An Answer to the School Bus Nonsense

[alcibiades_mystery]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050901/480/flpc21109012015

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.

But let's delve further into the absurd notion that the evacuation could have been effected by these buses. Suppose 200,000 people remained in the city. At 50 people a bus, they would have only needed 4000 buses. Funny, I only see about 220 in that Drudge picture. You'd also need 4000 drivers. Suppose you could load 50 at a time. Loading, say, 1 person on a bus every 10 seconds (allow for faster and slower), and giving a ten minute interval between buses (now, you're moving people from their homes, maybe forever, so you can see how generous this calculation is), and assuming you could load 50 buses simultaneously at a uniform rate. Each load of 50 buses would take 8.3 minutes (that's for 2500 people). You would need 80 loads, so that's 80 X 8.3 plus 78 X 10 (78 intervals) = 1444 minutes, divided by 60 = 24 hours. It would take 24 hours, with everything running smoothly, and 50 buses loading at a time, and 4000 buses available, to load 200,000 people on to buses and move them out of the City of New Orleans. let's cut it down to 100,000 people, and say 2000 buses and 12 hours. This is assuming that you have everybody prepared and in one place and space for loading 50 buses, and lines that would allow 10 second per person loads, and no snags, difficulties, or conflicts. Let's even be reasonable and say that you can cut the number of buses by 25% through return trips. You've also gassed up your buses and encountered no traffic (!). You'd need 1500 buses making flawless round trips and a population loading on at 10 seconds a person. And it would then take 12 hours.

Any cretin knows that even this rosiest of scenarios is impossible on short notice, yet this is what the Drudgites would expect to have happened with those 250 (max) buses in their stupid little picture. Any fool knows that this is a laughable objection. Any child knows it. Not the Drudgites. Only reason and a 20 cent calculator is necessary, but the Drudgites lack the first, and - from all appearances - the ability to use the second.

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.

[NMDemDist2]

1. kicked and nominated n/t

[Igel]

2. You think nearly half the city remained behind?

I thought the usual estimate was maybe 20%, not 45%.

And the claim isn't that the city would have been fully evacuated. Just that there would have been far fewer people left to evacuate after the hurricane. Had they gotten 20k out, that would have roughly been equivalent to the Superdome population on Wednesday. This would have made dealing with those remaining much simpler.

The evacuation plan was flawed, it seems. There also wasn't much time to implement it, had it been better.

Things could have been handled better. People seem to be involved in a kind of pissing contest, "dems are perfect," "no, repubs are perfect." Personally, I haven't seen many perfect politicians so far in this fiasco.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. I reduced it to 100,000, or 20%, if you read the whole calculation

That's the 12 hour, 1500 buses scenario.

I also discussed removing 20,000 (which, I might add, took the better part of 2 days to evacuate). While it might have made things "simpler," it would not have ended the crisis in advance, if 80,000 remained in the city. Even by today's numbers (42,000 evacuated, 45,000 remaining in the city), the figure of 100,000 or thereabouts seems accurate. In any case, I took the 20,000 into consideration, and it solves little, in terms of DHS FEMA culpability.

Moreover, I also placed some responsibility on the city and state authorities.

You seem to be the only one playing the perfection game. It helps if you read the posts, too.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. I agree... the evacuation should have been handled better, but

fatherland security should have been ready to swoop in the minute the winds died down. Not several days later.

-----------------------------------------------------
Would Jesus love a liberal? You bet!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/liberalchristians.htm

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Let's look at the 20,000 more carefully as well

Would you agree that 15 minutes is a reasonable time to load 50 people on to a bus (pull in to pull out)? In my experience with buses, that sounds about right. And let's even assume that they could load 10 buses at a time, and that it would take only 10 minutes to get organized between loads. That's 400 buses, or 40 loads, with ten minutes between loads. If everything went smoothly, it would still take 16 hours to load 20,000 people on to buses. If such an evacuation started at noon Saturday, it would take until four am Sunday morning to get it done. And this is supposing everything goes smoothly.

It is possible, and should have been done. But let's not pretend that it would have been easy to accomplish with only city resources.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. Nowhere to go and probably no drivers

Freep types are playing this because it was on Drudge. They're so predictable.

FEMA would have needed to set up places for the buses to go. Coordinating ALL of this is FEMA's job. It might have been a good idea if they had worked on it after the 2001 study.

The drivers would not have been at work since it was the weekend. I would be surprised if even a handful were available since they probably evacuated with their families. This would have to be something you set up in advance.

The shrinking number of "Bush is Infallible" believers are grasping at absolutely anything, not matter how stupid.

[Czolgosz]

5. The bus nonsense is bullshit. Where would the buses have dropped off

their passengers? If the drop off would have been outside of NO (and obviously it would have had to be), it was beyond the mayor's authority to set it up. If the drop off would have been outside of Louisiana (and obviously it would have had to be), it was an intrastate matter that was beyond the governor's authority to set it up and clearly within the purview of FEMA. What does a mayor do for a living? Running evacuations is not within the top 1000 tasks. What does a governor do for a living? Running evacuations is not within the top 1000 tasks. What does FEMA do? Running evacuations and other disaster response tasks is pretty much job one. Drudge can fuck himself (and if he doesn't, who would?).

[Garbo 2004]

8. 2004 Hurricane Pam exercise: evacuation a problem, funding cut

Just last year, FEMA hired a private company, IEM Inc. of Baton Rouge, to help conduct an eight-day drill for a fictional Category 5 hurricane in New Orleans named Pam. It included staging a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, a prediction of 15 feet of water in parts of the city and the evacuation of 1-million people.

But the second part of the company's work - to design a plan to fix unresolved problems, such as evacuating sick and injured people and housing thousands of stranded residents - never occurred because the funding was cut.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/03/Worldandnation/One_question_builds__.shtml

[MadeinOhio]

9. Hell, FEMA didn't even give them the resources they needed!

Even if the plan was in place, which is the local mayor's responsibility, FEMA didn't blink or move to give them the manpower to implement that plan. I've seen it again and again. This is a complete WASTED effort and also employed blatant racism. That's all that matters!

Those freaks in FEMA were allowing people to die and actually laughing at people, mostly poor or black. NO exscuses!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

10. It would have required more than one mustering point

Although not especially large, New Orleans is still a city. People from all over downtown would not have been able to walk to just one point, which otherwise might have involved several miles of walking and thus several hours to get there in the rain. There would have had to have been neighborhood rallying points to catch the buses. And that would have required practice and trial runs, involving shutting down the city on occasion. And it would have required everyone to have access to a radio or TV to know when, how, and where to catch the buses. Has a significant portion of a city ever been successfully evacuated by bus?

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Goes without saying

I'm trying to demonstrate that even the rosiest, most idealized scenario of a bus evacuation is dubious. Then again, I suppose we could cut the time down significantly if we posited 4 mustering points?