LAWLESSNESS KILLS

More evidence that encouraging the looting early on after hurricane Katrina cost many innocent people their lives, in the New York Times:

As early as Friday, Aug. 26, as Katrina moved across the Gulf of Mexico, officials in the watch center at FEMA headquarters in Washington discussed the need for buses.

That's in DC, a couple of days before the storm.

Someone said, "We should be getting buses and getting people out of there," recalled Leo V. Bosner, an emergency management specialist with 26 years at FEMA and president of an employees' union. Others nodded in agreement, he said.

"We could all see it coming, like a guided missile," Mr. Bosner said of the storm. "We, as staff members at the agency, felt helpless. We knew that major steps needed to be taken fast, but, for whatever reasons, they were not taken."

Drivers Afraid

When the water rose, the state began scrambling to find buses. Officials pleaded with various parishes across the state for school buses. But by Tuesday, Aug. 30, as news reports of looting and violence appeared, local officials began resisting.

Governor Blanco said the bus drivers, many of them women, "got afraid to drive. So then we looked for somebody of authority to drive the school buses."

"Somebody of authority to drive...?" Is that a hint that lawyers were still putting liability ahead of lifesaving? Sounds like it might be.

Had widespread lawlessness not been an issue so early after the storm (looters reportedly hit the streets before they were even flooded, thanks to Blanco's a Nagin's lax attitude), they might have had enough drivers from surrounding parishes to move all those buses into action before they were all flooded. But the lawlessness understandably frightened drivers away. Would you want to drive a big, slow bus into what amounted to a war zone unarmed?

Perhaps FEMA in DC should have gotten on the phone to someone in Mayor Nagin's office on Aug. 26 and asked them about their evacuation plans, but that isn't FEMA's job. It probably will be eventually. One thing I see coming out of this is a FEMA that will require states and cities to draw up detailed disaster plans and file them with FEMA HQ. Currently, FEMA wants such plans but the filing requirements are very loose.

And cities and states will still have to follow those plans.

One thing is curious about this NYT story, btw. It never mentions the hundreds of buses scattered all around New Orleans and how using them before the storm might have made the whole situation different. Those buses don't even rate a throwaway line.

MORE: The Captain blasts the NYT for failing to mention the nearly 600 buses NOLA officials had at their disposal but failed to use. It is more than passing strange that in a story that uses the word "buses" 18 times, the Times never mentions the most famous buses in the United States. As usual, when there's a fact that may harm Democrats, NYT readers are the last to know it.

(thanks to Chris)