Blanco says feds pledged buses

[True_Blue]

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered.

Where were the buses?

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

more....
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml

[Erika]

1. The truth comes out

The spoiled elitists GOP can only think of comfort, not necessity.

[Verve]

2. I knew Blanco was going to start speaking out once the storm had passed!

Let her rip!:nuke:

[skids]

3. Finally. (Recommended.)

Too bad I greylist and don't know any freepers. Otherwise I'd be bombarding all the Nagin bus bushitters that sent me spam right about now.

[sasquatch]

4. Nominated

[merwin]

5. And the superdome had much better air conditioning, huh?

[Be Brave]

6. Bush whined while people died.

Thank goodness Blanco is finally speaking out.

[Ian David]

36. Emperor Bush Fiddled While America Drowned

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. So THAT's the story behind those school busses Blitzer keeps showing

to "prove" Nagin and Blanco are responsible for people not getting out of New Orleans.

This is important. I'm told that the Advocate, from Baton Rouge, is a solid source. They've had some important stories since the storm.

We need to get primary documents on this and media blast them everywhere, including a blizzard of them at Wolf Blitzer.

Nominated.

[rodeodance]

24. No, Blanco is referring to FEMA buses --Not the ones Wolf keeps show-

ing. These Fema buses are not the ones Wolf keeps showing on TV (school buses up to their tops sitting in water).



...."'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

[ThoughtCriminal]

8. The issue of AC on school buses pre-landfall is valid

Un-airconditioned and no bathrooms. For the elderly and sick the number of deaths would have been substantial from heat and dehydration in the 6 hour+ drive to Baton Rouge. And if the buses did not make it out in time, I can think of few vehicles less safe for high winds in the open.

After the storm, it was not so much of an issue since there was no AC anywhere and supplies weren't being brought in.

[gasperc]

19. I saw a story of an elderly lady dying the SAT befor the storm

it was posted her on DU last week
but, to me, it all smacks of lackadasial approach to government and diaster relief in general. Bush and Rove are far more interested in image and pushing their "agenda" and making sure republicans get voted into everything. Actual governing is somewhat of an afterthought. Like we need an agency that will do a gangbuster job when a diaster strikes is a total afterthought. They think more along the lines of we need an agency that promotes Bush compassionate conservative image and send federal tax dollars to pro-GOP companies that will keep the GOP power monopoly going.

[Wordie]

9. Recommended! ...and sent to Keith Olberman (Countdown on MSNBC)

[HardWorkingDem]

10. I'm sorry for this reply, BUT....

is the issue really about sending buses AFTER the hurricane hit, or BEFORE...to me, that is where the real scandal is at. With the amount of time before hand, the buses should have been there before and not after.

Another issue that seems to be missed is, is it not the responsibility of the Federal government to step in when something is coming that is clearly beyond the capabilities of the state or local governments? If the Bushies were true leaders, they would have made sure this happened BEFORE the hurricane hit.

[Wordie]

11. Feds (and president) had responsibility under the National Response Plan.

Here's a link to a different thread discussing this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2096332&mesg_id=2097868

[snot]

12. I'm not certain, BUT

I can tell you from N.O. friends and from reports, until Katrina had hit, a lot of N.O.'ers didn't seriously consider evacuating. They'd heard lots of storm warnings before, they'd weathered the storms out, and the storms had always made a right turn before seriously hitting N.O.

And they were right, in a way--it wasn't the storm that made evacuation necessary.

The big difference this time was when, AFTER the storm had passed, the levees broke.

(And why IS it, again, that they broke AFTER the storm had passed? I'm not entirely clear on that . . . )

Anyway, everyone who knew the levees had broken knew then that evacuation was a serious thing, and THAT's when the busses needed to be there. They weren't.

Or the next day. Or the next day. Or the next day. Or the next day.

[K8-EEE]

13. Exactly....

That is the question, when the levees broke and it was major SOS time, is the FEMA answer like, OH YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT ALREADY, SCREW YOU. They just could not seem to do ANYTHING....and they have quite a few hundreds of billions of dollars, day after day I was like, send the damn buses!

[HardWorkingDem]

14. Buses after doesn't add up.....

I can understand people not having a way to leave or not wanting to leave when all they have is what they are leaving behind. I would hate to do the same thing. And it is especially heartbreaking thinking about the people and families who had nowhere to go or other families to stay with. With all that said, I'm not trying to blame the victims here, but for those following this storm, it was well publicized about the dangers that could happen days before it hit land.

I seem to recall many news reports talking about a possibility of a breach in the levee systems. And really, getting buses into NO's after the breach of the levee systems may not have made much of a difference when compared to getting them in there BEFORE the storm hit. Many, many roads were probably blocked and would impede bus travel.

My whole issue is that this is the sort of thing where the Federal Govt MUST KNOW that a disaster like this is beyond the scope of state and local governments.

[Sgent]

15. No

The "worst case scenerio" involved no levee breachs. It involved the levees being overcome (storm surge higher than the levee's).

In that situation, rather than filling up with water over a period of 24-48 hours, the city would ahve been instantly innundated with water (think tsunami). Its a subtle difference, and it bears no real comfort for vitims of this storm, but the "worst case scenerio" would have been much more devistating than this.

Katrina veered east at the last minute and exposed her weakest wind/surge to Lake P. The levee's initially held, but it was a breach in the actual levee, not the topping of it, that caused the damage.

[MH1]

28. But in the case of a surge vs. breach...

If the levees were good for, say, 20 ft, and the surge was 24 ft, then there would be some flooding due to the 4 ft overage. But once the surge subsides, there would be no additional flooding unless the levees were breached. And in any case the water inside the levee would not be as high as outside, because it only allowed in what flowed over top the levee.

In the case of a breach, unless it is fixed first, the water level inside the levee would equalize with the water level outside the levee, and that would be a much larger amount of water - flooding an entire house to the roof, instead of having a couple feet of water in the living room.

Although it wouldn't happen as quickly, I would think an unrepairable (quickly) levee breach is a worse case than flooding from the levees being topped by a few feet. Because with only topping, less water would have gotten inside the levees, so it would be able to be pumped out a lot quicker, and it would not be necessary to divert resources to repairing a breach.

So I disagree that "worst case scenario" of levee being topped would be worse than what did happen, the levee breached in several places that could not be repaired quickly. Unless of course the levee was topped by many more feet of water than in my example, in which case you are probably right.

Where I am going is that if the levees and pumps had held, we would not have had anything like this disaster, even if the surge overtopped the levee. We need to hammer home this first-grade lesson: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. (Can we please put grown-ups back in charge now?)

[snot]

16. You're right in that Feds shd have known . . .

this was beyond State capabilities--if for no other reason than that the State officials told them so.

But there's also the fact that FEMA told folks in N.O. day after day that busses were on their way, they'd be there the next morning, and--like the water and food that FEMA should have been able to drop within 48 hours without any great strain--they just didn't show.

Post-K, there weren't many ways in and out of N.O., but the ones there were were freely passable, except to the extent they were blocked by FEMA or by police from neighboring suburbs. Busses to Houston, etc., could easily have gotten through, hundreds of them, 24 hrs per day day after day, IF FEMA had positioned them in a timely way and given the appropriate orders. Instead, I kid you not, FEMA actively BLOCKED pretty much every kind of help you can think of.

If you have doubts, peruse http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x22805 . There are multiple reports from multiple sources.

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. Days before?

Katrina had only been in the Gulf for 3 days before it New Orleans. Plus there are guidelines from the Feds has to when to order evacuations which were followed. Second, this was the first time ever a mandatory evacuation was ordered for New Orleans because before Katrina no one thought they could evacuate enough of NO to make it worth it. Considering all this and the fact that Nagin did evacuate at least 80% of NO, this was a very successful evacuation. It was the Fed response or rather lack of response that ended up causing all the problems.

[Pirate Smile]

34. The History Channel had a show on NOLA and Katrina last night.

It showed why Levees weaken - it had visuals which I, obviously, can't replicate here.

Essentially, they showed a concrete levee - it looked like a big concrete slab sticking straight up in the water - water on one side and dry land on the other. They said the weakening of the levee is on the land side of the levee, not the water side. Water sloshes over the top of the levee, landing at the base of the land side and washing/eroding away the ground at the base of the levee, where it goes into the ground, weakening its foundation and it eventually topples over or buckles.

That was the visual they gave and explained which made sense.

[NMDemDist2]

38. actually the evacuation was a "sucess" Plans called for 60% to leave

and more like 80% actually got out. That is a sucessful evacuation anyway you count it

What's criminal is the lack of Federal response AFTER the storm.

[AnnInLa]

55. IMHO, Snot is correct

(the above is a strange sentence to write)

IF the levees hadn't broken, the buses wouldn't have been needed for evacuation. Once the levees broke, Blitzer's buses were under water.

Before the storm, everyone now knows the difficulties of forcing, at gunpoint, I guess, the poor, the elderly, the handicapped, the hospitals, the nursing homes, the jails and prison...all onto school buses which would have driven by whom? to where?

[Usrename]

23. I live in FL and am familiar with 'mandatory' evacuations.

The people who wanted to leave their homes were bussed to the superdome. There was a large National Guard presence there before the storm hit. Others wanted to stay in their houses. Here in FL, the local police will advise you that if you stay you are 'on your own' and that curfews will be in force. You cannot be out on the street or you can be arrested. If your house catches fire, no one will come. They do not remove you forcibly, and it is unrealistic to think that it would be any different than the recent pullout from Gaza if they tried.

There is no evacuation plan that I know of that calls for people to be taken to a shelter and then left to fend for themseves for a week or so. The issue of busses after the disaster was to move the evacuees to livable quarters where food and water would be available. Reporters moved in and out of the city to visit the superdome, so the roads must have been open. Why no rescue? Why no busses as promised?

A poster here noted that civilization is only 12 meals thick. Deny food and water for more than three or for days and society breaks down. The Bataan Death March of WWII fame, noted for the brutality of the event, lasted only a few days. The POWs were denied any food or water. It is a hideous, monstrous, evil thing to do.

[rodeodance]

25. I have not heard why Nagin did not use the school buses that we keep

seeing on TV--BEFORE Katrina hit. (primarily I saw then on the Situation room). Does anyone know this story?
I think mayor Nagin said something about not having drivers but I am not sure.

[CottonBear]

30. Go to the Media Matters for America website for the bus story.

Nagin did not have control of the school buses. The NOLA school board did.

The mayor used public transit buses to take people to the Superdome. There were not 2,000 school buses. There were less than 500 operable school buses (I think that number is correct. There were only 800-900 total school buses in NOLA and not all were operable. Check the Snopes website too for bus debunking.)

Even if Nagin had used every school bus and transit bus, there still would have been tens of thousands of people left in NOLA.

Even if he could have usd the school buses, he would not have had drivers with the proper licenses (they evacuated.) Many transit drivers evacuated.

The buses that did make trips out to other parts of LA were not allowed to go back. These buses also got stuck in traffic for hours. There are no bathrooms on transit buses and no bathrooms or AC on school buses.

[noamnety]

43. They halted school bus evacuations

after several nursing home residents died on them or shortly after getting off them, from the heat.

At that point, they didn't know for sure the levees would break, but they did know for sure they'd killed several people from trying to evacuate them on school busses. Even federal guidelines call for evacuating unairconditioned busses when temperatures rise above a certain point. Can you blame them for stopping, especially when they were promised the AC busses from FEMA would be arriving?

[Mich Otter]

32. About those buses...

OK, let's figure out what it would take to use the school buses.
Who was suppose to drive them? Were they expecting the buses to be driven by the Moms and Dads who typically drive kids to school? If I was a Mom or Dad, I would be spending my time getting myself and my kids the hell out of New Orleans!
What routes were the drivers suppose to take? Which homes were they suppose to stop at? The kids get picked up at a street corner, usually a few blocks from their home. To use school buses to pick up people other than kids, the drivers would have to go up and down every street and stop at every house. It would have been physically impossible to do so in such a short time, even without a hurricane bearing down on them.
Who would have persuaded all the people to leave? Who would have carried those who needed the help to get on the buses? Does anyone think the bus drivers could have gotten to every house, persuaded every person to leave, and gotten every person on board the bus? It could never happen.
Where were the bus drivers suppose to deliver all their passengers? The Super Dome did not have enough room for everyone. The Convention Center was added as a site after the Super Dome filled to capacity. The Convention Center also was not big enough for the people who were looking for safety.
Many of the residents would not have been willing to leave, even facing death. Some of the people are physically incapable of leaving. Some of the people are incapable of making logical decisions. Other people would simply have made the wrong choice for whatever reason.
If there was an assigned place for each person to get to for safety, and a way for the people to get there, the deaths would have been greatly reduced. There was too much of leaving each person to fend for themselves.
The problems were large enough that only large scale planning by federal, state and local governments, working quickly and jointly, could have had the best success possible.
The planning is flawed and the leadership is not interested in taking care of people first.

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. Nagin used the City Buses to pick up people around NO

and to take them to shelters. On Sunday AM the Super dome was opened has a shelter of last resort and people were then taken there at that point. That was when HS/FEMA should have sent buses in to take as many people as possible out of NO but they didn't. Instead they sent in security forces in order to search for weapons and drugs. HS/FEMA sent in enough MRI's to last 2 to 3 days and otherwise left people to fend for themselves.

In regards to the school buses, the Mayor of NO has no jurisdiction over the School Board and those buses were inappropriate for the 6-8 trip to Baton Rouge or other safe area since they have no AC or bathrooms. Three people did die in a school bus on the way to Baton Rouge.

Once the hurricane passed and more and more people started to show up at the Superdome, Blanco asked the Feds to send buses. Before the storm there were about 10,000 people in the Superdome. After the storm and when the flooding began that number went up to around 30,000. HS/FEMA did as little as possible for 5 more days to help anyone there. In the meantime Bush ate cake and played guitar.

[OregonBlue]

18. Did they have contracts with private companies to supply buses?

Is that why it took them so long? There must have been buses in big cities that were not devestated by the hurricane. I'm just asking.

[0007]

20. I hope Blanco has conclusive proof and it appears she does.

Now what will Rush Lmbaugh say? 0' never mind!

[cassiepriam]

21. A pattern is emerging........

Feds refuse to help or allow others to help due to minutia:
• cannot send school buses since they do not have air conditioning
(but these are the buses that are good enough for out kids everyday).
• docs cannot help because they are not federalized
• other rescue workers cannot do their jobs because they have not had the correct training....

Sounds to me like Federal attorneys ran the rescue effort and worried more about liability than saving lives...

But wait a minute... aren't these the same attorneys who found legal rationales to justify rape and torture of prisoners, including innocent women and children? The same federal govt which was able to justify the killing of 100.000 Iraqis (again mostly women and children)? Seems like they can find rationales to do the insupportable when they want to. I am beginning to believe those who claim NO was genocide. I thought it was indifference. It is now looking more and more deliberate.

[rodeodance]

22. By then (Thrus) many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or dying.

.....Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said, 'Yes, m'am.'"

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a critical error.

"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in one day's time."

It was late Wednesday. The buses wouldn't get to New Orleans until Thursday. By then, many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or dying.

[cmd]

27. It's one thing to be on an unairconditioned bus for a trip to school

and another to be on one for hours in slow or stand still traffic. The heat becomes unbearable in those conditions. They would have become death traps. You know how quickly a car heats up in the summer. Put seventy five people in a bus in 90 degree weather and see how long they can take it.

[cassiepriam]

31. I would taken my chances, beats drowning.....nt

[marions ghost]

35. I think that's the bottom line...

"Federal Attorneys worried more about liability than saving lives..."
Legality over morality. Deliberate decisions were made to limit exposure, not so much 'incompetence.' But then they didn't see the potential for an even bigger level of exposure.

[cassiepriam]

37. but that is the is the big irony.......

Bush and co never worry about consequences or liability.
They do what they want, then buy or threaten their
way out of any jam. Or use propoganda to make is someone else's fault. So why were they so worried all of a sudden about
minor liabilities? Looks fishy to me....

[marions ghost]

39. I think they worry about both...

LIABILITY: first they strive to limit liability in ANY way...(look at the way they parse every word that comes out of their mouths). It's all about risk vs the bottom line. They are willing to play that game with people's lives, no problem.

CONSEQUENCES: then if things go dont go their way, they will as u say, "buy or threaten their way out of a jam." (or pass the buck if they can, like blaming it on the mayor and gov).

I think the feds made some unforgiveable miscalculations which amount to criminal negligence, dereliction of duty, whatever legal terms there are for total fiasco. And the gross mismanagement of FEMA funds under the Dept of Homeland Security before the storm is obvious. It would be hard to prove a premeditated attempt to cause death and injury. But I think a proper investigation could probe into, as you say, this very suspicious pattern in the way aid was constantly thwarted. This demands a serious inquiry and we must continue to press for that to take place.

[rodeodance]

26. kick

[DemsUnited]

29. Buses, before & after the storm.

Might have been possible for Mayor Nagin to have used school buses to evacuate another 10 to 15 thousand people before the storm. But that still leaves what? 70, 80 thousand people stranded after the storm hit & levees broke?

FEMA/HomelandSecurity/WhiteHouse f***ed up big. If buses had started rolling into the city on Tuesday like they were supposed to, and food and water distributed, then many of the horrible things we all saw on TV would have been avoided.

[KC21304]

44. Nagin said there were maybe 300 working buses.

No way to get 10 to 15 thousand people in them, even if he had been able to get drivers.

[truthisfreedom]

40. why doesn't FEMA have thousands of its own buses regionally placed?

the world's "super-power" better be ready and gassed up, right?

[Joe Chi Minh]

41. A pound to a pinch of snuff, they didn't have anywhere

to take them, and weren't interested in preparing anywhere for them! Until the nation-wide, indeed world-wide clamour of outrage finally persuaded them that they'd already begun to pay what would become an enormous price for their dereliction. And very belated damage control became the order of the day.

[Laelth]

42. Nobody wanted those people, sadly.

The reason they couldn't walk across the bridge to Crescent City was that that town's government didn't want thousands of poor people dumped on them. So, they posted armed guards at the bridge. Busses are useless if you have nowhere to go.

Sad but true.

-Laelth

[Joe Chi Minh]

46. Hence the total dereliction

of its duty on the part of the federal government and implicitly, of course, Bush. Which was my point.

[Patiod]

51. I've seen a lot of reports about this

and I'd like to know more about it. Did the people in Crescent City or any other town/parish that turned people away have the right to do so? Should they now be held accountable?

[Laelth]

56. Interesting question.

The freedom to travel (from state to state, at least) is a constitutional right protected by the Supreme Court at strict scrutiny. In order to restrict this right, Constitutionally, a state must show a compelling state interest, a necessary connection between the interest and the act the state took to protect that interest, and the least possible intrusion into the protected right when acting to protect that state interest. That's a tough burden, but as far as I know, it applies only when one state passes a law or takes some action that prevents citizens of other states from moving to or away from the state that passed the law or took the restrictive action. I know of no cases where the Supreme Court has struck down a state law as unconstitutionally restrictive of a citizen's ability to move around within a given state. The state, itself, has police powers--that is, the ability to take action necessary to protect the health and general welfare of its citizens. Here, the Crescent City police would argue that it was protecting the general welfare of its own citizens by prohibiting citizens of New Orleans from entering. It's likely that the federal courts wouldn't even have jurisdiction to hear the case. The only place it could be brought would be in the Louisiana state courts, and those courts are likely to protect the interests of a municipal corporation within the state, i.e. Crescent City, from private-citizen plaintiffs, i.e. the residents of NO who weren't allowed to cross the bridge.

Still ... it would be an interesting case.

-Laelth

[Catherine Vincent]

45. I am glad to hear this.

But it almost doesn't matter. The right wing put out the talking point about the buses underwater and the shills and media ran with it. They will continue to run with that and forget about what Gov. Blanco said.

[GOPAgainstGW]

47. Blanco Is A Total Idiot! n/t

[CAcyclist]

52. And I've lost respect for your opinion. nt

[Bridget Burke]

53. Please explain....

Awaiting details.

[Ian_rd]

48. Damn - the "buses" was the best GOP talking point - now it's gone *cries*

[Vinca]

49. There has to be an independent commission to study this mess.

While I'm sure there is plenty of blame at all levels, it's painfully obvious Shrub's political cronies being appointed to key disaster positions was the crux of the problem. People died. People suffered and are suffering. Ice is being trucked everywhere but the hurricane disaster zone. Michael Brown leaving is a start, but mere resignations are not enough and this all needs to go higher up.

[neuvocat]

50. Could someone explain something to me?

Wasn't she praising Bush a little while ago? Thanks.

[AnnInLa]

54. My Gov

I never doubted that she would come out with the truth after she got what she wanted from bushco. Here, we were watching her numerous public beggings on local TV, begging for what Louisiana did not have. I cried everytime I saw her go on TV pleading for help. The people of Louisiana know who did what, when they did it, why they did it...and these people are fed up with bushco.