What is the answer to the "School Bus" talking point?

[benburch]

Why didn't/couldn't Mayor Nagin us the school bus fleet to evacuate?

[nyhuskyfan]

1. Evacuate where?

He's the mayor of the city of New Orleans. His jurisdiction is New Orleans, which was staring down the throat of a Category 5 Hurricane.

In order to use the buses to get people to safety, he would have needed to bring them to shelters out of his jurisdiction -- which is where FEMA is supposed to be in control.

The state of emergency was declared on Friday (or maybe Saturday), which meant that the DHS and FEMA were supposed to be in control of everything at that point.

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. YES! This is the best one

.....

[phusion]

12. I agree

This is the best response.

NOTHING was in place. They'd all get in the busses and possibly be stranded on the open highways.

[SoCalDemocrat]

2. Prevented by administration

There were 80 some buses and drivers standing by to evacuate LA victims. However FEMA or Homeland Security, I'm not sure which, gave the order that it was not safe and they were not to go in and evacuate.

Lots of other states and countries are offering help, but so far the administration by and large is refusing offers for help. It appears they are more concerned with who goes in and what photos get out than with helping people.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. I don't know

but here's some questions I would ask:
what does Lousiana law say about comandeering buses from a school district by a mayor?

Was there fuel available for them to take that many people out of town?

Had anyone agreed to take these people? That, it would seem to me, would be the most important question to ask.

[marshall]

26. No plan existed

No plan existed and Nagin did not have time to throw one together at the last minute. Galveston has had a plan for years--the mayor knows where the buses are, who can drive them, where to drive them to, and how to get everyone together. Something of the magnitude of evacuating an entire city has got to be planned out beforehand.

[alcuno]

4. New Orleans evacuation plan.

First of all, I believe that when you have a plan you have to have it approved by both the state and federal government. As to the plan, it was to open the interstates to outgoing traffic and provide bus service to those who could not leave so they could stay in the shelter of last resort. The city of NO did that. Even Mississippi does not force residents out.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Homeland Security was supposed to be in charge

The Mayor begged for help throughout the storm. He was told that the Superdome would be a safe shelter to send people. FEMA kept telling him that help was on the way but it never came.

Sorry, that poor man did his best but the odds were against him because BushCo wanted another LIHOP.

[Nikki Stone 1]

6. There weren't enough school buses for all those people

....

[AnnInLa]

8. can't be done

1. You can't force people to evacuate, even if it's mandatory

2. School bus drivers who make minimum wage can't cope with transporting all the hospital patients, their oxygen, etc, their meds, their nurses and drs

3. School bus drivers who make minimum wage can't cope with transporting all of the nursing home population with their oxygen, alot of the being mentally ill, and the staffs to take care of the patients

4. School bus drivers who make minimum wage can't cope with transporting the different jail and prison populations

5. minimum wage, can't cope = aren't trained to deal with the above populations

6. Drivers had evacuated with their families or were holed up in their own homes.

I'm sure there were a million more reasons.

[Spazito]

9. Good explanation from someone on Guy James right now

*

[justabob]

10. Elsewhere it was posted

1. Drivers had gone in the evac order

2. Where would the busses go?

3. Mayor's jurisdiction ends at city limit, couldn't have promised anything without Governor and/or other help

[converted_democrat]

11. Did they even have enough busses for 25,000 or more before the storm?

[bpilgrim]

13. got anymore info?

but aid was blocked from entering his city, is the story that seems to be unfolding now, so he could have had 1000 greyhounds and it wouldn't have mattered.

obviously though any material he had in his city was lost.

peace

[Dogmudgeon]

14. Were they his to deploy?

Were they in working condition? (I live about 2 miles from a large school bus lot where the junked buses are taken. They fix the working ones by scavenging the dead ones.)

Was there money in the N.O. budget for fuel? Was there even fuel available? Many of the survivors who stayed behind have said they had no money for gas, since it was a Friday at the end of the month, and their paychecks hadn't arrived or cleared.

Had New Orleans privatized bus service? If it had, Ray Nagin would have been forbidden to commandeer the buses in absence of a contractual stipulation allowing it. Fox would certainly have called it "looting".

The buses may not have been in any emergency declaration checklists or manifests. If Nagin was unaware of this resource, it makes sense that he wouldn't call on it.

And yes, it is possible that Mayor Nagin just forgot about the buses. The same way George Bush forgot that a Cat-5 hurricane was bearing down on a city he knew would be destroyed by as little as a Cat-3 hurricane.

These issues will all be examined in the same set of investigations that George Bush will also face.

--p!

[gratuitous]

15. They only had one driver available

A stupid talking point deserves a stupid answer.

[Emit]

16. This might not actually help

But I've read some parts in this report about evacuation plans. It's a lot of red tape but they do have a lot written about evacuations:

http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/frp2003.pdf

here at this site:

http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/plansindex.htm

• State Emergency Operations Plan (EOP)
EOP Supplement 1a - Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation & Sheltering Plan
479 KB
EOP Supplement 1b - Southwest Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation & Sheltering Plan
419 KB
EOP Supplement 1c - Shelter Plan 456 KB


• Louisiana Amber Alert Plan
• Louisiana Emergency Alert System
Report & Order
Louisiana State EAS Operational Plan
• Emergency Support Functions -The Federal Response Plan
• Federal Response Plan 2003 4.6MB
• Sample Debris Plan
• State Public Assistance Administrative Plan 04-05
• Public Assistance Administrative Plan Annex A 04-05
• State Hazard Mitigation Plan
• Louisiana Model Daycare Emergency Plan
• Louisiana Model Home Health Emergency Plan
• Mosquito Vector Control Implementation Plan For Tropical Storm Allison (FEMA 1380-DR-LA)
• Public Assistance Administrative Plan Addendum/Annex A/Obtaining State Funding -

Basically trying to find the answer to the same question.

[stlsaxman]

17. Here is your answer-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4605183&mesg_id=4605183

On BBC: Northern Command was in position, waiting for Presidential orders.

DHS (FEMA) had everything, even NorthCom on hold to make Bush look good when he arrived on Friday.

It didn't work, however. Unless your freinds are drinking the Kool-Aid.

[benburch]

22. Hey, stlsaxman!!!

LTNS! Do you go to Bartcop chat still?

[Gabi Hayes]

25. how bout Pete Hisey? haven't heard from him for awhile

is he ok?

[benburch]

31. Heard from him last week!

He's been traveling a lot for work.

[beyurslf]

18. School superintendents control the schools and their assests.

Mayors do not. And in many major cities, the busing program is privatized. In my city, neither the school nor the city own the buses.

[ISUGRADIA]

19. Unless LA has a drastically different system

the mayor is not the head of the schools. He can ask the school system but he cannot order them to do jack. More Drudge stupidity and right wind suckingup-ness.

[applegrove]

20. How were a convoy of busses supposed to make it to Houston

when they had to stop for every child to go pee. Were they all supposed to be on the school busses?

The President has powers to commandeer Jumbo Jets. He could have aquired travelling busses just as fast as school buses.

[snippy]

21. Prior to landfall and after the evacuation order, my television news

programs showed traffic moving at a crawl out of New Orleans. From a Sun Aug 28, AP article:

. . .

As many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave, and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport. The city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome.

Nagin also dispatched police and firefighters to rouse people out with sirens and bullhorns, and even gave them the authority to commandeer vehicles to aid in the evacuation.

. . .

But the evacuation was slow going. Highways in Louisiana and Mississippi were jammed as people headed away from Katrina's expected landfall. All lanes were limited to northbound traffic on Interstates 55 and 59, and westbound on I-10.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050828/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina

There is a photo of the traffic jam on Interstate 10 as people attempt to evacuate at the link.

[bribri16]

23. First you need drivers...these are some of the poorest workers around

They were probably just too concerned about their own families and rightly so. I can fault Nagin and the governor for not having prepared to evacuate those who could not get out on their own, but shelter in the Superdome and Convention Center was a part of the plan for those who could not leave. But once there and once the levees broke (something the feds should have anticipated since the winds for forcast to be above 150 mph) the lack of mobilization of forces to face what then became a "national disaster" was the problem. i am sure that after this, most major cities will have plans for the elderly, infirmed, and poor. If they don't then they will have no one to blame but themselves.

[bpilgrim]

24. anyone got a LINK to this story or is this more RUMOR MONGERING

from the RW wackos.

Ben this is difficult to comment on with no CONTEXT or SOURCE.

peace

[Pepperbelly]

33. They have a pic of around 100

school buses somewhere in a flooded parking lot.

The implication is that they were in NO (which you can't actually say from examining the photo) and that the Mayor (read BLACK MAN) was too incompetent to use them.

These freaks will sink to about any sophistry is it gives them an opportunity to imply something racist.

[bpilgrim]

34. ah, RUMOR MONGERING

thanks Pepperbelly for the info, can you believe the logic benders they will go through to get a 'talking-point' to defend the fuhrer :crazy:

:hi:

peace

[mshasta]

27. this is why....

[alcibiades_mystery]

29. That's after the flood

The claim is that the buses should have been used before Katrina arrived.

[alcibiades_mystery]

28. The answer is complex

because the story holds seeds of truth.

I count about 220 buses in the Drudge photo. Let's project high and say he had 400 buses. The emergency plan, developed in coordination with the state and FEMA, should have called for the use of those buses to evacuate people. Let's say 50 people a bus, and say that could have gotten 20,000 people out. The plan should have called for a mustering point in the Lower 9th Ward, and it should have called for the use of the Louisiana National Guard to flush out, sort, and prioritize evacuees by age and health status. That plan didn't exist, and that is the joint responsibility of the city authorities, the state authorities, and FEMA. That would be the optimal use of those buses. But even if that optimal plan were in place, you obviously would have had the problems of sorting and prioritizing, and you still would have left 100,000 behind. That's the rub. Even accepting full blame for Nagin on the buses, the catastrophe would have still happened, and the response from FEMA would have still been as pathetic. Suppose the plan is to evacuate the hospitals. That could have been done with the 400 buses, although you'd have to then reduce the number of people evacuated significantly, since you'd also have to move medical equipment and personnel.

The answer, then, is: Yes, the mayor, together with the coordinating agencies at state and federal levels, should have composed a better evacuation plan. True. I accept that. It's obvious that those buses should have been deployed. BUT.

1) There would have been a significant number left behind even if those buses had been worked into an evacuation plan.
2) FEMA and DHS would have had to have been involved in the use of those buses, since the city would not have the logistical resources to muster, sort, and prioritize people without the NG (imagine the panic of being among 10,000 fighting for the 400th bus!)
3) Even with that reasonable criticism of local officials, the federal government does not escape its responsibility for what DID happen in terms of a slow response. Because something different could have happened if someone else had acted differently doesn't make you any less responsible for what DID happen. DHS and FEMA proved themselves to be worthless in an emergency situation; the President stumbled about in indifference for several days as a major security situation escalated beyond control, and the federal apparatus - which has sold itself as the preparedness apparatus - proved to be unable to prepare.

Those are your answers. Go forth.

The truth is that the School Bus Claim mis a diversion from the major failing here: the inability to move quickly to save a major population once a disaster was imminent and escalating. No school bus picture buys the federal agencies - DHS and FEMA - out of that charge, and no school bus picture can wipe away the picture of the "security president" playing guitar and yucking it up while thousands of American citizens were drowning in their homes.

[bpilgrim]

36. no, it's easy

1. the city was flooded
2. Drudge

and follow through with WHY were the feds ACTIVELY delaying aid from the outside (that wasn't flooded)

kiss

peace

[alcibiades_mystery]

39. They're talking about evacuationm BEFORE the flood

And the picture initially comes from the AP. Your answer is piss poor and insufficient, and would get the ass of anybody who gave it kicked in an argument. You're not helping your fellow DUers with that nonsense.

[The Magistrate]

41. Well Said, Mr. Mystery!

[Igel]

30. It's part talking point, part truth.

There are evacuation plans at the city and state level. They did not account for the poor in NOLA. We can scream and shout all we want, but it doesn't change the fact that the evacuation plan relied almost entirely on private transportation. This is a flaw that was not addressed in 20 years of planning; Nagin and Blanco inherited the lack of planning, and didn't improve on it. FEMA's responsible for helping with the plans; but not for implementing them.

Even in a disaster, the local guys don't sit back and watch the DC folk run DC-produced plans. It's a foolish idea if you think it through.

There wasn't much time to evacuate: category 5 status was declared early Sunday morning. Still, Blanco could have mobilized the LA NG Saturday or Sunday morning, and *they* could have driven the buses.

But Nagin said no: he wanted buses with bathrooms. He has a point. In hindsight, it's a stupid point. Some of the buses now being used to bus people out of NOLA are school buses. But it was a risk he took; he lost.

It's probably a private bus fleet. With no schools in session, the evacuation plan could have hired them. Or they could have been commandeered: in hindsight, would the company rather have them under water (I saw the picture), or slightly befouled by some adult passengers who couldn't hold it till the next rest stop?

Where to take them? How about W or NW Louisiana? Shelter them in some large hell-hole that would at least have electricity and running water?

The answer to that talking point is mostly a dodge: work-arounds would have been possible.

[benburch]

32. And as I read the FEMA rules...

FEMA has primary responsibility for all evacuations.

[charmsicle]

35. Nagin and the Governor asked for help on Thursday

People kind of have to keep that in mind. Obviously there was a plan or else all those people wouldn't have ended up in the Superdome.

And the Superdome looked like a good idea at the time ....until it became apparent the evacuees couldn't go home.

How many buses were there? How many people could fit in them? Where would they go?

[bpilgrim]

37. and here are copies of the docs ----------- ---------- > IMAGE

more...
http://news.globalfreepress.com/katrina/Disaster_Relief_Request

psst... pass the word :bounce:

peace

[soup]

38. I see your documents, and I raise you a

:kick: back to the front page

Good thread, everyone. thank you.

[moondust]

40. NATIONAL disaster. FEMA is lead agency.

FEMA can get buses, C-130s, whatever necessary. FEMA also has telephones with which to call Mayor Nagin to request the use of school buses or whatever else it needs.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

42. This should work: