The Real Reason Buses Didn't Evacuate N.Orleans - Chicago Tribune

[JPZenger]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/23/895/00538

The above link describes a Chicago Tribune investigative article about the real reason it took so long to get buses into New Orleans to evacuate people after the levees broke.

FEMA contracted the work out to one politically connected trucking company. That company called up a subcontractor 18 hours later. Then the contractor found a travel company through an internet search - that travel company advertised on their website that they could move large numbers of people. That company eventually got buses into New Orleans, but the owner had to upfront $500,000 on her American Express card to do it. So FEMA paid a contractor to do a google search.

Meanwhile, according to the article, the professional association of bus companies in the US (including Greyhound) called FEMA and had offered their immediate assistance. They said: Where do you want us to show up with buses, and how many do you need? FEMA simply told them to go to a generic non-hurricane page on the FEMA website entitled "Doing Business with FEMA." The Association couldn't get anyone at FEMA to return a call about their offer. (By the way, Greyhound has a major role in evacuating the coast for Rita).

Someone should be shot.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Important for the Floodgate investigation. Nominated.

[electropop]

6. What an excellent name: "Floodgate"

It follows the "-gate" theme for scandal names, but also brings to mind the image of finally opening the floodgate to let a torrent of revelations flow and wash the corruption out of Washington.

[ComerPerro]

11. Floodgate is pretty much the only fitting "gate" name (except "water")

The others sound so damn lame.

But, "Flood"gate actually sounds not retarded.

I despise things like "Monicagate" "Iraqgate" "Electiongate" and anything else.

[electropop]

23. Yeah, generally I despise the -gate names too

but this one is perfect.

"Traitorgate" also not too bad; rolls off the tongue.

[ComerPerro]

24. Traitorgate rolls off the tongue, yes. But I still

just hate that suffix.

[DarkTirade]

31. I've never heard it called Monicagate...

I did hear it called 'zippergate' though.

[Stephanie]

15. somebody buy the URL quick

[SharonAnn]

22. It's the way to spread the $ to as many Republicans as possible

without actually having any money left over to do the work. By the time every subcontracted company takes their "cut", there is less money left to actually perform the evacuation until there is finally no money left to actually hire drivers, fuel buses, and get it done.

However, the well-connected Republican donor companies have all received money from FEMA for "coordinating" the bus evactuation. Never mind that it actually never took place.

[electropop]

2. Thanks for that.

It's helpful to have a factual rebuttal to Freeper lies.

[Connie_Corleone]

3. And right-wingers were blaming Nagin for not using Greyhound.

I kept hearing "Mayor Nagin turned down Greyhound". Nagin, himself, said that he never got a request from Greyhound. Now we know Greyhound contacted FEMA and FEMA *ucked up.

[Lindsay]

4. The entire maladministration and everyone

* has appointed should be thrown in jail.

We can sort out the guilty from the not-so-guilty later.

[indepat]

10. Choose which feasance: non-feasance, mis-feasance, and malfeasance

[raccoon]

5. What are those FEMA people paid for, sitting around with their

thumbs up their asses?

Nominated.

[TahitiNut]

18. Like any agency under Bush/Cheney, they pipe the public funds to cronies.

These people have absolutely no operational experience - they've NEVER been responsible for getting a job done themselves. These are the folks who always have the free time to find the nearest microphone - to kiss ass and slap backs while others are doing the real work. They're the useless fucks in any organization who're never around when work needs doing but are first in line when credit is handed out.

FEMA was just another conduit for pumping money out of the public coffers and into the pockets of cronies and opportunists. The people creaing these "rice bowls" had absolutely no interest in assuring operational readiness. None. They're practiced at filling their skies with the flak of blame.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

25. FEMA Officials are paid like everyone else in BUSHCO

They're charged with implementing policy in the manner that enriches the most cronies of the Bush family and the RepugnantGoon leadership.

Damn the results, just make sure the right people get the money.

[SmokingJacket]

7. That's about the craziest thing I ever heard of.

And it's exactly what happens where there are no leaders.

[Stephanie]

8. Wow.

I'm sure glad Bush is privatizing government. That's working out just great.

[Coexist]

13. you know it....

here's to profit-before-people. Can't have the riff-raff gettin' on just any ol' bus, now can we.

[Nikki Stone 1]

9. Now it all makes sense (Recommended)

We gotta get this out there.

[glitch]

12. If cronyism was competent and efficient it wouldn't have such a bad name.

morans. :(

[Stephanie]

14. Here's the Chicago Tribune link to the article >

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0509230350sep23,1,1064399.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Offer of buses fell between the cracks

By Andrew Martin and Andrew Zajac
Washington Bureau
Published September 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, as images of devastation along the Gulf Coast and despair in New Orleans flickered across television screens, the head of one of the nation's largest bus associations repeatedly called federal disaster officials to offer help.

Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association said he spent much of the day on Wednesday, Aug. 31, trying to find someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who could tell him how many buses were needed for an evacuation, where they should be sent and who was overseeing the effort.

"We never talked directly to FEMA or got a call back from them," Pantuso said.

Pantuso, whose members include some of the nation's largest motor coach companies, including Greyhound and Coach USA, eventually learned that the job of extracting tens of thousands of residents from flooded New Orleans wasn't being handled by FEMA at all.

Instead the agency had farmed the work out to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America, which in turn hired a limousine company, which in turn engaged a travel management company.

Over the next four days, those companies and a collection of Louisiana officials cobbled together a fleet of at least 1,100 buses that belatedly descended on New Orleans to evacuate residents waiting amid the squalor and mayhem of the Superdome and the city's convention center.

[im10ashus]

38. UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!

There should be indictments over this. No kidding! This should be on the FRONT PAGE of every newspaper and there should be indictments.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

16. Un-effing-believable.

Is it too much to expect all these idiots to have figured out Haliburton doesn't do busses BEFORE the disaster hits?!?!?!?!?

On edit:
I see Landstar had an evacuation contract with FEMA in place. They just couldn't figure out how to make good on it.

[tocqueville]

17. this shows in a nutshell why "private" welfare is doomed to fail

in a similar situation in France the Prefect (equivalent of the Governor) and appointee of the central administration is entitled to declare a "red plan". Plans made in advance tell how much vehicules are disponible.

Then he can lawfully SEIZE any vehicule he wants, even trains (normally not private citizens small cars, except cabs). They cannot refuse, or they'll be arrested. They cannot refuse to drive.

After use they present a bill to the administration.

so far, nobody is complaining...

[SpiralHawk]

19. K & R

Fer sure.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JPZenger]

21. 300 Driveable School Buses

The issue of evacuation of the people without cars before Katrina hit is a different question from the above article. The above article addresses the evacuation of people after the levees broke.

www.mediamatters.org reports that there were only about 300 driveable school buses in New Orleans. Yes, they should have been used on Sunday, and yes they were covered by floodwaters when the levees broke. However, this is very different from the Rightwingers claim that 2,000 buses were sitting unused.

In any crisis, when a hurricane is approaching, it will be tough to convince individual bus drivers to drive INTO the area that is about to be hit. The same problem occurs with evacuations in case of a nuclear power plant radiation leak. School bus drivers are supposed to drive into the area with the radiation leak to pick up people without cars. One reporter interviewed a group of school bus drivers and they all said they would not drive into the endangered area.

After the levees broke, some bus drivers were also hesitant to drive into New Orleans because of the reports of shootings and gangs.

[doublethink]

27. Your synopses of human nature is even being verified at this .....

moment when we look at hurricane Rita about to come ashore down in Texas. The 'Bush' airport with all the airline workers evacuating with everyone else, and not showing up for work there. But I could hear a freeper argue .....'Hey I see by the satellite image all the planes at the airport' why don't they just use those planes to fly those people out of there?' ....... freepers just don't take reality into account. They pretty much never do on any issue. Peace. :)

[Nothing Without Hope]

30. Actually even fewer. Here is the Media Matters link on those school buses:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509120005?is_gsa=1&fi

There is a full article documenting the lies on TV and other venues. Here is an excerpt:

(snip)

During a roundtable discussion on the September 11 broadcast of ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which included Gingrich, Stephanopoulos repeated Pruden's faulty figure. After Gingrich asserted that "it's the mayor who fails to use the city buses to move the poor out of New Orleans," Stephanopoulos responded, "He says that was never part of the plan, but you're right, there were 2,000 buses under water." Gingrich replied, "That's right."

In fact, The New York Times reported on September 4 that Louisiana emergency planners believed it would take as many as 2,000 buses "to evacuate an estimated 100,000 elderly and disabled people" in the event of a catastrophic hurricane like Katrina. But, The New York Times wrote, this was "far more than New Orleans possessed."

Pruden's claim that the city possessed 2,000 school buses that could have been used for a pre-storm evacuation appears to be an exaggeration of a September 1 Associated Press photograph of school buses parked in a flooded lot in New Orleans. The photograph was widely reported on conservative websites, including the Media Research Center's NewsBusters weblog, the Instapundit weblog, and Michelle Malkin's weblog. A September 6 MSNBC.com article that described the scene in the AP photograph noted, "Some 200 New Orleans school buses sit underwater in a parking lot, unused. That's enough to have evacuated at least 13,000 people."

Apparently, those school buses constituted the majority of New Orleans' school bus fleet. According to a September 5, 2003, article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, "The district owns 324 buses but 70 are broken down." A 2003 document posted on the Louisiana Department of Education's website confirms that Orleans Parish used 324 "board owned" school buses and no "contractor owned" school buses.

(snip)

Posted to the web on Monday September 12, 2005 at 4:21 PM EST

Also, many regular school bus drivers are unlikely to drive back into the dangers of the flooded city to pick up evacuees.

[passy]

26. Landstar war profiteers.

Found this after a search on google combined with halliburton.
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:EhwB8cHpyToJ:democracyrising.us/content/view/27/74/+Landstar-Express-America+halliburton&hl=en

[Catrina]

28. The deadly results of Privatization

I hope this will end turning this country into one big marketplace, with no oversight, for big business. If ever there was proof of what people were concerned about regarding deregulation, privatization and all the other rightwing, dangerous policies, this Bush administration is a tragic and graphic example of why it is necessary to have GOOD government and oversight.


Their 'free market' policies have resulted in Enron, Tyco, disaster in Iraq, and now here. They are deadly!!

This is infuriating. To think that while those people were dying, some idiot was doing a google search to find buses. No, it is criminal.

I like Floodgate also, at least the suffix fits this time.

George Bush is nothing but a puppet for the Corporations, it's no wonder he never knows what's going on. He didn't even know when they decided to dump Brownie, in an attempt to stem the tide of criticism. They've turned the presidency into a joke.

This interview is from NPR and shows clearly what the plans for NO were/are. This is shameful and should be stopped without a doubt. Calling them vultures is an insult to that creature who serves some purpose. And ISRAELI paramilitary in NO??? Omg, what has happened to this country! All for business, that's all anything is to them.



JEREMY SCAHILL: "Right. I was just watching CNN and they were interviewing a guy they're called the pied piper of hurricane Katrina, a guy from Ohio, who has come to the Houston Astrodome to recruit 100 people who are -- who had left New Orleans to try to bring them to settle in Ohio. I mean, what they're really trying to do is to settle the poor and the African-American populations of New Orleans elsewhere. And to make New Orleans a nice, white city, for white, rich businessmen. There's no other way to put it. That's exactly what we're seeing right now. They want to take areas for instance like the ninth ward and turn them into big -- you know, Wal- Mart type neighborhoods. In fact, we heard mayor Nagin talk yesterday about how one of the first things they want to do is set up a gigantic Wal-Mart so people returning can have a place to shop in New Orleans. This hurricane is the greatest thing to happen to Wal-Mart since the superstore. And this is a very serious racist series of actions that we're seeing here right now. This is has everything to do with class and everything to do with race, and it's very, very frightening. And yes, we attended a conference where grassroots activists are talking about a plan for rebuilding New Orleans, but it's on right now, and they're not a part of it. The people that are a part of it are old-time Louisiana white Republican families working in conjunction with their friend, mayor Ray Nagin, and there's no other way to put it. They love Ray Nagin. He's pro- business. He's their guy.

Look at the comments of James Rice, a local businessman, who is one of the leaders of the private Audubon Place, the gated community. The only privately owned in the city of New Orleans. He told The Wall Street Journal, “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically. I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we have been living is not going to happen again or we’re out.” James Rice has brought in Israeli para-militaries to guard his facility. It's Israeli company that brags about having former members of the Shin Beit, the GSS, the Israeli Defense Forces. He has brought them in. I was talking to them in front of his property. Some of them participated in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and these are guys now who are patrolling outside on St. Charles avenue in front of Audubon Place and will potentially come into conflict with residents of New Orleans. What on earth are Israeli paramilitaries doing on the streets of New Orleans? These are the questions that people need to ask right now, defending a man like James Rice who was called for the poor to not be allowed back into New Orleans."


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? sid=05/09/16/1222257&mode=thread&tid=25

I'm glad that local officials are handing over tapes of their conversations with FEMA officials, before they disappear.


September 23, 2005 · "In the days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, officials in local, state and federal governments held a series of telephone conference calls aimed at coordinating their responses to the storm. The sessions were recorded by Walter Maestri, emergency manager for Jefferson Parish, who shared them with NPR.

In tapes of the disaster planning meetings, emergency managers and civic officials evinced a growing concern with the strengthening hurricane's possible effects -- and after the storm made landfall, a growing frustration with the aid effort mounted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

"First and foremost, we have still not received... any of our gasoline and diesel shipments..."

"Do you have a FEMA liaison that's there with you joined at the hip?"

"I assume you're talking about the emergency food, the water..."

"What ever happened to these FEMA gen packs..."

"The media is hot on the Pam issue..."


"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859329"

[Patiod]

29. Most of my criticisms of Nagin are that he's too business-oriented

Not incompetent (as Faux would portray him) but a little to focused on getting BUSINESSES up an running again, whether or not it's 100% safe to do so.

[DarkTirade]

32. I'm not sure which is worse...

the fact that this kind of thing happened...
or the fact that after 5 years of the Bush administration, I'm not surprised by things like this.
I WANT to be shocked and surprised, but by now, I'm really not anymore.

[Disturbed]

33. Nominated.

Of course we know why the Bush admin. does not want a real Investigaton and repeats "blame game" crap. The Bush Admin. is criminal and incompetent.

[The Backlash Cometh]

34. More people are dying because ot this fricken privatization!!!

How many people have to die before it's understood that business transactions take too damn long when human life is at stake?

[PurityOfEssence]

35. Not shot; someone should be drowned in Grover Norquist's bathtub

I must say, though, that keelhauling would be quite appropriate, as would the old Puritan dunking chair.

[donheld]

36. It's ALL politics to these idiots

Peoples lives are not as important to them as politics and cronyism.
:banghead:

[Cocoa]

37. at least there's a happy ending

Landstar's regulatory filing also said that because of Hurricane Katrina, the maximum annual value of its government contract for disaster relief services has been increased to $400 million.

[Auntie Bush]

39. Re: "Someone should be shot." How about a

mile long firing squad aimed in the "right" direction.

[in_cog_ni_to]

40. The TRUTH is finally coming out. Those bastards! Rush Limpballs and

Insannity owe the world an apology for lying! Like THAT will ever happen. :grr: AND, why hasn't the MSM reported this? They sure jumped on the bus story when it looked like it was Blanco and Nagen's fault.

[LincolnMcGrath]

41. bump

[leftofthedial]

42. FEMA "contractor" = another clueless white frat boy school chum

of some politically connected repuke

[LincolnMcGrath]

43. kick