traffic out of the city and not be able to even bring them into NO. Therefore, they should have rounded up the NO school and city buses (which was in their emergency plans) sooner than later to bus people out, not depending on other parishes or cities. And if local officials chose to wait until after the hurricane, which they did, they had to depend upon the roads and bridges not being damaged, which they were, to bring in buses. Each city is responsible for their own plans and implementing them in a responsible and timely manner. Obviously NO missed the boat and the buses.

I think "Mnt. Girl's" comments should be taken seriously. I am not sure what is meant by "beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments." Does the request from the Governor on Aug. 27 imply total inactiveness from that day on the part of the State and local governments? By replying that the Federal government was not active fast enough would avoid my question.
I would really like to know what preparations the State and local governments in hurricane prone areas had thought about and organized, already having experienced hurricanes in the past. For example, how did Mississippi State and local governments prepare and deal with the storm? If they were more successful, how and why?

The City and School distict are the owners and operators of a fleet of vehicles and they didn't even try to protect their assets and get the vehicles to high ground. How may private truck fleets were left to soak in the flood? The pictures show a complete lack of responsibility on the part of those city officals. Lots of managers in the Equipment Management and Transit Departments should be fired. How much do you think it would have cost to drive them out of harms way compared to the cost of repairs that will be needed and probably billed to the taxpayers. And if they would have called the drivers to work, on the way out the gate, dispatch could have said - oh, by the way, if you see anybody that needs a ride, pick them up. What a bunch of morons.

One of the other excuses they use is "Where could we get drivers on such short notice". This obviates the use of normal drivers, who should have had as part of thier training a disaster routing plan, and a signed agreement to make themselves available in disaster situations, particularly the ever so predictable floods. Failing this, Blanco had plenty of National Guards persons that could have manned the busses. It is beyond me how any Governor and Mayor with even an ounce of integrity could have failed to have a fully operational plan not only in place, but thoroughly practiced as well. This would include pre-notification of the plan and practice runs using at least handbills and flyers in the areas housing the most likely to need support in an evacuation. FEMA responded beautifully and at previously unheard of speed.
This is all clearly just old fashioned Bush Bashing...at its worst.

Bill,

C'mon, first you would have Mayor Nagin calling for buses and drivers and the governor as well as handling tasks we all know he was handling prior to this catastrophe. Then others on this blog also would have him calling school districts and public transit companies across the state to find drivers to ferry in buses. Then coordinating efforts to evacuate folks including those who have no place to go and don't want to leave?
I know it's easy to monday morning quarterback and it's got to be fun to ferret out facts that somehow make the Commander in Chief come out clean but FACE IT! FEMA is designed to handle EMERGENCIES that's why it's called FEMA. They failed to do so. Horribly. The mayor of Louisiana is not. I highly doubt my mayor or yours for that matter would anticipate total destruction and handle it efficiently.
While I agree that the buses should have been used to evacuate people, had FEMA done it's job coordination between state local and federal officials may have saved even more lives.

The City of New Orleans, like all major cities, had an evacuation plan, to be used in case of a disaster.
I understand, and have heard nothing to dispute it, that this plan called for the use of city and school buses to evacuate helpless people and those without transportation.
It is apparent that there were at least 200 New Orleans school buses available for this service on Sunday before the storm, and hundreds more city buses as well. Even after the storm there were probably hundreds of additional buses in neighboring parishes that were unaffected by the levees breaking, and hence potentially available.
So the question arises: why were these buses not brought into use?
After the storm, the state of disorganization of city government caused by the evacuation of many key participants and decision makers, as well as the near total breakdown of communications obviously played a role. City government was clearly overstrained and paralysed.
But why were hospitals and nursing homes not evacuated on Sunday, by bus, according to the plan?
The only answer I have heard supposedly came from the mayor, who is reputed to have said that there were not enough volunteers to run the buses.
This raises the key question which I have not seen addressed anywhere: what steps were taken to arrange in advance for bus drivers in case of emergency needs for them?
Were there plans for assigning regular drivers to emergency duties?
Why did these plans, if they existed, fail?
What steps were taken to seek volunteer drivers?
Were regular drivers solicited to volunteer in advance? Who was asked to volunteer? When>
Who was made aware of the need for drivers?
So far I have heard no answers, which leaves open the possibility that nobody was aware that volunteers were needed, and the lack of volunteers was entirely due to this ignorance.
Perhaps there is a better explanation.
Without one, the most reasonable guess is that the warnings about this storm were so dire and the voluntary evacuation was so successful, that there was nobody left in city government with the sense to organize anything, even the recruitment of volunteer bus drivers.
There is a novel by Joseph Conrad, I think it is "Victory", in which the hero as a young man is the captain of a shipload of pilgrims in the Indian Ocean, and his ship founders in a storm. He and his mates abandon ship and abandon the helpless passengers, and he is disgraced, because someone in his absence takes charge and saves the ship. He spends the rest of his life atoning for this act of cowardice.
Is this the basic story of the New Orleans scandal? the heroes here being those in the hospitals nursing homes and boats buses and helicopters who saved as many as they did.
Is my timetable wrong? The evacuation was supposed to take place on Sunday; the storm hit on Monday; the levee did not break until Monday evening. It is awful to have city government (and law and order) break down after a disaster; how can one describe a situation in which city government becomes paralysed even before the disaster happens?
How can this be explained?

Fact of the matter is, 72 hours before the Hurricane made landfall, the Mayor, and the Governor both knew it was going to hit New Orleans, as at least a catagory 4. On New Orleans webpage, is the hurricane response list, as put together by the City of New Orleans. On the webpage, it says that if there is a cat 3 or higher hurricane that is going to hit the city, the MAYOR, has the direct responsibility, as delegated by the Governor of the state, to evacuate the city. This is supposed to be accomplished by using all means of public transit, for those unable to leave on their own. This was not done, or even started until Bush called the Governor himself and begged her to evacuate that city. That happened 48 hours before landfall. Local officials did not use their disaster plan that was already in place, and we ended up with the situation we have now. NO amount of spin is going to change that fact folks. The Feds response was not even close to the best, BUT the evacuation of the city, and the use of all the buses available, was the direct responsibility of the mayor. The major problem that everyone is whining about, is the people left behind, and the feds dismal response. I'll just go ahead and postulate that if the mayor had followed his own disaster plan, the vast majority of those people would not have been left behind. Lookm it up, do your research, and try to spin that. I dare ya.

I guess you aren't an english teacher.

"The president replied, ok, let us help. They didn't live up to the promise."

Who does "they" refer to? The president? Wouldn't it be "he" then? "us"? Who is "us"? FEMA? Promise? what promise? Is the Stafford Act a "promise"?

If what you are pointing out is correct, then it appears the state of LA had absolutely no clue or plan with regards to an emergency such as a Cat5 hurricane and the state needed Federal assistance immediately. It's like LA is a a young boy who is having a problem with his algebra homework and becuase he can, lets his Dad to it all for him.

Pity your students...social studies?

It's comical to me how certain people revert to childish name calling during an honest trade of ideas.

What some fail to see, is many of you quote from sources where you hope others have done the research for you. Google all you like, but when you read from any media outlet you are letting them do the work for you (including thinking). Check the government sites for yourself and read them objectively.

I'm not jumping up and down in support of Nagin, Blanco, or anyone else. We do a terrible injustice to the entire situation by focusing on school buses that, if utilized, still would have left thousands in need of basic care and in harms way. The local government wasn't capable of handling such a mass exodus. The feds said they'd help, yet still many suffered.
Would the number been less if the state evacuation plan (put together after March 3, by FEMA and Homeland Security in conjunction with the state) used those buses? Possibly. I do know one figure head official (Mayor Nagin) did not cause the suffering of so many. I do know the feds did not respond in a timely manner. I do know the feds help put in place an evacuation plan and enacted the response plan that would ensure their help.

As far as the U.S. Bataan. Did you also see the interview with the Captain where he said he had been given the order to "stand down"? After beginning rescue maneuvers they had to sit idle off-shore with all of their supplies waiting for the word to move? Check your sources more carefully.

I'd like to offer another explanation for the unused buses and the non-evacuation of the rest of NO.

I do not think the NO mayor, the governor, or anyone in authority down there TRULY believed that a major levee failure could occur.

They cannot say that now, however, because too many high-placed Democrats/Liberals instantly and very publicly derided Bush when he said something along just those lines.

If Katrina did all it did and more, but did not fail a levee to flood NO and KEEP it flooded, few or none of all these things (buses, Superdome accomodations, etc.) would have mattered. The water would rise, then fall in a day or so. Even the Superdome folk would have emerged and gone home or elsewhere, and everyone would have smiled, applied for lots of Fed money, and "normal" life would have resumed (including maneuverings to skim, divert, or redirect those same funds).

But the levee failed.

I'm going to be blunt. The vast majority of the complainers don't know what the heck they're talking about.

Last year, my family and I survived a direct hit from the left eye wall of Cat 4 Hurricane Charley. It took the authorities 3-4 days to get lots of food and water to us. For those first 3-4 days, we were greatly inconvenienced. It took another few days for an efficient distribution system of relief supplies to work. It took about three weeks to get power restored. It took about the same time for the water and sewage system to be usable again. And we had no flooding.

In our county, we had just as many people greatly inconvenienced as did New Orleans. All of our hospitals were significantly damaged. Cell phone service was out. Water and sewage was out. Electrical power was gone.

The complainers are really focused upon the 3-4 days of inconvenience that most NO poor people suffered before they were evacuated to shelters. Please excuse me if I shout, "So what!" They are still alive. And I bet that if you asked them about it now, they would all gladly trade their 72 hours of hell for their lives.

The unused buses are merely symptoms of a poorly devised first response by the local authorities. To use a sports cliche, Nagin choked in the biggest game of his life. He needed to act by noon on Saturday. By dinner time on the 27th, it was too late because the time for a safe escape had dropped to less than 24 hours. He finally acted on that Sunday. By then, those buses would have been good for only one trip to Baton Rouge. He knew that. That's why he designated the Superdome as the refuge of last resort.

Blanco then compounded the evacuation problem by not asserting her authority immediately. She was the biggest hinderance to the early relief effort.

Based upon my experience, the Katrina relief effort has exceeded my expectations. I thought that it would take a week for the first big relief convoys to get to NO. It took 3-4 days. And this occurred despite all of the real, imagined and exaggerated snafus.

So, where were all of you complainers last year when my home was destroyed? Where were you when it took 3-4 days to get me food and water? From my perspective, There were three major differences between us and NO: 1) we didn't flood; 2) most of us aren't African-American; and, 3) most of us voted for Bush in 2000. That's why I view most of the complainers as a bunch of political hypocrites. Is that blunt enough?

Just curious to find out another fact I haven't seen mentioned....

Had school started yet this year in the school district? The implications about availability of drivers would follow...

How many school children are transported by bus on a normal school day? That is, how many people has the system proven it can efficiently move in the short span of the couple hours before school starts each day?

People talk about using the Superdome as a collection point - I submit that that's an outdated model. In the future planning, we should consider simply using the established routes/stops for pick up - go to where the people are. Think distributed networks, not central control.

How did they define "broken down"? Was it a busted radio or a engine that won't run? How bad does a bus have to be broken for you not to use it to transport people who will otherwise DIE? In the military we call "Busted radio" type problems "Partially Mission Capable". That is, usable in emergencies, but not for routine use.

Regarding the bus fiasco in New Orleans.

In the British War Museum is a small sailboat. About 17 foot, one sail. This piddly little craft made three trips across the open sea to Dunkirk in June 1940, saving the lives of nine members of the British Expeditionary Force.

In September, 1914, the French used 600 taxis to ferry 6000 Paris reservists to the First battle of the Marne.

Buses? They could have used taxis, police cars, delivery trucks, bicycles, road graders, postal trucks, 18-wheelers, or anything else that could move under its own power.

Drivers? Absolutely no skill is required to drive a school bus at ten miles per hour. Fill the bus with evacuees then ask for a volunteer. Simple.

The New Orleans officals lacked the will, not the way.

All your bus are belong to us.

MTN Girl says the mayor was a "figure head"......sounds suspiciously RACIST to me.

In her opinion, any govenor can wash their hands of responsibility in a crisis as long as they can point to a communication to the Feds that admits they are incompetent.

Considering Blanco is a woman, this sounds suspiciously SEXIST to me.

Before we condemn Bush or the local officials here so quickly maybe, just maybe, we should look at the history of other disasters (like Rick's example above) and THEN compare the response of locals and FEMA.

My opinion is that Blanco and Nagrin were betting the storm would be like Ivan...no biggie. Politically, they would have gotten splattered if they forced everyone to vacate by force and the storm wasn't significant. As it stood, before the levees broke, it looked like their bet would be a winner. That's why Blanco held off, she didn't want to look "weak" and then get blamed for some heavy handed, sloppy, federal response.
They lost the bet. Unfortunate for some individuals who chose to stay and die. Very bad for those who couldn't vacate. My concern would be focused on the government action that did not adequately address those that had little ability to move themselves. That knowledge would never be held at the federal level. That is what Nagrin should be held accountable for, not looking after the weakest in his population, first.

I keep throwing this link into various conversations. This is from WWL TV, New Orleans, Sunday, August 28:

Of interest (aside from the flat out statements that there would be limited supplies at the Superdome, and that you should BYO, and that people were "discouraged" from going there) is the fact that RTA busses were picking people up from 12 different points around the city to take them to other shelters. Mike McConnell, on WLW radio, reported that these busses were not full - that many of them left nearly empty. (To be fair, I have not seen verification of that anywhere on the net.)

Folks, all this finger pointing really ain't getting us anywhere. My opinion - the vast majority of the 20% who did not evacuate wouldn't have done so even if a damn bus parked right smack dab in their driveway.

JAG,

I think you're right. Nagin and Blanco were BETTING that the hurricane would not be any big deal. Like Nagin was quoted as saying when questioned for sending police officers to Las Vegas for R&R, "New Orleans is a party town. Get over it."

Nagin dithered on Saturday while waiting for city attorneys to decide whether possible lawsuits from hotels (for ordering a mandatory evacuation) made it unwise for him to order a mandatory evacuation. And even when the evacuation was ordered, hotels were exempted. Incidentally, does this bring "tort reform" to anyone's mind? In what other circumstances are people deterred from good, but legally or fiscally risky, actions by the fear of lawsuits?

Fortunately for everyone, Bush gave Nagin and Blanco political cover by personally appealing for a mandatory evacuation on Sunday morning, which Blanco made sure she mentioned in the press release.

Blanco failed the city and state by not accepting the offer for help from the federal government when it was offered.

Then, several days later, when the E Coli warnings started going out and the mayor wanted to get everyone evacuated, she told him she wasn't going to order that and said she needed time to think it over.

And as for the feds not acting quickly enough... They took FIVE days to get to Homestead, Florida after Andrew hit. They got down to help after Katrina in THREE.

Well they didn't complete the plan, and one day before the hurricane is not the time to try.

The next question is why, if the Superdome was designated as a shelter, there were no supplies laid in to support the people?
Who sent people to the Convention Center and then just left them there?

jt007,

"If you try to evacuate people the day before the storm hits and they get stuck in traffic on bridges over lakes or bayous as the storm begins to hit....that's big trouble. So instead of taking that risk, the city planned on focusing city resources on getting people to shelter at the Superdome."

By this logic, the 700 buses that were requested from FEMA by the City but allegedly weren't delivered would not have made any difference.

They requested the buses on Sunday. It's obvious that the buses wouldn't appear that day. So these buses were likely requested for evacuation post-Katrina.

As for people saying that they just should have moved the buses out of harms way, that itself would have taken hours for each bus. Go west out of N.O. and you have miles of swamp before you hit an exit, go north or northeast and you have to cross Lake Pontchartrain. Considering traffic during an evacuation, just doing this would have taken hours.

Also, the city evacuation plan involved taking people to shelter nort of Lake Pontchartrain. That's taking people out of N.O. and into the path of the eye of the storm. The evacuation plan was scrapped (I'd guess for this reason or an inability to get drivers), and the city focused their efforts on getting people to the Dome.

And I'm not sure how people can criticize this. Once you take a bus out of the city and get far enough away to shelter, you can't use it again...not enough time to come back. If buses are used intra-city to shuttle people back and forth to the Superdome, then you can use a bus multiple times in getting people to relative safety. Using buses to take people to the Dome saved more lives than using buses to get people out of the city.

I don't see a trackback, so I will post this from my response post.

I have not seen it in print, so I can't provide a link, but I heard Nagin say the reason he asked FEMA for Greyhound busses rather than using the school buses and transit buses at his disposal was that the Greyhound buses had more comfortable seats. He was content to leave people in the Superdome for days without food or water (which the Red Cross wanted to deliver), and force them to wait for a bus with comfortable seats.

As far as the U.S. Bataan. Did you also see the interview with the Captain where he said he had been given the order to "stand down"?

--NO, can you please provide a source to this "interview"??
I do know they said they followed the storm into shore.

What is funny about mtgirl's comments is she seems to be implying it was ok that they didn't use the buses, but FEMA instead should have, becasue the Governor, pursuant to the Stafford Act, asked for a Federal Disaster Declaration.

People were dying, no one seemed to be coming--and no one did come for 5 days.

You are utterly clueless.

"Uh, like, maybe, to avoid dying and because shelter can be found after escaping the hurricane. Ridiculous."

It's this kind of intellectual dishonesty that the Left will continue to advance, just as long as they despise the man sitting in the White House."

That might be the most absurd thing I've ever read. Find shelter AFTER a hurricane blows through? Don't you think it's kinda, sorta important to find shelter BEFORE the hurricane? You know - sustained 150 mile per hour winds, 200 mph gusts, tornadoes springing up, falling trees and power lines and swirling debris and all that stuff.

If my choices are the Superdome and sitting on a school bus, I think I'd rather take shelter in the Dome and hope for the best.

Supposing too few regular bus drivers could have been recruited (they say the regular drivers, mostly women, refused out of fear of likely passengers) and a few volunteers showed up and drove the buses--but they weren't "qualified." Imagine the class action lawsuits if buses wrecked. Next time they'll probably write regulations that specify that such volunteers must attend orientation classes--like those volunteer responders that FEMA first sent to Atlanta to get sexual harrassment training before being allowed in NO.

Let me see if I get this---

1. In an Emergency, the President should assume dictatorial powers to protect citizens from harm because Local authorities are clearly unable to do so.

2. President Bush is such an incompetent "chimp" he couldn't lead a group of children to a Chocolate Factory.

3. Therefore President Bush failed because he didn't do what he was clearly "incapable" of doing.

4. Local authorities succeeded because they recognized their inability to act and turned the matter over to someone "incapable" of acting.

Did I miss something?

What did Blanco see the day before the storm that convinced her that state and local authorities didn't have the wherewithal to handle the storm that she could not have seen the year before and forfeited her responsibility then? Other than the fact that Mayor Nagin could not execute the "plan" that supposedly existed. As Mountain Girl pointed out, there were many obstacles to evacuating the helpless, therefore the Mayor of New Orleans couldn't be expected to do it, even though he had developed a plan that recognized and provided for solving those same obstacles. Didn't he?

In Police work, there's a well known fact that the guilty often place themselves between the police and the thing they're guilty of. For example, if you're running an illegal gin disstillery in the backyard, when the police arrive, you tend subconciously to put yourself between them and the still.

Hmmm... So where was Mayor on the day of and after the disaster. I recall on a radio show blasting everyone else about their failures.

Sounds like the in-between position to me.

Wonder what he really knows. Personally, I can drive a bus. During an emergency, anyone who can drive can drive a bus.

right?

Lots of good comments on both sides. I however do not think that the highway patrol would have closed one lane of traffic so the buses could come back for a second trip. This would negate that hypothesis.There needs to be more investigation done. Especially if people could get to the superdome which they thought was safe and could have been with a little extra supplies and protection. Why would anyone who survived the storm leave before the levees broke?

"I need 500 buses, man," Mayor Nagin told WWL Radio (New Orleans). "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here...I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

----later----

NBC's Dateline / Stone Phillips: "What was mobilized? I mean were National Guard troops in position. Were helicopters standing by? Were buses ready to take people away?"

Mayor Nagin: "No. None of that."

NBC's Dateline / Stone Phillips: "Why is that?"

Mayor Nagin: "I dont know. That is a question for somebody else."

----present----

I have to ask thinkingwomansfishwife -- where has Mayor Nagin stepped up and accepted even one iota of responsibility?

Ranting Tommy...
"Bungler in Chief"? Only in the hate filled lefts fantasy world. President Bush compares very well to previous American Presidents in many areas. He is far from perfect, but he a good man and is doing a good (not perfect) job. If the mainstream media would stop lying about him (plastic turkey, Dan Rather/Mary Mapes, Michael Moore) I am sure many more people would like him. I have personally met three people who think Michael Moore's film was a documentary, instead of the propaganda it was. Al Jazera showed it on the 9/11 anniversary, thanks Mikey for "supporting the troops". Stop the hate, Bush is every citizens President, and if I can support the good things Carter did, and there were some, you can treat the Presdient with respect.

NewYorker- your post, my friend, is a thing of beauty. Brilliant synopsis of the lefty newthink regarding Katrina.

Whoever wrote this: "The mayor of Louisiana is not..."

That, my friend, is an example of idiocy. But in your view, doubtless Bush is the grinning eejit....right.

Gov. Blanco's requests for assistance are for exactly that, ASSISTANCE. Just because she asks for help and the feds agree to help her does not absolve her of the underlying duty to do everything she can to manage the crisis.

The left is spinning feverishly over the buses because they don't want to admit publicly what they know in their hearts is true. A Democrat screwed up!

In 2004 New Orleans ran a "wargame" scenario about this very crisis. Out of it came a plan on what to do.

No one followed the plan, including the Feds, the State or the City. The left wants to focus on the feds to the near exclusion of the failures of the State and City.

But the basic indisputable fact is that if the city and state had followed their own plan before the storm then more people would be alive today, and the SuperDome tragedy would not have occurred.

The buses are simply tangible evidence of that failure. As much as the left wants to spin it. If the mayor had ordered the evacuation on Saturday morning instead of Sunday morning then they could have used 500 buses to transport the 25,000 people who were in the SuperDome out of the city.

The city plan called for evacuating the city 72 hrs before the storm. The mayor ordered it less than 24 hrs before. The plan calls for the city to utilize public transportation resources to evacuate the indigent to evacuation centers OUTSIDE the affected area. The mayor transported people to the SuperDome which was still INSIDE the city. The plan calls for the City to provide food, water, shelter AND security in the evacuation centers. The City did none of the above.

They should have used the buses on Saturday and if they couldn't get the normal drivers they should have used National Guardsmen to drive the buses. The city should have taken Amtrak up on their offer to seat several hundred passengers on the last train out. But the city declined the offer. Why?

It is these mistakes that could have been avoided. By not following the plan it made the job of the Feds that much harder, which only magnified their mistakes and failures.

Let me be a little more blunt - the idea that, had 250+ school busses rolled through New Orleans in the 2-3 days before the hurricane hit, they would have left loaded with happy low income evacuees is pure, unadulterated and absolute *fantasy*. Balderdash. A complete and utter load of crap.

And it was announced well in advance that there would be few supplies at the Superdome. That's why they called it a "shelter of last resort".

What some fail to see, is many of you quote from sources where you hope others have done the research for you. Google all you like, but when you read from any media outlet you are letting them do the work for you (including thinking). Check the government sites for yourself and read them objectively.

Funny, this is coming from the person who can't bring herself to read the website for the U.S.S. Bataan, which of course refutes her claims that the Bataan was just floating in the Gulf until it was ordered into action days later.

The truth is that the Bataan rode out Katrina, then fell in behind the storm and when the storm passed it was on station to begin operations which it did as soon as it was safe.

I'm not jumping up and down in support of Nagin, Blanco, or anyone else. We do a terrible injustice to the entire situation by focusing on school buses that, if utilized, still would have left thousands in need of basic care and in harms way.

If we assume 500 buses, each making 2 trips carrying 60 people each that is 60,000 people who'd have been spared the misery. Blowing this off reflects poorly on you.

As far as the U.S. Bataan. Did you also see the interview with the Captain where he said he had been given the order to "stand down"? After beginning rescue maneuvers they had to sit idle off-shore with all of their supplies waiting for the word to move? Check your sources more carefully.

No. I was following your advice by going to the website for the U.S.S. Bataan. So which is it, am I to read the news articles you decry or the actual websites? I think somebody wants to have their cake and eat it too.

Further, I just did a google search on the U.S.S. Bataan and "stand down" and got zip. I did read an article that claimed the Bataan was underutilized, but I'm not sure I trust the reporter to understand the issue. For example, he noted that the ship didn't have anybody onboard who was sick from New Orleans. Of course, it could be that keeping them on land and treating them at places closer to the city might make more sense. Also, the Bataan's helicopters had flown ashore at least one medical (complete with doctors, nurses and supplies for on site treatment) team that I know of maybe more.

I think "Mnt. Girl's" comments should be taken seriously. I am not sure what is meant by "beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments." Does the request from the Governor on Aug. 27 imply from that day the State and local governments would no longer be active and the Federal government was to do emergency work? By replying that the Federal government was not active fast enough would just avoid my question.
I would really like to know what preparations the State and local governments in hurricane prone areas had thought about and organized, already having experienced hurricanes in the past. And why they wanted to give up days before the storm hit. For example and in comparison, how did Mississippi State and local governments prepare and deal with the storm? If they were more successful, how and why?

A question somewhere between off-topic and tangentially-related: Why does the school district have 70 non-working buses out of 320-something, over 20%, at the beginning of the school year? What kind of management expertise is that? A few, or several, I could see, but 70?

Bill: I'm getting dizzy from all that leftwing spin and one way finger-pointing.

Do any of these folks really think that this obvious move for political advantage against Bush and a C.Y.A. for state and local officials is helpful?

Seems I have picked up quite a few of those spinning leftie viruses by asking the same questions: http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/

The left demands we stop using the photos of the buses, the clearest indicator of local malfeasance.

I'm going to post that photo again and again and again, along with the words from the New Orleans evac plan:

"Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans."

If these lefties would spend HALF the energy they have expended bashing Bush in rebuilding efforts, New Orleans would be what it could be: A shining city, ON A HILL!

>>And it was announced well in advance that there would be few supplies at the Superdome. That's why they called it a "shelter of last resort".

It was the shelter of only resort for many of the city's most vulnerable, precisely because the city did not implement its own disaster plan regarding their well-being. The hole just keeps getting deeper for local officials, no matter how one attempts to point the finger elsewhere.

"It was the shelter of only resort for many of the city's most vulnerable, precisely because the city did not implement its own disaster plan regarding their well-being."

I don't know what the entirety of the city's disaster plan says - I do know that there were RTA busses leaving 12 different points in the city the day before Katrina hit to take people to shelters (see my link above). I have heard no reports that people were clamoring to get to or on these busses, but one (unconfirmed) report that few people took advantage of the opportunity.

The idea that vast numbers of the "vulnerable" wanted to bug out of town but couldn't is a *huge* assumption, and one that doesn't seem to be supported by any facts that I'm aware of. If there were big crowds at these pick up spots - well, who knows, maybe someone would have called for those soon-to-be swamped school busses...

Mountain Girl: don't waste your energy trying to defend Nagin and Blanco. So what if these two individual people failed to respond properly? Does that reflect poorly on you or show that what you stand for is wrong? There are incompetent and irresponsible people in both political parties. To paraphrase Bill Maher: don't defend people, defend principle.

And to all of you people focusing on the alleged failures of Nagin and Blanco, let's say you're right -- does that somehow absolve Bush and his administration of their obvious failures? If Nagin and Blanco failed, that fact by itself has no logical bearing on the question of how quick/effective the FEDERAL response was. Bush himself seems to realize this, as he has admitted twice now that the federal response was not what it should have been -- the first time was in a conversation with Nagin when they first met; the other was just yesterday in a press conference. It's obvious you're trying to somehow absolve Bush, your precious leader, by simply pointing at things like unused buses. 255 or 2,000 or 2 million buses do not somehow prove that the federal response was timely/adequate. Bush, for the first time that I can recall, has admitted a mistake. Can you people?

Out of curiousity, what do all of you think about the kid that "borrowed" the bus and saved a 100 people? I heard he was going to get in trouble.....

For the love of God, MikeL - Where's that Kool-aid you're sipping?

IF [you look at the actual timeline]
THEN [there's obvious proof fastest response in history of country]

Gotta love those entitlement fights in Houston, eh?

Nagin and Blanco should have resigned before the storm if they were incapable of handling it -

I'll pay to rebuild this disgusting city just once more. The next time, let it rot in the swamps the storm creates.

Mississippi. There's the model.

Nagin: I don't know what she's doing. Says a lot about the Mayor-Govenor relationship?

Blanco, in the news yesterday, looks so haggered you'd think she was hit by a bus. Oh wait, no one to drive it?

I can drive a bus.
You can drive a bus.
In an emergency, we can all drive buses, including that one kid that did. That dear child should be running New Orleans, and Louisiana!!!!!

All Hail the Child that Drove a Bus and Saved People. He's a National Hero and Deserves Recognition and Reward.

Mike L.,

It seems to me that most people who support Bush to one extent or another acknowledge that he makes mistakes - and even cringe at some of them. Maybe you just are just super-sensitive to the small minority who defend Bush in everything he does. But the media focus on blaming the federal government for every misstep in the response has been way out of perspective. That is starting to change as hysteria recedes.

But it still takes a brave person, perhaps one like you, from the "reality-based community" to actually point out that EVERYTHING is not Bush's fault . It's kind of frightening to me to see so many people attempt to give a single person responsibility for so many aspects of their lives. There are good reasons why Separation of Powers is such a prominent concept in our constitution. Even though it leads to tensions and fumbling in times of emergency.

There is something unsettling about people in a country with elections at the local, state and federal levels who seem to expect an all-powerful, all-knowing king to direct every aspect of government, even though this is a natural desire. It takes a lot of effort at election time to research your choices for mayor, school board member, sheriff, etc. Things would be so much simpler if all government were directed by a single person directing a vast, well-oiled government machine which took dangerous decisions out of the hands of mere local elected officials.

There is something to be said for greater command and control in big disasters. We need better ways to make it clear who is in charge when dire emergencies arise, without extinguishing a can-do attitude on the part of the populace.

From MikeL:
"And to all of you people focusing on the alleged failures of Nagin and Blanco, let's say you're right -- does that somehow absolve Bush and his administration of their obvious failures? If Nagin and Blanco failed, that fact by itself has no logical bearing on the question of how quick/effective the FEDERAL response was."

I disagree I believe their failures had a direct bearing on the Federal response. It became a cascade effect in which the Fed now had to solve the problems that the State and Local govenments didn't fix or created as well as the ones they were initially prepared to solve.

Consider this. If the Mayor had instituted the evacuation order a day sooner maybe more people would have gotten out. If the mayor had used the public transportation system to evacuate the indigent from the city instead of to the SuperDome and if the Mayor had supplied the SuperDome with food, water and security as his evac plan called for, then maybe we wouldn't have had such a crisis at the SuperDome. If the Governor had called in more of her available NG troops and done it sooner maybe the violence and looting would not have been so wide-spread, and maybe that wouldn't have delayed the rescue efforts.

FEMA is NOT a first responder. That task is given to the State and Local governments to handle the situation as best they can until the cavalry comes. That can be a difficult and even an impossible task. Which is why FEMA has gone to great lengths to educate and prepare State and Local governments for the task. Part of that preparation is to develop an emergency plan. The purpose of the plan is to make it easier to handle the situation.

The plan from both a State/Local level and the Federal level is predicated on one assumption, that the plan is followed. The State and Local governments in NOLA did not follow the plan which exacerbated the situation for the Feds.

Everyone that questions coordination between the state and local levels has forgotten that in the last election for Governor, the mayor endorsed the opposition (Jindal). The representatives for Governor Blanco stated that Nagin would be "iced out". I believe Blanco did not want to "allow Bush to become the Hero", and this was the reason for her vacillation.

Something about the requirement for evacuee's to bring their own water to the Superdome...I wondered at the time could a white mayor get away with making a similar requirement of poor black people, who presumably lacked the means to get out of the city? Based on my experience as a black woman and I knew the answer--a white (male) mayor would've been accused of insensitivity. By the same people who are now crying that the faled-rescue effort in New Orleans was not calibrated to the peculiar needs of the urban poor.
Tonite, after the president's speech, I was heartened, to see the responses of Katrina survivors at the Astrodome who refused to blame Bush for their plight, but instead focused on the governor & the black mayor. Where the sunken school-buses are concerned, one woman was most emphatic in holding Nagin responsible.

It's cruel & ironic that when it came to saving the lives of New Orleans' poor black people, no one in city hall had the competence to figure out how to deploy those same yellow school buses that over the last 30-years, have come to symbolize the emergence of black leaders, America's black great leap towards equality & diversity.
vashti varnado
vovarnado@hotmail.com

A Federal Emergency was declared by the Bush White House on Saturday, Aug. 27th at Gov. Blanco's request, so that FEMA was then authorized to take action to "alleviate the impacts of the emergency".
I'm sure Hannity is some kind of source, but the Knight-Rider agency reports it was DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff who was in charge of leading the National Response Plan, adopted in 2003.
Knight Rider reports confusion was abundant:
"Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the 'White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force."

Hope that isn't too much off your topic.

I live in hurricane country. At the beginning of the season we get almost continous PSA's from the media about stocking up on emergency supplies - 3 to 4 days worth, batteries, etc. Also to determine whether you would evacuate or not and how and what route. The designated shelters have food and water supplies stocke up and porta potties on contract should they be needed. That's how Fla gets ready. We don't have much in the way of public transport but I expect that if a hospital had to evacuate our local military would step in if requested.

      Pardon me, but many of your are arguing on a factually incorrect basis.

      The state of Louisiana DID NOT HAVE ANY REAL HURRICANE DISASTER PLAN.  They did try to pretend otherwisse, but it wasn't so.  I've misplaced the reference, and I'm over 24 hours without sleep at this moment, but if you google the state of Louisiana hurricane evacuation plan, you should find it.

      What the "plan" stated was that in tbe event an evacuation was necessary, the state would have extra highway patrolmen directing traffic.  The state government would also "co-ordinate" and "keep the media informed."  In English, they'd sit in the capitol and leave it all to the local authorities, while taking advantage of media coverage to look like they were doing something.  That's what the state was going to do.  Everything else governmental would be fobbed off on someone else.

      As for the City of New Orleans, IT NEVER PLANNED TO EVACUATE ANYONE FROM THE COAST IN CITY OR PARISH VEHICLES.  When I say neve, I mean it as in "not at all, wasn't going to happen, we've told everyone who asked it wasn't going to happen, and we will no even try." 

      I have a long post on this here, with links to the city's alleged evacuation plan, and a Times-Picayune article on the city's planning.  To summarize:

1) If it became necessary to evacuate, the plan was for the population to drive themselves out, in their privately owned vehicles.

2) If you didn't have a vehicle, better arrange a ride.  The city of NOLA didn't think it had the resouces to get you out, and in any case wasn't going ot try.

3) If you don't get out, and your house isn't safe, NOLA would attempt to move you to some place within the city or parish, but that's it.  They weren't planning on evacuating people from the coast.

      Just in case you still don't get it, let me rephrase: the official "evacuation" plan was to bus people to the Superdome or other public facilities in NOLA.  That is exactlty what the city government did.

4) In the event of a major levee failure or overtopping, hope that you can tread water.</