The NOLA evacuation plan
was followed, and 500 city and school buses were called on to evacuate people to the areas that were selected to house people (i.e., the Superdome).
Like many cities, New Orleans had such an evacuation plan. City officials knew that approximately 100,000 city residents had no personal transportation, and their intent was to use public buses to ferry them to safety.
It was a plan filled with flaws, and New Orleans officials knew it.
A test of the plan last summer during a simulated Category 3 hurricane revealed that as many as 300,000 people might remain trapped in the city, many for lack of private transportation, according to a report by Louisiana State University. A national review of hurricane evacuation plans by the university's Hurricane Center in 2001 determined that plans to use buses, especially in New Orleans, were inadequate because existing fleets could accommodate only a fraction of those needing help.
As Katrina bore down on New Orleans two weeks ago, little had been done to fix that shortage, experts said. New Orleans' plan called for about 500 city and school buses to hit the streets. But it did not include provisions for driving people out of the city. Instead, the few buses that made the rounds at 12 pickup points simply delivered the poor, the disabled and the elderly to the Superdome, which had inadequate provisions.
One major problem was that the plan contained no details for deploying drivers, especially those who pilot school buses, said Chester Wilmot, an LSU professor who consulted on the city's plan. In addition, the plan neglected to designate shelter outside New Orleans.
"It failed," Wilmot said. "The plan didn't go into the detail that is necessary."
The statewide plan in Louisiana for evacuating people with access to private transportation was a success, however, guiding 800,000 to 1 million people to safety outside New Orleans.
Cont'd
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.evacuate12sep12,1,431498.story?page=1&coll=bal-nationworld-headlinesAs ineffective as that was, that was the plan and that was the plan that NOLA created with FEMA's input, as I understand it.
'Hurricane Pam' exercise offered glimpse of Katrina misery
Friday, 6 p.m.
By John McQuaid
Staff writer
The document’s cover page reads: “Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Functional Plan.”
It maps out detailed instructions for emergency managers responding to a deadly hurricane that floods all of New Orleans, killing more than 60,000: how to rescue and evacuate hundreds of thousands of people stranded on rooftops or trapped by rising waters; how to quickly mobilize federal, state and local agencies; how to drain water laced with toxic sludge and clean up a ruined city.
But officials never put this plan into action...
~snip~
The exercise grew out of an initiative at the Federal Emergency Management Agency started early in the Bush presidency to develop plans for the worst possible disasters that could hit the United States.
~snip~
It assumes a high degree of coordination between federal, state, and local officials – something that has been a thorny issue in Katrina. But Jones said the Pam exercise was valuable simply because it drew everyone involved together to sit down face-to-face – something that is paying off now.
The report recommends a massive mobilization of transportation assets to evacuate the region after the hurricane has passed, another problem that plagued response last week. “A major limiting factor in executing this plan will be a shortage of transportation facilities,” it says.
For example, it says that 400 buses per day would be needed to transport an estimated half-million storm victims out of the affected area to temporary medical facilities set up some distance away. Katrina victims waited for days for buses or other transport out of the city.
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_09_09.htmlBTW, if you haven't read this report, I highly recommend it:
http://www.walterbrasch.com/katrina.htmHere's an excerpt concerning those darned buses:
SPECIAL REPORT:
‘Unacceptable’: The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina
by Walter Brasch
~snip~
An attack that quickly spread throughout the conservative blogs, websites, and talk shows, focused upon Nagin for not using than 300 school buses and more than 300 city buses for evacuation. Pictures of yellow school buses, surrounded by flood water, became a battle anthem to attack local government. However, the Mayor would have had to find certified drivers who had not already evacuated the city and whose own homes were not about to be buried by the flood. Further, he would have had to have found a place to take those evacuated by bus. By the time mass shelters outside the flood zone were able to handle large numbers of evacuees, the buses were surrounded by water. Nagin’s demand to the federal government was justified. He told WWL-AM:
One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting . . . public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here. . . . I'm like—you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.
In most instances, the local governments couldn’t be faulted. In such a widespread disaster, it is the responsibility of state and federal emergency management agencies to coordinate assistance for the local level. But, more important, because the Bush Administration was pushing a terrorist prevention agenda and neglecting other disasters, local and state governments had figured out that to get the abundant federal grant money, they had to place an emphasis on anti-terrorist training and to buy equipment more suited to the threat of terrorism than to protection against natural disasters. The other main problem was that FEMA was working less and less with local and state governments. To prepare against a catastrophic natural disaster, the federal government needed to help local and state governments understand what was needed and to help fund it. It didn’t.
Michael Chertoff told the media in Washington, D.C., according to the Washington Post, that FEMA’s response was slow because “our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.” He was wrong. The National Response Plan directs FEMA to “ prepare for, respond to, and recover
an incident or potential incident is of such severity, magnitude, and/or complexity that it is considered an Incident of National Significance.” FEMA does not have to wait for local or state officials to request its assistance. That plan also allows the Department of Defense to provide immediate assistance, even if not requested by local authorities. Two days before Katrina hit land, President Bush, upon strong recommendations of the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, which had already issued their own declarations of emergency and requests for federal assistance, had declared a “state of emergency,” which should have moved FEMA into action.
To mitigate criticism of the slow federal response, the Bush administration asked Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to turn over her state’s National Guard and to cede all authority to the federal government. Well aware that such a move would have led not only to the Bush Administration trumpeting that the local and state governments were mostly at fault for the problems resulting from the disaster, but also of the establishment of martial law, Blanco declined. Before returning to Louisiana one week after Katrina came ashore, Bush not only didn’t have the courtesy to tell the Governor the schedule, but deliberately chose not to meet with her to discuss how best to proceed with the rescue and recovery. Blanco, however, learned the President’s schedule, met him at the airport, and forced a 90-minute meeting...
~snip~And, Hmmm....about those OTHER buses:
The school bus issue is really old hat now, and is really just a way of diverting attention from the bigger problem: Where was FEMA?
September 20, 2005
EVACUATING NEW ORLEANS....One of the great and enduring mysteries about the aftermath of Katrina has been the Great Bus Question. Where were they? Why weren't they used to immediately evacuate the Superdome and the Convention Center? National Review posed this question vividly — and tacitly placed the blame for the lack of buses on local officials, not FEMA — by filling its cover with a famous photo of a fleet of New Orleans schoolbuses trapped and useless in three feet of water after the storm passed.
A couple of days ago, Michelle Millhollon of the Baton Rouge Advocate got Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's side of the story:
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.
....The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday. Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them.
....On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card....Card promised to get Blanco more buses.
...."I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said. "Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first concern until I realized that they were not there."
Meanwhile, the state continued to send school buses into the affected areas.
One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one point that the state could stop sending school buses because the agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the commercial buses that still weren't there.
Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.
Is this the straight dope? It's certainly free of any wiggle room if Blanco isn't telling the truth. Will we ever hear FEMA's side of this, or has that chance disappeared completely with Mike Brown's resignation? —Kevin Drum
Here's the original:
Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
Capitol news bureau
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.
Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml
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