How many school busses were actually left in New Orleans?

[norml]

I know I'm lazy.

I just got home from work, and am doing the outline for my radio show on KZUM from 2am to 3am Friday morning.

I know they tried using the busses, and some nursing home people died on them, partly because of no air conditioning or bathrooms on board.

I also know most of the bus drivers had evacuated.

Please help me to find an exact number of school busses left in New Orleans that got flooded.

Thanks!

[xray s]

1. CNN Lou Dobbs said 12,000 today

pulled that number out of Rove's ass. Dobbs was on his knees for BushCo today.

[norml]

2. This article from an Omaha TV station web site puts the number at 200.

Stressed Evacuees
Critics question emergency planning


New signs of stress among hurricane evacuees are emerging.


snip


Congress is now investigating what went wrong with the governments' early response to Hurricane Katrina.

A senate committee will get a closed door briefing tomorrow from FEMA. Public hearings will follow.

Critics are scrutinizing all levels of government, asking questions such as why 200 school busses sit under water in New Orleans, when a draft emergency plan a few years ago warned buses would be needed.


snip


http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1819972.html

The only critics this article mentions are the ones harping on the school busses.

How absurd!

[Scout Finch]

5. buses

So, only certified bus drivers could drive the school buses? Do you think that stranded flood ravaged evacuees cared if the bus drivers were certified? As long as they could drive them to dry ground?

[norml]

9. Personally, I would've thrown the keys to anyone who wanted to drive them

out of town, even though some might call that letting people steal the busses, especially if no disaster came to pass.

I recall stories of people "stealing" busses to get to the Superdome, and then being charged with theft.

No, they wouldn't have needed to be "certified" bus drivers.

They just needed to be people who could drive a bus, and were authorized to do so.

Considering that an evacuation had been ordered, perhaps there were few official personnel of any kind left for bus driving.

By the way, according to the National Response Plan FEMA, DHS, or even the President could've come in and requisitioned those busses any time after the 26th. of August, when the Governor had declared a State of Emergency and asked for Federal assistance.

Yes, the keys to the 200 busses should've just been given away to anyone who wanted to evacuate, so why didn't Dubya and his crew do that?

Don't tell me the President can't requisition 200 school busses, when it's a National Emergency.

[doublethink]

8. Thank you for confirming that !!!

I heard that bogus report earlier today too ... and posted it here ...http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4701304&mesg_id=4701584
Peace. :)

[markus]

13. There might be 12,000 seats

When I left NOLA 20 years ago, the Orleans Parish School Board had a smallish fleet for a city it's size, in part because of the large number of older students who used Regional Transit Authority buses to get to school.

If that is what he meant, that means that 12,000 of the cities 115,000 people without cars could have been evacuated. RTA used to have about 400 buses, which could move 24,000 people. However, those bus routes can't just be stopped. Many of those 115,000 rely on the RTA to unite them with their familes before they leave. That's why the buses run until tropical storm force winds or a curfew.

So, in reality, less thatn 24,000 could be moved by RTA.

Even if every seat were taken (and if people were told they couldn't get back to their families, they would have walked home before boarding a bus. I know I would have) that would mean you could evacuate 36,000 of the 115,000 under the most ideal conditions. And everyone else in that group would have no way to reach a shelter of last resort.

People who are spreading this are equally responsible for not sending their friends in the flying saucers or their personal fleet of flying pigs to help with the evacuation.

I am not just blowing smoke here. They are. I was a report for a suburban newspaper group from 1980 until 1987, and was living with a woman who was then-RTA Director Dean Bell's right hand person. I have read everything there was to read back in the 1980s on hurricane planning.

The complete evacuation of the city has never been considered feasible, for the very reasons I've cited above. That why they open shelters for people who feel their location or their housing is threatened by the storm.

And you need to keep buses running on regular routes, and paratransit operating in the city, to help people get home from work or whevever and get to a shelter.


More hear: wetbankguide.blogspot.com


On Edit: A site blocked by my firewall is tossing around numbers visible in the Google results that 16830 could have been evacuated on 66 seat school buses. That would make for about 250 buses, which is consistent with my own recollection that it is a smaller number than (and because of) the RTA

[joemurphy]

3. The Next Question - Who Were Available to Drive Them?

My guess is the bus drivers were already gone.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. I've heard between 200 and 400, including both school busses

and city busses.

Use of them was discontinued because the traffic jams going out of town mean that they had @70 people packed onto un-airconditioned busses that were moving at a crawl to no known destination because there were no out of town shelters for them to go to -- 8 hours on an overcrowded bus in 90 degree heat. It was killing people.

[Scout Finch]

6. So were lodgings at the Superdome.

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. The Superdome was only to be used has a shelter

of last resort which is what happened.

Since the Red Cross refused to certify the Superdome or any other building in NO for anything more then a Cat 2 hurricane, the Red Cross and FEMA made little attempt to bring the necessary food and water until 5 days after the storm passed.

[norml]

11. So why didn't Dubya and his crew step in and do whatever you think

should've been done?

Dubya and crew were authorized to do so, after Governor Blanco had declared a State of Emergency and asked for Federal assistance on the 26th. of August.

[shraby]

7. The buses wouldn't be able to get

back into the city either once they were out. The traffic was one way.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Even if there had been one school bus per person, that's not the point

My first superficial reaction was, "Gee, they could have used the school buses," but then, I realized that, like all right wing talking points, this idea falls apart when you think it through. :-)

Suppose the mayor had been able to load every impoverished resident of NOLA onto a school bus.

Then what?

Where would 100,000 people with no money go? Who would feed and house them? Even if they could afford to check into a motel, there weren't any empty ones for hundreds of miles. Motels for 100,000? Even if they had relatives in other states, who would pay their way there?

Evacuations of this magnitude would have to be coordinated on a regional basis, and that means the Feds stepping in.

Mayor Nagin could have loaded the population of New Orleans into however many school buses, and there still would have been no place to take the people. His Superdome shelter strategy would have worked just fine if the levees had not been breached.

The next time a right-winger tries to tell you that it's all Nagin's fault for not using the school buses, give him a dose of reality.

Don't let the wing nuts set the terms of the debate.

[Comadreja]

14. Not just anyone can drive a school bus

it takes a minimum of training to operate a school bus. A 40' bus in crowded, narrow streets full of fleeing families can do more harm than good unless the driver knows the special problems of bus driving and knows the route.