I placed a link to this on my blog. This is really important stuff for people to know. I don’t usually do mass e-mails, but I also e-mails a link to everyone in my address book… at least 200 people. I hope they all visit your site and read and then pass this on.

Did you read the story of the kid that stole a bus, loaded it up with whoever he could find, and drove it to the Houston Astrodome? He had a hundred people on that bus - maybe the number of potential evacuees needs to be revised upwards…

I was willing to give Nagin the benefit of the doubt before - but this is looking more and more like outright incompetence and negligence. I’d be willing to bet there are also pictures that will show police and other emergency vehichles in the same situation. Unforgivable.

Someone on Fark kept pushing the idea that Mayor Nagin didn’t have the authority to call up the buses, i.e., that they belonged to the school districts and therefore weren’t at the beck and call of the mayors office.

This strikes me as a really odd statment. Even assumings it’s true, why wouldn’t the school district be a part of the disaster plan, even if just because they had the buses.

Does anyone know if there was a plan in place to get those buses moving, or were they ignored as an asset until they were underwater? I know that there are lines in the disaster plan for NO about useing buses (and city buses were used to get to the Superdome) but did anyone in NO even realize that they had hundred of school buses they could use?

Read the post below—”They Had a Plan.” And get your fellow Farkers to read it too. The plan included the use of schools buses and other municipally owend vehicles. But the mayor and the emergency manager apparently didn’t follow the plan. That’s negligence, pure and simple.

Yeah, they had authority to commandeer the buses for evacuation.

Check out the link below. It’s a guy stuck right in the middle of the flood zone and he’s running a live journal. Definitely worth taking a look and reading his first hand observations.

Link

It’s such a pity the Red Cross aren’t allowed to enter N.O.

What’s extremely troubling are the countless people trapped in their attics. Their have been reports that as LAFD boats slowly went through the flood zone and they could hear many people knocking from inside of their attics. There should be rescuers with axes chopping holes into these roofs to get anyone alive out. This seems critical, imao.

Good post. We’ve been curious about the evac plan and it’s not surprising to learn that it wasn’t implemented…at all.

Bus-tacular! Thanks for your coverage.

BTW, There’s a message board/support group for Katrina. www.katrinatalk.org Come over and give some support and get some, too.

Thank you for all the work you did on this story. When I think about Mayor Nagin demanding “500 buses” and learning that he had at least 500 school buses and NORTA buses, it makes me sick.

We’ve witnessed a tragedy in the horror and squallor that the poor have had inflicted on them, all apparently because a city administration did not act in time.

President Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana on SATURDAY. Mayor Nagin waited until SUNDAY to declare an emergency in New Orleans.

Will the race baiters and Bush haters reflect on that simple timeline and relevant facts?

Yeah… and I just saw Elvis fly by in a UFO!

Thanks again, I linked to you several times.

At Mayor Nagin’s news conference about 1 pm Sunday and 14-16 hours before Katrina struck he said he would commandeer vehicles but apparantly that was talk with no follow through. However, even if true and acted upon, evacuations needed to have started at dawn on Saturday.

If I was truly cynical, I would wonder if this was disaster was allowed to play out as it has for the benefit it could be put to in the aftermath. I would believe that no public officials, Governor and Mayor could be this uncaring and this unbelievably inept and that there had to be an underlying motive. That is only the thought that would come to mind if I was truly cynical, of course.

That picture does not say “just about everything that needs being said”. For all your talk of facts and truth, it sounds like you don’t want people asking questions, but I’ve got a few:

Why has the Red Cross not been allowed into the city? Why are people at the Superdome and Convention Center not allowed to leave? Why was it that while the military was ready to begin food drops, it didn’t because it was waiting for a request from FEMA (scroll down to bit about “Bill Wattenburg”)? Why are Federal stockpiles of supplies sitting unused? And biggest of all, why did Federal officials have no idea what was going on?

There’s plenty of blame to go around. You wanna keep score? That’s one against the mayor, 5 against the Federal government.

No everything is bad, some are grateful:

“But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us “Sin City,” and turned your backs.” Anne Rice, writer and N.O. native (be sure you buy her books!)

Link

I am no longer willing to give any of these people on the left the benefit of the doubt. I have had it. Its so completely disgysts me now I become apoleptic with rage when the likes of Nagin, Kennedy, Jackson or others get on TV and start talking.

They have become grotesqueries. Like flies they gather and pass a deadly disease unto those they lite upon.

The welfare state, the race bating on the left, the culture of victimhood has strangled a whole segment of our population and truly threatens to implode this country. NO is an example of what will happens when things start to fall apart. The individual initiative and self reliance and self organizing principles of our civic society are eroding and being eroded by government policies that need to be stopped.

Its distressing to see grown men pushing women aside, children sitting in the sun while grown males rest in the shade, people standing on a road for SIX days waiting for help when they could have just walked 50 miles to it.

Something is broken or breaking. The blame needs to be laid plainly, clearly and squarely on a whole slew of people and institution that have allowed this catastrophe to occur.

Davis Cheanult

Jack: At 7:29 PM this evening you wrote:

“Why are people at the Superdome and Convention Center not allowed to leave? “

Do you own a television set Jack?

And had New Orleans implemented their disaster plan in a timely fashion, following Bush’s declaration on Saturday, not waiting until Sunday, maybe one of the boobs currently blaming Bush for the mess would have gotten those now destroyed buses on the road in time to save some of those folks.

Bush and FEMA didn’t cause the problem here Jack. Ever heard of local accountability???

Look ass tard, the freeking mayor told them they would be safe in the dome (not) fed in the dome (not), evacuted from the dome (not). The mayor made no contingency plans, had no plans for follow up, had no food stockpiled, had no communications with his own FEMA dude, ignored the national FEMA, ignored the president (Bush essentially told the Govenor to tell Nagin to evacuate the city). He thought it would blow over.

Nagin is primarily responsible for making sure everything is in order prior to the arrival of the storm. He did not do anyhting. He did not inform FEMA of gathering points (convention center) exit points, had no recon done, chose not to stop looters(making it unsafe for the red cross to come in).

All said and done Nagin is criminally irresponsible and managed to kill thousands of New Orleans and create a catastrophe of epic proportions.

IF it were not for federal assets taking their own initiative and acting and preparing without orders (battan) in preparation. Churches in Utah were better prepared to come down than Nagin was to get his skinny ass out of five star hotel.

Nagin 10,000+ dead, Feds 5 I’ll give you the five.

Let the left talk all they want. Let them cast blame about. Facts are facts and this Democrat state with a Democrat mayor left their people to rot, riot, rape, murder, loot and raze the city while their leaders looked the other way. This should be a lesson to everyone. You get the government you deserve. If you are satisfied to be placated with welfare and not work, if you are satisfied that nobody is accountable for their actions, if you are satisfied when your government rationalizes your poor behavior, well, you get what you deserve. You should not be looking for whomever promises you handouts when you’re at the ballot box. Because then you are totally at their mercy when times get tough.

Let the left talk. It’s all they have left and they just look like idiots to the American people.

Oh, and by the way, and apologies up front for getting off topic. Thank the left the next time you pull up to the gas pump. It is because of the left and their beloved environmentalism that we haven’t built a refinery in this country in 25+ years. Haven’t been allowed to drill in ANWR or off the Florida or California coasts. Have 38 different flavors of gasoline. Haven’t built a nuclear or hydroelectric plant in as many years. So, they’ve held us hostage to their insanity and now WE have to pay the price. It’s time for them to pay that price at the ballot box.

You got that right about the enviros responsible for the gas shortage and costs…

The Gulf of Mexico supplies approximately 25% of the nation’s oil resources. The portion that is offline (as of Friday) was approx. 1.5 million barrels.

Now, GUESS how many barrels would be coming out of ANWR RIGHT NOW had Clinton not vetoed the measure allowing developement in 1995?

YEP… just about the same amount.

My post on that here.

Lastly, with all the lefties wimpering that Bush should have taken charge of the situation because of course the implication is that the Mayor can’t be held accountable (he’s black after all).

Just imagine if Bush had declared martial law in New Orleans and foricbly evac’d those folks himself. The left would be screaming to high heaven.

Local governement is the first line of defense in such situations. They are charged with the responsiblity to plan and prepare. The Mayor in New Orleans may have planned but failed to follow it. And you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that if you open the superdome as a shelter, you better be prepared for the worst.

But it’s easier for lefties to indulge their Bush hate than face their own responsibiity.

Does anybody know where the NORTA bus yard is now? Their web site is down. Years ago when I lived there I think it was at the end of the St. Charles Street Car line, but there are no buses around there now on Google Earth.

Somewhere there should be a picture of hundreds and hundreds of city buses. As a child I remember there being so many city buses that they didn’t issue schedules- another bus would always be along in 5-10 minutes.

130 more municipal transit buses in this photo.

Image

Wow RT! You simultaneously posted the answer to my question before you could have possible seen it.

Great minds think alike???

RT, which photo is that from? Do you have a link to the original?

I sent e-mails to 1/2doz. CNN reporters today detailing the substance of these posts & also the story of Jabbar Gibbons-the 20yr.old kid who took that school bus and saved a busload of people,driving them to Houston.I asked these reporters why the Mayor couldn’t have done the same,with all the other buses. I asked them if the reason they didn’t report such an heroic story was because it didn’t fit their “blame Bush”storyline. Maybe a few thousand e-mails & phone calls to CNN would force a change in their reporting.

This is a Google map link that shows the NORTA buses.

Link

jack, did you even employ critical reading skills by reading through the links you posted?

Regarding the Red Cross:

“Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested—and continues to request—that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

What’d Federal about “local authorities” and “state HSD”?

Lest you need some learning about the National Guard, the National Guard is both under the command of the President and the Governor. When deployed with their own state, the National Guard is under the command of the Governor.

The Federal government does coordinate the deployment of other States’ National Guard units into other states, but the Natioal Guard making the calls in New Orleans are under the command of the Governor… until the President decides the Governor has totally failed at her duties and gets the entire national government to step in. Are you saying that Blanco failed that badly?

So watch your blurring of “military” and National Guard into “Federal”. The “military” National Guard is not the same “military” Navy, or “military” Army, or “military” Coast Guard. Just because the “military” is waiting, doesn’t mean it is the Federal military.

Oh, and about the “Federal stockpiles of supplied not used” link.

Let’s go read that one too…

“A federal official said the department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness reminded the Louisiana and Mississippi governors’ offices about the [firefighting] stockpiles on Wednesday and Thursday, but neither governor had requested it.”

Okay now. We have a flood, and a Cat 4/5 hurricane… and you are questioning why firefighting (!) stockpiles weren’t called on by Governors? You called that a Federal problem? Just who should have predicted that a hurricane and flood would have caused drug addled thugs to burn buildings?

Poor poor jack…

BTW, those NORTA buses in the picture referenced above on Google maps are less than a mile NW of the Superdome.

I’m afraidyou’re right about the Left’s descent into . . . what? Insanity? Rabidity? They are becoming hate zombies. Before Katrina I read on a few lefty blogs — and in a letter to my local, small town newspaper — that every single justification for the Iraq War was a lie. It takes less than a minute on the web to read the joint resolution that authorized the war. It mentions current WMD programs once, in paragraph 5 of the 17 “whereas” paragraphs that point to UN resolutions violated, peace terms of the 1st gulf war violated, attempted assasination of GHW Bush, etc. These people, these leftists, have gone insane. Hillary Clinton voted for the resolution. John Kerry voted for the resolution. John Kerry voted for the resolution. When people insist that the sky is not blue, that the sun doesn’t rise in the east, that the Earth is flat, you’ve got to push back.

Having done real disaster relief, and participated in exercises about imaginary disasters, it is totally clear to me that the mayor and governor are 95% to blame for the part of this mess that man could affect.

As others have said, command and control (and planning and pre-positioning) is the responsibility of the locals. FEMA provides help in those efforts, but the initial response cannot come from the feds.

See THIS for a first hand report from my daughter’s friend of what happened in the SuperDome. It was anarchy, and people were murdered in significant numbers.

Meanwhile, the mayor who did NOT preposition supplies in the place he told people to go to; who did NOT put enough troops or cops in place to stop the predators, resulting in numerous rapes and murders; who did NOT make sure the generator was above the long known forecast water line; who did not get porta-johns into the place at all; who did not even issue shoot-to-kill orders against looters; THAT MAYOR is blaming the feds!

It’s enough to make me sick (as it did my acquaintance who was actually trapped in the SuperDome).

A few more unused NORTA buses at the Almonaster Ave bus facility.

Link

Actually Nagin isn’t someone on the left.

If you look him up on Google and find the pre-Katrina bios (Wikipedia is a good place to start), you’ll find out he’s a self-made man who rose to the top of Cox Communications, life-long Republican who only switched party affiliations because its impossible to win city-wide office in NOLA as a Republican.

Once in office, he fought the corrupt system left intact by generations of Democrats and managed to clean some of it up. He has given quite a bit of money to the Bush and other Republican campaigns. He stirred up a lot of controversy in NOLA by endorsing Blanco’s Republican opponent in the gubenatorial election. Even the National Review wrote a fairly glowing article on the mayor, which you can easily find on their site. You’ll also find lots of lefty groups attacking his mayoral career in the pre-Katrina days. He was not beloved by those on the left.

Yes, I think he deserves his share of the blame. But don’t knee-jerk attack him simply because he’s got a “D” in his party affiliation. He supported Bush, supported Republicans, and isn’t someone who just stands and waits for the government to do something.

And in terms of the criticism, just imagine if all these things had happened under Clinton’s watch. If Clinton hadn’t immediately rushed back to Washington, if Hillary was spotted in NYC buying expensive shoes while NOLA was burning, if VP Gore had remained completely invisible while thousands are starving openly on the streets, if the head of FEMA was a guy with no qualifications beyond his huge donations to the DNC, Republicans would be screeching for Clinton’s and his cronies’ heads.

So I hope people, on the left and right, can drop the partisan blinders, and realize this whole thing was screwed up by everyone from the top to the bottom and assign blame where it rightly belongs, regardless of the party affiliation. Because in times like these, we need competence, not partisan ideology.

Just a thought . . .

the busses sitting idle during this catastrophic event is disgusting.

The lack of clear direction from the mayor seems to indicate that the school transportation administration was clueless about their role in disaster response. Who would the mayor have contacted if the bus drivers and school transportation administrators (access to bus keys, fuel access)followed the mayor’s ‘get out’ evacuation plea?

CS, I honestly don’t care what letter Nagin has after his name. He and Ebbert, especially Ebbert, screwed up. Then they blamed everyone but themselves for the catastrophe. It was seeing the picture of the buses and knowing what it meant, and then reading about what Ebbert and Nagin were saying about Bush, that forced me to start working on this story. Those two have brought this on themselves.

FYI, Regular military assets are covered by Posse Comitatus while Nat. Guard assets are not. (per Chertoff) Therefore National Guard personnel can work beside police officers in the same enforcement capacity. The Governor is responsible for and hasn’t issued the order to engage the lawbreakers with deadly force yet so the NG is in a defensive mode only. Things being as fluid as they are in an emergency zone this might have changed since the DOHS brief last night.

“If we let Ray Nagin, Jesse Jackson, RFK Jr and the rest of the leftist mob define Katrina and tell us what went wrong, the coming big bang will be dangerous. These are dangerous people. They taste the air and sense blood. They feed on misery. They must be answered, they must be pushed back, or they will win.

And we will all, every one of us, suffer.”

This is absolutely true.

The Leftists should be called what they are. They are destroyers. They are destroyers because they are totalitarians. They are totalitarians because they are fearful, hateful people who have no faith in themselves or humanity or anything.

That is the fact of reality about Leftism. Everything else is just talking about the aspects of those facts.

But in truth, Leftism is a potent and deadly virus. It need not be a majority position. It is extremely difficult to fight and defeat. The perfect medical analogy is cancer.

And here is another truth. In this case, if the cancer defeats us we deserve defeat. If the diabolical wins, is it the strength of the diabolus, or the weakness of common virtue?

It is the lack of virtue, and the weakness of it. Full stop. End of story. Period.

There’s the struggle.

Kudos to RT, I had just found the same site by Googling RTO in New Orleans and following the adresses. There they are! 130 city buses, all flooded. The “normal” Google Earth site shows 71 in the lot so they packed them in to get them REALLY flooded.

Just to be clear, this is the Canal Street facility we are looking at (Canal and White), about a mile from the Superdome. Almonaster Ave. is on the east side of the City, across the ship canal in the freight area. Googling does reveal an RTO facility on the northern side of this end of town, but it is beyond the edge of hi-res coverage in Google Earth. Any better souces of photos here, before or after? Close to I-10, south side between exits 241 and 242.

We are approaching 400 flooded buses just in this blog census of photos.

The mayor should have evacuated people on those buses. But there is plenty of blame left to go around:

Why did DHS and FEMA not know about the convention center until Thursday, when the media had been reporting on the seriousness of the situation there since Tuesday?

Why did President Bush wait until Wednesday to fly back to Washington when previous administrations (Clinton, Bush Sr., Nixon) made a point of being in Washington before major hurricanes made landfall?

There have been reports that local groups have tried to make rescue efforts but have been rebuffed by FEMA officials. Are these reports true? If so, who should be held accountable for such idiocy? Is that Nagin’s fault, too?

Further, the Department of Homeland Security’s National Response Plan, available in full on the Department’s website, explicitly states that there are two kinds of disasters: Regular old incidents, where the federal response is limited to providing requested aid to state and local authorities, and Incidents of National Significance:

“When an incident or potential incident is of such severity, magnitude, and/or complexity that it is considered an Incident of National Significance according to the criteria established in this plan, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with other Federal departments and agencies, initiates actions to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the incident. These actions are taken in conjunction with State, local, tribal, nongovernmental, and private-sector entities as appropriate to the threat or incident. In the context of Stafford Act disasters or emergencies, DHS coordinates supplemental Federal assistance when the consequences of the incident exceed State, local, or tribal capabilities.”

Further, it states:

“The President leads the Nation in responding effectively and ensuring the necessary resources are applied quickly and efficiently to all Incidents of National Significance.”

The NRP is new in December 2004, was signed by the full cabinet and is currently, supposedly, fully implemented, superseding all previous national policy on disaster response. In other words, in an incident of this scope, it is the policy of the United States, put in place by this administration less than a year ago, that the federal government bear the primary responsibility for prevention, planning, response, and recovery.

Go read it for yourself: Link

Addendum: the governor of Louisiana sent a letter to President Bush on August 28th, informing him that she expected Hurricane Katrina to “be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments”

Link

Hmmmm.

1. Posse Comitatus is about federal troops acting in the capacity of police. I.e. Posse Comitatus doesn’t come into play if the federal troops are deployed solely to support local or state forces. But if the federal troops are involved in any sort of police operations then Posse Comitatus comes into play. In order for the President to use federal troops in a police role he needs permission from Congress. Although the President doesn’t necessarily need permission from a state govenor, it would be unusual to not get permission.

Note that Naitonal Guard units acting within their own state are not covered by Posse Comitatus as long as they haven’t been federalised. If the state’s govenor calls up the state’s own National Guard then they are exempt from Posse Comitatus. If the President calls up a state’s National Guard then they are considered to be federalised and thus subject to Posse Comitatus.

Gov Blanco, rather belatedly, has gotten a number of regional state’s govenors to activate their individual state’s National Guards abd “loan” them to the LA National Guard in an agreement that sidesteps the issue of Posse Comitatus since the troops aren’t technically federalised.

shrug It’s all rather arcane and wierd, but absolutely necessary if you look at countries like the Phillipines or other nations where the military often has an active role in domestic issues and politics. The Posse Comitatus keeps federal troops apolitical.

2. There’s going to be one helluva fight over the next few months over responsibility for the f-up over Katrina. IMHO I couldn’t care less what political affiliation that Nagin has, he’s a jackass and that’s all there is to it.

please come to our nation’s capitol this september 24th to stand by the consent we confer to our nation under it’s constitution, demonstrate our support for U.S. forces and the cause for which they sacrifice on our behalf, express our hope and support for young and emerging democracies and voice our frustration with the hate and disunity promoted by the extreme Left.

Defend the White House

Great information. I have linked to you also. This definately needs to get out before the Leftist Revisionists try to make this look like a top-down “Bush and the Feds told us to let everyone die” coverup.

Very informative stuff.

Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco are the ones who have failed here. Any federal failures are a direct results of the total failure of local control.

Name one local success from the state of Louisiana or the city of New Orleans when it comes to this Hurricane.

You can’t. They failed.

Name one FEMA success. They have cleared out of the Superdome. They have fed thousands. They’ve restored order.

Ray Nagin isn’t competant enough to know that he should have evacuated the city earlier and used the buses.

What’s his excuse? Union pressure? School pressure? Ignorance? Idiocy?

Oh yeah, when it comes to Nagin. He thinks that the CIA is coming to kill him. Really. He’s a loon!

THis article, from 2004 - answers the “why isn’t the Red Cross there” question.

Link

Hey Jason:

Bad enough Nagin and Ebbert left the buses to be destroyed in the flood…

But if you are going to send the poorest and most helpless residents of your city to the Superdome or Convention Center, wouldn’t you have made preparations for more than one or two days stay?

Yeah, the feds could have done more, but the PRIMARY responsiblity is that of the local government.

Another example of moral equivalence where everyone is equally at fault will get us NOWHERE in the future. Neither will the race baiting finger pointing by those on the left.

I’m not giving the mayor any breaks. He failed, clear as day.

My point is not just that the feds could have done more, it’s that they are mandated to have done more. It was apparent that the mayor hadn’t evacuated the poorest people as early as Sunday. Did DHS notice that the most important part of their plan for averting disaster hadn’t been achieved? Did they take any steps to compensate for this failure? It hasn’t all been sorted out yet, but when the director of FEMA and the Secretary of Homeland Security don’t know that thousands of people are parched and starving at one centralized location until two days after its reported on CNN, then you can start to say they were pretty inept at adapting.

I don’t see how spreading blame everywhere it’s deserved will get us nowhere in the future. This was a systemic failure; doesn’t that mean the whole system should be scrutinized? Blaming just the mayor is what gets the rest of the nation nowhere. What happens when an earthquake hits San Francisco? Or when a suitcase nuke goes off in Dallas? Are we okay with the kind of federal response we saw here? Does blaming only the mayor do anything at all to fix the federal response we saw here?

This isn’t about Democrat or Republican, this is about Government. Government, at all levels, failed us when we needed it the most, and a failure to recognize that fact will only result in it happening again.

If GWB was the mayor of New Orleans and Condi was the governor, this situation would be a whole lot better and there would be more people alive.

How can some of you dedicate so much of your time and strength into placing blame, whether it be the mayor or the President? It’s disgusting…I’m so glad that my identity isn’t so closely tied to a political party that I can’t even think straight.

The bus criticism is so stupid. It is a Monday-morning quarterbacking attempt to deflect attention away from FEMA, which by the way has been criticized by both Republicans (Bush, Frist, Gingrich)and, suprisingy few, Democrats.

So here are few questions about the buses:

Were there enough buses to get evacuate 80,000 people? No.

Would it be safe to be on the road in a rickety-ass yellow school bus during a hurricane? No.

And where would you have taken those 80,000 people?

The devastation created a sense of urgency whereby other states felt responsibly compelled to take the evacuees. This climate, if you will, did not exist before the hurricane.

I can imagine that phone conversation: “Uh, Governor Perry, it’s me, Ray Nagin. Remember, from Mardi Gras? No? Well, anyway, it looks like we might be gettin’ ourselves a little bit of a rainstorm down here in the Big Easy. Would you mind if I brought 75,000 of my poorest, most destitute citizens over to your place for a few months? Great! Can we bring anything? Wine? Dessert?”

More importantly, keeping blaming Mayor Ray Nagin. Keeping blaming the black guy and just see how well that flies in the upcoming Congressional hearings. You connies just don’t get it.

Michael says:

But in truth, Leftism is a potent and deadly virus. It need not be a majority position. It is extremely difficult to fight and defeat. The perfect medical analogy is cancer.

And the perfect rhetorical analogy to this kind of talk is obvious.

If you look closely in that NOAA image, you’ll see another single bus parked next to a house a few blocks to the left and down. That makes 14. I wonder if someone was trying another “Escape from NO” like that 19-year-old guy a few days earlier, and didn’t quite pull it off.

You can write-off Kennedy and Jackson as partisan opportunists but how do you respond to Bendan Loy’s call for Brown’s dismissal? He makes a number of great points.

Compare Mississippi and Florida to see the failures of La state government in this situation.

Is the criticism of the federal response that it happened on Friday and Saturday instead of —when — Thursday and Friday? This is worth a national poltical debate?

People’s time scales seem out of whack with this entire incident. Today (Sunday) at 11 AM ET, the Mayor of NO spoke on CNN about 7 days of misery and death in New Orleans. The hurricane passed barely 6 days before he gave that quote and 5 days have passed since the flood started. It was also odd that my wife told me with certainty that the hurricane windstorm hit on Sunday morning. But it didn’t. It hit Monday morning. The shock of this all has warped our sense of time’s passing and the perception that things are moving “slowly.”

The die were cast here by nature and the problems with the PRE-hurricane evacuation, when this fleet of 500+ buses would have been most useful. And of course useful afterwards as well, in getting the pockets of people out of the “last resort” shelters, as the State/Local evacuation plan calls places like the Superdome.

Even today—Sunday—we have some people refusing evacuation as they are being encountered all through the city.

We have not yet seen one week pass yet, and shelters like the Astrodome, Reunion Arena, and the Georgia Tech Arena in Atlanta have all come into existence and are filled or are filling with evacuees.

Jason, You need to learn how our governments (federal, state and local) work and what they are limited to doing. Bush had gone to the La. governer and asked that they be allowed to take over on late Friday night (the 26th) and was rebuffed. In fact Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government. It seems that they felt that when things went wrong the bushies would blame it on the local officials. Go figure. This was reported in todays Washington Post by the way.

It wasn’t Friday the 26th, it was Friday the 2nd. Go back and read the article again. Either you didn’t read correctly or you’re being disingenouous. I hope it’s the former.

Link

As far as learnng how the government works, I’m reading straight from the government policy, that I’ve linked to directly. Maybe you could explain how I’m mistaken, in terms of the policy that’s in place?

As posted by Philly2dc above, where were those buses going to go to?

And who would have driven those buses? The day before the storm hits, people are trying to get themselves and their families out and situated.

Again, where do you take roughly 10,000 people on roughly 200 buses the day before the storm was going to hit?

Baton Rouge? Nope, they were in the path of the storm themselves and didnt have the capability of sheltering and feeding 10,000 people.

Any other city to the immediate west or northwest (and out of the storms path) of New Orleans was out of the question, because none of them are large enough with the ability to accomodate 10,000 people.

And unless there is the unlikely scenario that there is time and things are organized enough to make multiple trips to and from New Orleans, thats still only 10,000 people. What about the other 100,000+ people?

Just stupid. The mayor did all he could with what resources he had. He needed outside help, it was obvious. The state and federal government failed him and the city. I actually think his emotional speech woke up some people.

And you guys are assholes for criticizing him. Try putting yourself into that situation and see if you do everything perfect enough to escape criticism. It cant be done. The man just lost his beloved city and all you guys can do is rip him.

So typical…

Yep, yep, yep.

Lefties have no ground to stand on in crticizing the powers that be.

Damn, if we had listened to the damned “liberals” the fucking levees might have been strong enough. The poor wouldn’t gave been nearly so poor. We wouldn’t have wasted 300 billion fucking dollars on an illegal war. We wouldn’t have stuffed the pockets of millionaires with even more money. We would have had adequate National Guard forces on hand. The oh so pretty glossy veneer of the greatest nation in history would not have been pulled away to reveal a third world nation by a storm. We wouldn’t have an empty treasury.

You goddamned “conservatives” have, in the past 30 years gutted this country with your policies of Social Darwinism.

Go Cheney yourselves.

You’ll all hang, every last one of you, if there’s any justice.

The frigging liberals were all calling us rednecks, when we wanted to shoot looters. Now look where it has gotten them. I bet those cherry-ass limpwristed pseudosophisticates would think different if they’d ever been carjacked by some loser prattling their liberal fed bullshit about how tough it is on the black man.

And the mayor and the citizenry of NO are pathetic. All blathering about help from outside and no pulling together and doing things. I don’t even want to contribute to Katrina. good riddance.

I’m so disgusted by the outright lies that some Rebublicans/Conservatives wish to perpetrate. I’m happy to see others before me post some truth as to the real facts. Here’s just one more lie that’s been going around. It’s been said that Gov. didn’t declare state of emergency until 9/4. However, when truth comes out, they do nothing to correct their lies. See the Washington Post’s correction that, in fact, she declared a state of emergency on 8/26! Link

“This climate, if you will, did not exist before the hurricane.”

Nonsense.

The local NO authorities had a clear picture of the need to move people who had no independent means of leaving the city. They knew it from experience of previous storms. They knew it from Census 2000. And they knew it by reading their own emergency plans. They also had identified the priority of using local transit vehicles to effect the evacuation to areas outside of the threat of flooding.

Neighboring states were not disinclined to take in as many evacuees as necessary. Whether by plan or by improvisation. Pretending otherwise is caustic speculation based on zilch.

The local authorities in NO would have had similar demands placed on themselves if there were refugees from neighboring states flowing towards NO. That’s part of the regional plan for pete’s sake. So let’s not pretend that there was some sort of last minute need to negotiate or to seek approval for movement of people in need.

Jason, you are correct on the date. Of course, the article that you reference is the same article where I got the information.

So as you well know, Bush was told to not get involved, and Blanco took steps to keep him from taking over. So either you didn’t read correctly(or more accurately chose to ignore it) or you’re being disingenouous. And I really don’t care which it is, I know how your side works.

We have our teachers colleges and our universities to thank, in great measure, and our media in lesser measure for the hate, bile and rabid nonsense pouring from the left. These people hate the truth, and they are deeply ignorant. They have been instructed to politicize everything and anything if it will enable divisiveness. The left, as it is now, is the hard, blood enemy of good government and equable society.

Maybe the reason for the delay in, and reluctance to, evacuate is because of the reaction that might have come if it hadn’t been necessary. What if evacuation was unnecessary? Didn’t hurricane Ivan last year cause an unnecessary evacuation? There can be too many false emergencies.

“There can be too many false emergencies.”

That is true. But the point at which there have been too many is relative to the site. NO really ought to have been gaining experience on how to be better prepared and how to execute the key parts of an evacuation plan. Instead of drills, they had actual storm threats to test against reality. Those were real emergencies, not false emergencies, and it takes leadership to reinforce the value of taking action — even if only to err on the safeside — rather than rolling the dice again and again.

NO has to be a functioning port city for the good of the country. People have to live in such a location. It follows that measures need to be in place, practiced, and improved on a yearly basis. Firsthand experience with hurricanes and storms can toughen up responsiveness, rather than soften up civil attentiveness which only converts realistic expectations into a hazardous form of complacency. Leaders do not rest easily when there is a threat; they do not count on good luck to protect lives. Unfortunately this seems to have been the default position in NO and Louisiana. It spread to the emergency workers who were on the frontline; it unsettled the civilians. And that meant good people had to do much more than act competently. To do the basics they were called on — by circumstances — to perform heroics.

And that last point should be lost here. The lowered expectations of the leadership made the job much tougher for the boots on the ground and for the people that needed assistance. Yet those boots on the ground have been getting done what had to be done.

Here are the RTS buses:

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4356/norts4as.jpg

To find them yourself, go to maps.google.com and search for 2817 Canal St. You can view the post-Katrina imagery there.

By my count, there are 137 full-size city buses there plus a few that look like they are near the maintenance barn.

Here are links to more images of buses. Some yards have the large buses and some have smaller buses. Also, there were fleets of other types of passanger vehicles that were abandoned.

Bellville and Patterson [33 large]

Canal Street [146 large]

Florida Avenue [50 large and 70 small]

Dwyer Road [13 large]

Almonaster Blvd [270 large and 25 small]

Various Others [25 large]

Howard Avenue and S. Salcedo Street [37 large and 68 small]

Abandoned passenger vehicles, vans, and trucks . Throughout the city there are abandoned fleets of passenger vehicles.

I hope the links work okay. I’m using a friend’s site and he isn’t around to help me with the technicalities.

The above links failed.

Here is a blogsite dedicated to images from the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, beginning with the location of abandoned buses .

Although this is an interesting point, there are some important facts missing. For one, was there gas available to fill up these busses? Were there drivers available? And where would Nagin take these people? Texas, etc. have one asset that he did not have: they all have places to house the refugees. Nagin did not have these. Maybe this is why he was begging for help?

According to the Chicago Tribute buses are owned by a private company called Laidlaw, who owns the Greyhound bus line as well. Probably a bit more difficult to get permission from a private company at a time when the severity of the situation was not yet known. Thanks to the buses being on low-ground, by the time it was known, it was probably too late.

You captured my worries about this event perfectly. People believe lies if they are repeated often enough and conservatives are often defeated by repetition because the think facts speak for themselves. Well facts don’t speak for themselves, someone has to voice them and you’re doing a top notch job of giving them a voice. If more people don’t get on the bandwagon, the lies will prevail. I already seem them gaining strength in the SF bay area

I agree with on many of your points- In particular those about the buses. Failures happend at all levels of government.

Regarding you point about the left. Neglecting the goofballs you mentioned (and I agree they are goofballs), the left is pissed at the administration because all along they were the ones saying they were the “right” guys in office because the dems couldn’t do the job. Well, apparently, the Feds for their part didn’t do theirs on many fronts.

So the Bus Brouhaha turns out to be much ado about nothing. With the knowledge that a private company actually owned the buses, and that they were hardly sufficient to even BEGIN evacuating the people of New Orleans, attention must return again to the President who sat with his thumb up his ass while 80,000 people waited — and the rest of us wondered where his “leadership” was.

Catastrophes like this are quite beyond the local government to handle. That’s why agencies like FEMA were created in the first place. If you look at your payroll statement, you’ll notice you pay pennies to your local city compared to dollars to your state, and tens or hundreds of dollars to the federal government.

You freakin liberals are all about excuses when it comes to your incompetent democrat politicians. The buses were owned by a private company. “boo hoo”. (Your liberals on the Supreme Court didn’t have a problem with government taking private property. I guess buses shouldn’t be a big deal.) Where were they supposed to go? “boo f^ckin hoo” (Let’s see anywhere, but the hellholes that the Superdome and Covention Center turned into.) Who was supposed to come in and drive these buses? (You liberals are stupid to drive a bus?) Luckily for some 50 people a young man that had some common sense commandeered a school bus. Jabbar Gibbons. Oh by the you dumbass liberals he’s never driven one before. They then put their money together and drove to Houston and salvation. While if they did use all the buses they couldn’t get everybody out, but a sizeable amount of people could’ve been evacuated. It would’ve certainly saved some people the misery they had to endure and maybe the people that were left behind wouldn’t have suffered as much. Oh no but your “illogical” hatred of Bush has blinded you to the Mayor’s incompetence. Hell, before the storm hit I wanted to evacuate and I live in Vallejo, Ca.