LESS THAN A MILE FROM THE DOME

sat dozens of municipally-owned NORTA buses. Here's the photo, from Google Earth:

Thanks to Tom for spotting these buses. I count 146 of them at that facility, which is on Canal Street and less than a mile from the Superdome.

Figure these buses have 60 or so seats on them. That adds up to an additional 9,000 or so passengers who could have ridden them out of New Orleans ahead of the storm and the flood in one trip. If Ebbert had followed the plan.

I take no pleasure in counting up buses, Googling seating capacities and tallying up the number of lives that might have been saved. But when the blame game started, Mayor Nagin and Terry Ebbert made it necessary to do so.

**note** I had an erroneous photo of the Almonaster facility in this post. I've removed it until I can find a legitimate photo of it.

UPDATE: Here's the Almonaster facility. It's nearly empty.

It's just a couple of blocks from the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. It could have been emptied after the flood, though that seems unlikely. If it was emptied before the flood, why wasn't the other one? They're not far apart. Here's a link to a wide shot that shows both facilities. The Nagin Memorial Pool is in the lower left, if Google Earth's links are working right. They've been a bit screwy.

MORE: The link will take you to a BEFORE photo, in which you can see dry land and a lot of buses. Click on the red Katrina button to see the after flood shot--water everywhere, and an empty lot.

COMBAT OPERATIONS COMMENCE IN NEW ORLEANS

Via OTB:

NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy.

And then there's this:

Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.

“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

Indeed. It's not worth risking your life defending people who hate you.

I won't make the obvious comment about Democrat policies destroying the military. And I won't connect that to the Democrat Governor's ultraslow moves to re-establish order.

LEFT BEHIND

The WaPo half-heartedly wades into the local government's responsibility to help its least advantaged citizens escape the wrath of a terrible hurricane. I say half-heartedly, because the Post manages to sidestep those big yellow monuments to local incompetence:

In the months before the storm, the city's emergency planners did debate the challenges posed by these numbers, which are much higher than in other hurricane-prone parts of the country, such as Florida. Because a rapid organization of so many buses would have been impractical, the city's emergency managers considered the use of trains and cruise ships. The New Orleans charity Operation Brother's Keeper had tried to get church congregations to match up car-owners with the carless, and it had produced a DVD on the subject of hurricane evacuations that was to be distributed later this month. Unfortunately, none of these plans was advanced enough to have had much impact this week.

If the "plan wasn't advanced enough," whose fault is that? It's not as though no one knew that New Orleans was a city living on borrowed time. And how hard is it to give people a map of pickup points--mail them out, put them in newspapers, have a website, etc--and have a system of cascading phone calls to get drivers alerted? Where are you going to get the drivers? Well, since they're school buses, how about using the school's drivers? Make it part of their job to be ready to drive people to safety in the event of a disaster. They'd probably volunteer for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that by driving others to safety, they're also driving themselves to safety.

This kind of planning is not hard. It's a no-brainer.

This Post editorial is a base coverer. They can say that they covered the bus-ted story without really covering it. They can say that they asked a few questions without really asking any of the hard questions of the local "leaders" whose responsibility included making sure the whole city could get out when the mandatory evacuation order came down. The Post can say that its reportage addresses all the angles, even though it doesn't address them with the necessary attention to detail.

Not buying it.

(thanks to Chris)

YOU'LL GET BETTER COVERAGE FROM BLOGGERS THAN THE MSM UPDATE: Punditguy's take is right:

The anger burning in New Orleans over the past few days is justifiable. Refugees deserve an explanation.

But, their anger should not be directed at George W. Bush. Their anger should be directed at the criminals in their city, the drug addicts who held up their neighbors at gunpoint, the looters who stole from their neighborhood businesses, and the bad decisions, the bad calls, the inaction, and the ineffectiveness of their disconnected and dysfunctional local government.

That's how I see it.

DETAILS, DETAILS...

Lt Col Tony Shaffer offers a lot of details in this interview re Able Danger. He offers too many details for anyone to go on dismissing the operation or its significance.

Here's one detail about his meeting with the 9-11 Commission in Afghanistan that's sure to stir things up:

SHAFFER: The bottomline was, and the way I phrased it was, “We found two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, to include Atta.” That’s the way I phrased it to them. I don’t know if they didn’t recognize the Atta part, but I did specifically mention two of the three cells which conducted 9/11, and at the end of that I threw in Atta. Because my focus, honestly, was that we found two of the three cells. That was to me the most important factor, rather than focusing on Atta, as an individual. And that was what I told them.

---

As I recall, at the end of the meeting, there was silence. People were just silent at what I’d said.

Now, I don’t know how to interpret that, but I do know that two things came out of that meeting, some of which are admitted by the 9/11 Commission now.

First, Zelikow approached me at the end of the meeting and said, “This is important. We need to continue this dialogue when we get back to the states. Here’s my card.”

Now a senior executive handing an [Army] major his card, I would consider that a fairly big indication that “Hey, there’s something to this.”

Second thing, by the 9/11 Commission’s own statement of 12 August, it talks about Dr. Zelikow calling back [to the U.S.] immediately. My understanding from talking to another member of the press is that [Zelikow’s] call came into America at four o clock in the morning. He got people out of bed over this.

Yet the Commission, recall, ended up leaving Able Danger out of its final report entirely because they determined it wasn't "historically significant."

Who did Zelikow wake up to tell them about Able Danger? What did he tell them? What did they tell him? These are details we don't know, but we need to know them.

Read the rest of the interview. It's long but interesting. For one thing, it answers the question of why this story is only coming out now with perfect clarity.

BUS-TED! UPDATE

Reader Eric sent us this photo last night. It's a higher-res update of the infamous Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. Note the oil slick streaming from the bus engines:

With the improved resolution we count 255 buses in that one lot. That means at a capacity of 66 on board, 16,830 New Orleans residents could have been evacced out in one trip. Even if you have a lower capacity per bus, say 50 per bus, you're still getting nearly 13,000 out in one run. In an emergency mandatory evacuation, you could probably get away with putting more than 66 on each of those buses.

When we said that the buses are now expenses instead of assets, this is what we meant. Not only are those buses ruined, their disuse resulting in lives lost, but now they're spilling oil and gas out into the already polluted water. A spark near that slick could cause yet another fire and a whole new set of explosions.

It appears another small school bus lot in New Orleans sat unused too. It's in this NOAA image. Here's a cropped detail:

Looks like 13 buses there. That's enough transportation to get another 500-1000 people out of town before the storm hit.

There may be more evacuation resources sitting out there if anyone wants to keep digging using the raw images or Google Earth. For instance, there were at least a few airport buses sitting at the closed airport.

A WORD ABOUT FINGER-POINTING: I'm not going to get into every outrageous thing every lefty has said since the New Orleans crisis began. They're too numerous, too unreasonable and besides, the left is really beyond the reach of facts now. Sniping back at every idiotic thing they have said this past week would probably fill up a good sized library, and be entirely futile. And I don't have to say much when that picture of those buses says just about everything that needs being said.

I will say this. I think it's tremendous that some bloggers have chosen to hold their fire on Nagin et al until the city's stranded have been evacuated. I don't begrudge those bloggers their decision not to push back against the left at all. But I'm more than a little tired of several major right of center bloggers positioning themselves as though they're above the fray and that they will always have time to address the left's insanities later.

That may not be true. There may not be time to address the left's lies later. Led by Jesse Jackson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and a slew of other major leftists who can't win political power the legal way, a larger than reasonable number of Americans have been sniffing revolutionary airs since the crisis started. They have tried to turn hurricane Katrina into a race war. They have blamed the crisis on everything from Bush hating blacks to the Iraq war to irrelevant budget cuts to whatever canard they could dream up. We should ask ourselves, to what end? Bush isn't running for re-election in 2008. He'll leave office soon enough. So why stir up so much animosity in the midst of crisis? What is their end game, or are they just driven by pure hate?

I don't know what drives these leftists, but I do know that mob mentality has pretty much taken over their thoughts and actions. When that happens, someone has to push back. That's what we've been doing on this blog, providing hard facts to show that the crisis isn't Bush's fault.

It's fine for some to maintain the moral highground. I'd just ask them not to criticize those of us who aren't afraid to get our hands dirty if it helps get at the truth and break the left's mob mentality. Somebody has to do it, or the lies stand and could quickly take on a malignant life of their own. Those high horse bloggers can sleep safely in their beds because rough bloggers stand ready in the night to visit truth on those who would lie us into harm.

DAVID BROOKS SEES IT TOO: The Bursting Point:

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

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.

THEY HAD A PLAN

They just didn't follow it. So they were planning to fail. By "they," I mean pretty much every government official in Louisiana, and by "plan," I mean a signed-off set of procedures they were supposed to follow in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. You know, like the one that just hit. And by "fail" I mean complete catastrophic failure.

Here's the southeast Louisiana evac plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Go to page 13, read paragraph 5. It states:

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

Well, well. Can you say "smoking gun," Mr. Mayor? Mr. Ebbert? How about a smoking arsenal? I guess whether or not you decide to act is based on how you define "school and municipal buses" and "staging area." Or "hurricane." Or "mandatory," as in "mandatory evacuation."

Also see page 18, paragraph 2a 2 and 3.

Page 20, paragraph 3a 5.

Page 21, paragraph c 4.

Page 29, all of it.

And this is just one part of a 250-page state Emergency Operations Plan.

Consider this strange quote too:

Previous hurricanes evacuations in New Orleans were always voluntary, because so many people don't have the means of getting out. Some are too poor and there is always a French Quarter full of tourists who get caught.

So the existence of people who may be stuck in the bowl actually leads to a decreased hurricane evacuation level to match their helplessness instead of increased urgency and planning for buses? Are you kidding me? Is that called "Nawlins logic" or what? Well, now we know why the President of the United States had to be the one to give the order for a mandatory evac. Sad.

The poor folk provide crucial votes for the local politicians, and the tourists provide the dollars, but yet before a major hurricane they can't even get a bus ride? If the MSM did not exist, President Bush might be seen as a hero now to the survivors of New Orleans for at least trying to force the local pols to get a clue and to think about the poor, sick and helpless for once when it's not election time. That's compassionate conservatism. He feels your pain before you do and tries to prevent liberals from inflicting it.

There is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans.

So when the situation goes south, the levee breaks and the people who should have been evacuated based on the plan are dying, these same officials who decided to improvise the whole thing now blame it all on the President who begged them to just get everyone the hell out of there already.

Nice.

(I added a couple more paragraphs above since posted just a bit ago. See below for further updates...Chris R)

MORE: Some thoughts on planning vs. failure from a Powerline reader who says the NOLA folks knew all about regular mandatory evacuations. Maybe that was before Mayor Nagin came along.

UPDATE: Yep, it looks like this will go down in history as gross (local) negligence:

A year ago, New Orleans reviewed its hurricane disaster plans after Hurricane Ivan gave the city a major scare forcing the evacuation of nearly 1 million people from the area.

What happened last September bears striking similarities to the problems encountered before Hurricane Katrina struck. The only difference was Ivan missed the city.

There were hours-long traffic jams. Those who had money fled, while the poor stayed. The warnings were the same: Forecasters predicted that a direct hit on the city would send torrents of water over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.

"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, told the Associated Press at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."

Advocates for the poor were indignant in 2004 – just as they are complaining now.

"If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.

With Ivan, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then, just hours before the storm was set to hit land, they agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs.

Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.

"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said.

But again, in 2004, no city or school buses were used to take people to safety.

Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.

And, indeed, he didn't do much different last weekend before Katrina struck.

Even the problems that occurred at the Superdome this week had a precedent – during a threat by Hurricane Georges in 1998. An estimated 14,000 poured into the stadium, but theft and vandalism were rampant.

During the threat by Ivan, only 1,100 fled to the Superdome and they were supervised by 300 National Guardsmen, who were able to avoid major crime problems.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged after the Ivan near miss they needed a better evacuation plan.

Wow. Speechless.

As Instapundit has been reminding people, this storm wasn't a surprise. The blogosphere and Accuweather were on top of it very early.

JPod sums it up nicely:

With the local and state governments of Louisiana collapsing both tactically and emotionally, there was nowhere for that sense of frustration to flow other than toward the federal government. And there it will remain until the president succeeds in convincing the nation that he has taken personal responsibility for the management of this unprecedented disaster. At which point the responsibility might well begin to flow back again to the local and state authorities whose negligence in the days preceding the catastrophe border on the homicidally negligent. But not until then.

I think it's starting. The MSM just hasn't caught up to the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Mudville Gazette has more info on the New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan which has a few more specifics but is still not nearly as detailed as you would think it should be in following state guidelines. Both plans are just outlines for what is in other SOPs.

...Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations.

...Major population relocations resulting from an approaching hurricane or similar anticipated disaster, caused the City of New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness to develop a specific Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedures, which are appended to the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.

The SOP is developed to provide for an orderly and coordinated evacuation intended to minimize the hazardous effects of flooding, wind, and rain on the residents and visitors in New Orleans. The SOP provides for the evacuation of the public from danger areas and the designations of shelters for evacuees.

...Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans in coordination with the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and the OEP Shelter Coordinator.

The SOP, in unison with other elements of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, is designed for use in all hazard situations, including citywide evacuations in response to hurricane situations and addresses three elements of emergency response: warning, evacuation, and sheltering.

LOCAL SCREWUP: BUS-TED! **lots of updates, scroll down

Or, if you prefer, The Buses of New Orleans.

This is infuriating:

An angry Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans' emergency operations, watched the slow exodus from the Superdome on Thursday morning and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency response was inadequate. The chaos at the nearby New Orleans Convention Center was considerably worse than the Superdome, with an angry mob growing increasingly violent and few options for refugees to leave the scene.

"This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," Ebbert said. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

Ebbert's job is to coordinate New Orleans' response to emergencies. Somebody should show him this picture and tell him to stop blaming everyone but himself:

(AP Photo/Phil Coale)

New Orleans owns those buses. Here's their significance:

I count 205 busses. When I was a kid, I remember that school busses could carry 66 people. If that is still the case, 13,530 people could be carried to safety in ONE trip using only the busses shown in that picture.

One trip.

Houston is 350 miles from New Orleans. At 50 miles per hour, 13,530 people could have reached Houston in seven hours. Turn the buses around. 14 hours later another 13,530 people are in Houston, far away from Katrina's wrath. In a little more than a day's time, you've gotten the poorest people who wanted to leave but couldn't leave on their own out of the city. And you don't have to drive them as far as Houston. It's the closest huge city, but there are lots of smaller towns you could ferry people to more quickly. The shorter the drive, the more trips you can make. Pretty soon 26,000 saved becomes everyone saved. If anyone left behind in the storm survives and then loots, at least they're not endangering thousands of innocent people. Those innocent people aren't there to be endangered. They're somewhere else.

You see, buses have these interesting features on them, Mr. Ebbert, called wheels. They allow buses to move about the streets of a city under the control of a human. Because of their wheels, buses can go to where the people are and offer them a ride. You could tell people to congregate at street corners for easier pickup. Moreover, since the buses are on the road picking up people and moving them out of the city, they're not in the path of the flood when the levee breaks. So you can keep using them to get the few stragglers who managed to survive the storm and the floods. And you can use them to haul in supplies. Troops. Whatever you need.

But since no one mobilized these buses before the storm--ahem, Mr. Ebbert--since no one mobilized them before the storm, the poor in New Orleans had no way of getting out. And now the buses are waterlogged and useless. All 205 of them. They will go on the expense side of the ledger instead of the asset side. That's your fault, Mr. Ebbert. The blame rests with you, sir. You knew the city owned those buses, you knew where to get them, where to fuel them and you probably had a list of the drivers who operate them. Yet there they sit, half submerged.

One emergency manager with half a clue and a couple hundred drivers could have more or less saved New Orleans from turning into Mad Max territory. Terry Ebbert can blame everyone else all he wants, but this crisis is almost entirely his fault.

Now that National Guard and probably true federal troops will be put into New Orleans to quell the violence, and since the city is crawling with journalists and videographers, we're liable to get something on our TVs that will look like a cross between Waco circa 1993 and Tiananmen Square circa 1989. But with the added twist of a racial component. Great.

And it all probably could have been avoided with judicious use of a couple hundred school buses--those inside the frame above as well as the probably dozens of others outside it.

UPDATE: Here's a tight satellite view of the bus lot. It looks to me like there are more than 205 buses there. That's a freeway next to the lot, in the upper part of the frame. It leads to the Superdome in one direction and out of the city in the other.

Here's a link to a wider view, cropped so that the Superdome is in the lower left and the bus lot is in the upper right. They're not that far apart--a mile or two maybe. That view is cropped down from a much larger image, which is here. Fwiw.

I will say this--if the city's emergency planners couldn't figure out that the bus lot, the freeway and the dome make a pretty tight emergency staging and evacuation system all by themselves, those planners are beyond incompetent. Ebbert and his staff should be held accountable for this to the nth degree.

DRUDGE ASKS: Why didn't you deploy the buses during the mandatory evacuation, Mayor?

Good question.

WELCOME Corner readers!

MORE: I guess the local NO officials will blame Bush and FEMA for this, too.

UPDATE: The one guy in that entire city who actually used a bus to drive people to safety gets bus-ted for it? This is too much.

"If it weren't for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."

Eighteen-year-old [Jabbar] Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there. ...

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."

Ouch! That last line just dropped like a sledgehammer on some local politicians. Who does Jabbar Gibson think he is? He's "an American citizen." As one reader just commented: "Jabbar Gibson for Mayor!" When cops are telling people to go to hell because it's every man for himself, Jabbar's actions are far from outrageous. It doesn't look at all like a busjacking for instance.

MORE: Superdome refugees weigh in:

At the New Orleans Convention Center, some of the thousands of storm victims awaiting their deliverance applauded, threw their hands heavenward and screamed, "Thank you, Jesus!" as the camouflage-green trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in this increasingly desperate and lawless city.

"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here," said Leschia Radford.

But there was also anger and profane catcalls.

"Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!"

And this:

"If you want to save a life get a bus down here," said Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter. "I'm asking the American people to help save a wonderful American city." Her voice cracking with emotion and her eyes bloodshot from fatigue and distress, Carter said pledges of money and other assistance are of secondary importance right now to the urgent need for transportation.

"Don't give me your money. Don't send me $10 million today. Give me buses and gas. Buses and gas. Buses and gas," she said. "If you have to commandeer Greyhound, commandeer Greyhound. … If you donn't get a bus, if we don't get them out of there, they will die."

And finally this from Mayor Nagin himself:

"I need reinforcements," he pleaded. "I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. ...

I've done it all man, and I'll tell you man, I keep hearing that it's coming. This is coming, that is coming. And my answer to that today is BS, where is the beef? Because there is no beef in this city. "

Nagin said, "Get every Greyhound bus in the country and get them moving."

The lesson: "It's the busses, stupid." Even if you can't fill 'em up full of people before the storm, you drive them up the road and then back again later to pick people up after the storm passes and the city floods.

From Random Jottings:

And it's important to remember (well, it wouldn't be if certain people crazed with partisan venom weren't slinging stupid accusations non-stop) that the responsibility for planning for a predictable disaster is local. Not federal. It is the job of San Francisco to plan for earthquakes (and we do); to have the necessary communications and organization to coordinate emergency response. Including asking for and coordinating state and federal help when needed. New Orleans has been facing the possibility of flooding for at least 40 years, with the Mississippi flowing right through town, well above the height of many buildings. ...

The thing is, it is extremely difficult for outsiders to accomplish much when they are groping around unfamiliar territory. They can spend days just finding out what's needed, and establishing communications.

Well said.

UPDATE: Galveston, TX is on the ball.

The city of Galveston is taking action in case of a major storm.

You don't have to look far in Galveston to find kids being kids. But Renee Hill knows something the little ones don't.

They live in the Palm Terrace public housing complex, and if a hurricane threatened the city they'd be among the most vulnerable.

Most people here couldn't evacuate without assistance.

"I think about it but I don't know what I'm gonna do though," said Hill. "You know, it's like you don't have a car, where you gonna go? Who'll come get you?"

Galveston emergency planners said they have 17 city buses and 40 school buses, which could be used to evacuate residents. And now the city is set to make an agreement with the housing authority itself.

In fact, by late Tuesday afternoon the deal was done. Some buses will now go directly to the housing complexes and pick up residents.

"For safety, they should have some type of transportation so we can get out," said Hill.

Yeah. They should.

MORE: Bill Hobbs is on the same page. He notes that New Orleans public transit has 364 buses it could have used to carry out the mandatory evacuation. Those buses could have ferried 22,000 New Orleans residents to safety in one single trip. But they were never pressed into service.

Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina. According to this Freep post, Ebbert has quite the resume and a salary to match:

Ebbert, 60, has been directing the city's new Office of Homeland Security and Public Safety since his appointment by Mayor Ray Nagin on Feb. 11. A highly decorated war hero and the former executive director of the nonprofit New Orleans Police Foundation, Ebbert has been given major powers and responsibilities as an executive assistant to the mayor. His duties are commensurate with his $114,676 annual salary.

Ebbert is charged with coordinating the city's terrorism response capabilities and obtaining federal and state funds for homeland security. He also will oversee the police and fire departments, the Office of Emergency Preparedness and city Emergency Medical Services, and the 911 Center or Orleans Parish Communications District.

His duties extend beyond a crisis or special events such as Mardi Gras. Ebbert has responsibility for the daily operations and planning of all those departments as well as the management of their budgets, Nagin told Gambit Weekly last week, after presenting his plan to re-organize city government to the City Council. "Mr. Ebbert is responsible for all matters related to public safety," the mayor said.

$114,676 for doing what, exactly? Blaming others for his own failure? If Ebbert has any honor, he'll resign, give back every cent of salary he has taken since assuming his powerful office, and wait for the lawyers of New Orleans to catch up with him. And they will.

As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city's government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.

If you're keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans--in one trip--get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.

UPDATE: Looks like the bus lot now has a name: "Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool"

TEXAS WELCOMES REFUGEES

My parents live right in the path of the refugees who are now streaming by the bus caravan into Texas, either to Houston or Dallas or other cities. I called them last night after hearing reports that the lawlessness of New Orleans had started spreading out from the city.

They confirmed that the lawlessness is spreading, albeit at a much lower level that what we're seeing in New Orleans itself. Things have not gotten out of control along the I-45 corridor that connects Houston and Dallas, which was welcome news. I-45 is one of the main trucking arteries from the port of Houston to points north.

My parents did report something that you're not likely to hear on the networks. Houston has essentially filled up with refugees. The Astrodome is full, stores and spaces around the city are full, and Houston is coping quite well with the influx of about 100,000 displaced Americans. The city was able to plan ahead. Dallas has agreed to take 25,000, which means they'll probably end up with 30,000 or more in Big D. San Antonio is going to take on another 25,000. You've probably heard all of that on CNN and Fox. But what you probably haven't heard is what the small towns are doing. Buffalo, TX, population 1550, will take on 200 refugees in its civic center. Waco, population about 100,000, will take on 8,000 refugees, most likely at Baylor University. Dozens of small towns across Texas are doing this--absorbing the refugees coming in from Louisiana and helping them in whatever ways they need help.

Texas universities are also helping out, even absorbing students for the next school year and giving them financial aid.

Texans will end up giving of themselves, opening up their towns and businesses and schools, to the tune of millions of dollars. But it's a big state. It can handle it. It makes me proud to say I'm a native Texan.

MORE: The Anchoress rounds up what the gov't is doing and was doing before the storm even hit. For those of you so quick on the trigger to blame Bush (and for what will you not blame Bush?), keep in mind that as rescue workers tried to get into areas of the city flooded out, across streets littered with submerged cars, street signs and other hazards that could easily capsize small rescue craft if struck at speed, they were shot at by lawless looters. Some of those looters were New Orleans police officers. Civilization broke down. Paramedics are trained to save lives, not play Wyatt Earp in Tombstone.

It's not the feds' fault that this happened. To borrow a phrase from politicians gone by, "It's the lawlessness, stupid."

MORE: Thousands never left New Orleans before the storm because they couldn't. They don't own cars, and don't know too many people who own cars, and couldn't afford a train or bus ticket out. That's just a fact, as well as it's a fact that many stayed behind to ride out the storm--defying evacuation orders--or because of "hurricane fatigue" brought on by too many false alarms for which they did evacuate, only to return to homes undamaged by the storm but broken into by vultures who took advantage of the situation.

It occurred to me a day or two ago that perhaps Amtrak trains could have been commandeered and filled with poor passengers in the hours before the storm. The trains could have taken them anywhere in the nation relatively quickly and safely (it is Amtrak we're talking about). That would probably have taken federal intervention. But commandeering local government resources wouldn't have taken federal intervention.

We can see from this picture of dozens of unused school buses that the state and city took no steps to use vast transportation resources at their immediate disposal. They could have lined those buses up and used them to ship thousands of people out of the path of the storm, and if nothing happened, they could have used those same buses to bring them back. As things turned out, the buses would have been very useful for getting refugees out to Texas and elsewhere. But the buses were never used. And now they're under water, useless. That's a local screw-up.

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN

These are the darkest times. Lawlessness has engulfed stricken and flooded New Orleans. Blameshifting has become the political order of the day as criminal gangs and snipers roam the streets, making rescue and relief dangerous and next to impossible. Formerly tolerant, but now outgunned, city police are overwhelmed and many are now quitting while the innocent suffer and die. State and U.S. Military forces have not yet filled the gap to backup the men in blue who remain. We desperately need a hero. And one steps forward from the shadows. Who is he?

In the Carrollton neighborhood, two armed men - self-appointed sheriffs in a white pickup - confronted them. Spotting thieves who had commandeered a forklift and smashed into a Rite Aid store, the two men fired above the looters' heads and ran them off.

A man emerged pulling a little wagon stacked with Pampers, food, water and soda. He screamed at the men with the guns.

"Who are y'all? Who are you to stop us?"

"I'm an American citizen," was the reply. "Take your food and go."

Who is that man separating good from evil and dealing out both justice and mercy? He's not a subject, he's not a prole, he's not a mercenary. He's an American citizen.

Not far away, at Cooter Brown's Bar & Grill, the weary owner stood sentry with a pal to keep the looters at bay. He had a .357 magnum, a 9-mm. handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun and no hesitation about using any of them.

"The cops are busy as it is. If more citizens took security and matters into their own hands, we won't be in this situation," said owner Art DePodesta, 30, as he warily scanned the street.

...A group of men pried open a Coke machine and then fights broke out over the soda. A few Guardsmen moved in, locked and loaded. At the sight of the rifles, the fighting ended.

He's not a politician. He's not a movie star. He's something greater. He's an American citizen.

Here's another:

John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.

One said, “We want that generator,” he recalled.

”I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum,” Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. “They scattered.”

He smiled and added, “You’ve heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street.”

He's a farmer or a mechanic or a store clerk or a teacher. Whoever he was before the disaster, he's a hero now. "I'm an American citizen."

Charles C. Foti Jr., the Louisiana attorney general, said a temporary detention center and courthouse would be established somewhere outside New Orleans. “We will be ready to accept you in our system, and teach you about rules and order,” Mr. Foti warned looters.

On Tuesday, the state police sent in 200 troopers trained in riot control, said Lt. Lawrence J. McLeary, a spokesman for the state police.

He said that the “nervous energy” in New Orleans reminded him of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “I’ve never seen anything like that in Louisiana,” Lieutenant McLeary said.

With no officers in sight, people carried empty bags, shopping carts and backpacks through the door of the Rite Aid on Wednesday and left with them full. The forklift was still in the doorway. As they came and went, the looters nodded companionably to one another.

Paul Cosma, 47, who owns a nearby auto shop, stood outside it along with a reporter and photographer he was taking around the neighborhood. He had pistols on both hips.

Suddenly, he stepped forward toward a trio of young men and grabbed a pair of rusty bolt cutters out of the hands of one of them. The young man pulled back, glaring.

Mr. Cosma, never claiming any official status, eventually jerked the bolt cutters away, saying, “You don’t need these.”

The young man and his friends left, continuing the glare. A few minutes later, they returned and mouthed quiet oaths at Mr. Cosma, and his friend Art DePodesta, an Army veteran, who was carrying a shotgun and a pistol.

Mr. Cosma stared back, saying nothing.

Through the silent stare he communicated all that needed to be said: "I am an American citizen."

It's important to keep in mind that while a few bands of criminals have gone on a rampage, endangered thousands of innocent people, hindered rescue and relief efforts and will probably get away with major crimes like armed robbery, rape or direct and indirect murder, common Americans know that becoming little armies of one or two can make a big difference. Even in chaos, they will take responsibility and help others, even at great risk to themselves. Collectively they can help restore order, even if their sovereignty only extends for a street corner or a block. This is the meaning of citizenship--not entitlements or a lifestyle of handouts, but liberty coupled with the weight of responsibility. Around the world, whenever disaster strikes, the hero steps forward.

"I am an American citizen." "Let's roll."

(co-written by Chris Regan)

UPDATE: A reader nails it:

When the man said "I'm an American citizen", I doubt that he meant it in the expansive, "we are the world" sort of way. Maybe the man was white, maybe he was black, it does not matter; what does matter is that in Jacksonian fashion he was drawing a line, recognizing those that are inside the circle, and those that are outside the circle. There are those that obey the code, and there are those that don't, and those that don't shouldn't expect much.

...the American is the great indispensable element; an American is an unrecreatable consequence of a certain people, with a certain culture, a certain nature, in a certain time, over a few centuries becoming what the American is today.

HALF OF CHANDELEUR BARRIER ISLANDS WASHED AWAY

Long-term concern for future La/Miss hurricanes:

...scientists say they're alarmed by how much of the region's environmental defenses against future hurricanes and other big storms have become seriously compromised.

Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey who flew over the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana said Thursday that most of the Chandeleur chain of barrier islands - the first line of storm defense for eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi - appears to be gone. What is usually a continuous line of dunes is now just marshy outcrops, said Ann Tihansky, a hydrologist with the survey. "It's unbelievable," she said, after reviewing the results of an aerial video survey.

"It just makes the coastline more and more susceptible because more of that storm surge can move further inland," said Glenn Guntenspergen, a U.S. Geological Survey landscape ecologist who has studied the effect of hurricanes on Gulf Coast ecosystems.

With the loss of the islands and wetlands that buffer the region, he said, "It becomes less and less likely for the systems to be able to recover from these kinds of storms. The systems as a whole are rapidly losing their ability to recover."

Here's more info on the island chain in question from a post-hurricane Ivan USGS survey.

Regarding Katrina's impact they say:

Some of the most dramatic impacts of Hurricane Katrina were seen along the Chandeleur Islands, the first line of defense from tropical storm damage for the coast of Louisiana. The land mass has been reduced by approximately 50 percent. The Chandeleur lighthouse is no longer visible and has most likely toppled with its remains now submerged in the flooded water.

The Chandeleur Island chain has been hit by five storms in the past eight years. In 1998 it endured the effects of Hurricane Georges. In 2002 it suffered further damage from both Tropical Storm Isadore and Hurricane Lili. In 2004 it was battered by Hurricane Ivan, and it has been struck hard once again by Hurricane Katrina.

Michot and other scientists have collected images of the impact and recovery of the islands after each of these storms and found that after every major storm hit, the depth of erosion was greater and the land’s recovery time was longer. Before Hurricane Katrina there was some land recovery from the damage caused by last year’s Hurricane Ivan; that restored landmass has once again been destroyed.

The Chandeleur Islands not only protect important habitats for wildlife, but they also act as barriers which help dampen the impacts of hurricanes and tropical storms on Louisiana’s coast.

Even sadder, the Mississippi town of Waveland no longer exists. Slidell, LA and Pass Christian, MS barely survived. So there are many small towns in both states facing the same bleak rebuilding prospects as New Orleans, especially considering the current state of the barrier island buffer.

MOGADISHU, LOUISIANA

CNN reported a bit ago that FEMA has stood down its rescue efforts for the time being. Their reasoning is clear and stark: The gangs of addicts and looters, now armed with stolen firearms, have made rescue attempts too dangerous.

This is why you threaten to shoot looters, from the beginning of a crisis:

I fully acknowledge that shooting looters is an inappropriately disproportionate response if one views looting as mere larceny. But one doesn't shoot looters to protect property, one does so to protect order. Somebody is going to suffer unjustly when society breaks down. I don't understand why Muller thinks it preferable for the law-abiding citizens to be the cost-bearers. History has shown repeatedly that the way to stop an anarchic riot is an early display of substantial force.

Of course, with the New Orleans police having close to third-world levels of corruption in good weather, there isn't exactly law enforcement that I would trust on the ground in the city until the National Guard gets sent in, so the whole question may be moot.

I'd prefer the Marines instead of the National Guard, but otherwise this is exactly right. In coddling the looters early on, authorities sent a message that the lives of lawbreakers were being protected at the expense of the law-abiding. We would not shoot looters, therefore they had free reign. This is pretty much standard liberal crime policy, when you stop and think about it. That's also pretty much the ACLU's approach to crime and especially terrorism too. But I digress.

The fact is the dependence culture, the drug culture and the criminal culture are combining in New Orleans, which should probably be renamed Mogadishu, and are swirling into a perfect storm of chaos. The weather didn't cause this chaos--people are causing it right now by their behavior. Now if you're a law-abiding citizen facing the prospect of home invasion by these gangs and you have no means of getting help from outside, your only rational choice is to arm yourself however you can. Which means now the law abiding will turn to looting to get guns and ammunition, supposing there's any left in the city to be had. And even the law abiding will begin to shoot strangers on sight, if they believe strangers pose any kind of threat.

This is the cycle of violence: Let lawlessness get out of control even for a short time, and soon everyone's caught up in it.

(via Michelle Malkin)

UPDATE: CNN now reporting the evacution of Charity Hospital in N.O. is coming under sniper fire.

Curiel and his National Guard escorts, were returning to the hospital after dropping off patients at nearby Tulane Medical Center, when someone started shooting at their convoy of Humvees.

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard (troops), wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy. "

The incident happened around 11:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. ET). About an hour later, another gunman opened fire at the back of Charity Hospital.

"We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,'" Curiel said. "We started loading patients (for transport) and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

The National Guard soldiers told staff to get away from the windows, and evacuations were halted.

MORE: "Worse than Camille" has now become "worse than Iraq":

"This is mass chaos," said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather be in Iraq," where he was deployed for 14 months, until January. "You got your constant danger, but I had something to protect myself. [And] three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they had no plan."

UPDATE: Local news reports:

4:15 P.M. - (AP)Police say storm victims are being raped and beaten inside the New Orleans Convention Center.

About 15,200 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses grew increasingly hostile.

Police Chief Eddie Compass says he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.

Compass says, "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten."

He says tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon.

And...

NPR reports that "people trying to fix the levee are now getting shot at," according to Dane. An unconfirmed report.

Drudge says that the New York Times will report tomorrow: "There are signs of complete social breakdown, experts and locals say, a descent into a kind of predatory violence... Developing..."

MORE: Rep. Peter King agrees that it's Mogadishu out there.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg concurs. Honestly, I thought and hoped I'd be alone in making the comparison between New Orleans and Mogadishu. Events have mandated it, unfortunately.

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

In go the troops:

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she has asked the White House to send more people to help with evacuations and rescues, thereby freeing up National Guardsmen to stop looters.

An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country began pouring into the Gulf Coast on Wednesday to shore up security, rescue and relief operations. The new units brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the largest military response to a natural disaster.

"We will restore law and order," Blanco said. "What angers me the most is that disasters like this often bring out the worst in people. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior."

Well guv, you tolerated it for two days, and now looters are shooting at police who are trying to evacuate the Superdome.

As for the troops going in, while I have nothing but respect for the National Guard, I don't think they'll be up to the job. New Orleans has become an amphibious operations environment. Army National Guard troops are trained in desert warfare and urban warfare, typically. Most units have no experience in amphibious operations--sections of the city are under 20 feet of water. The looters aren't too likely to be in those areas, but they will be in shallower areas and areas where the streets are relatively free of water. I think this job requires troops who do have amphibious operations training and experience--the US Marine Corp.

I do think, by the way, that the mere loudspeaker announcement that the Marines are being deployed to take care of the looters would cause most of the miscreant to stand down. And that would be preferrable to sending in less capable troops that might actually have to fight against US citizens.

HIGH-RES DAMAGE ASSESSMENT PHOTOS OF THE GULF COAST

Here's an incredible new resource mostly for Mississippi residents who evacuated the coast. I don't think it's well known yet, but anyone living within approximately one mile of the coast can check on the current status of their home using these satellite images. For people who thought they would have to physically return to know anything about the neighborhood, check this first.

They have real slow index pages, but yet for some reason the large photos will load fast. Maybe someone (or another agency like FEMA) can mirror the indexes.

UPDATE: Google Earth users are trying to get the images to work with that program and Google is saying they expect to have more imagery available today. I suppose they're going to integrate the new NOAA imagery into their own. It should be much easier to browse.

Also, it turns out these images aren't from a satellite but a NOAA Cessna Citation aircraft.

UPDATE: NOAA just added a bunch of new Louisiana images covering lots of shoreline and New Orleans. Now the index page seems faster but the photos load slow. This link explains a bit more how to work with these images to find what you're looking for. It's easier when you toggle the hybrid feature in the Google Maps links to help orient yourself to landmarks.

And here's a different large high-res satellite photo of the entire city of New Orleans.