400 Buses Not Used to evacuate NO: anyone know the real story?

[democraticinsurgent]

This is one of the key RW talking points, that Mayor Nagin failed to utilize 400 available buses to evacuate NO prior to landfall. Scarborough hit on this last night.

Anyone know the facts?

[Mass]

1. Even if this is true, how does that excuse Bush's incompetence afterwards.

[niceypoo]

17. How do you evacuate 100,000 people scattered all over a huge city .......

most of whom have no money and no place to go......with 400 busses in 2 days? It took 5 days to evacuate 30,000 or so from the superdome.

[Syncronaut Seven]

21. You have them meet FEMA 150 miles up the road, 4 trips, 50 per bus

Or drive to Houston, as Houston sends 400 of their busses for the second wave.

You drive up and down the same streets that the busses normally take, you know, the established bus routes.

If you can't find the drivers you use cops, firemen, truck mechanics, glance at the Louisiana DMV roster of class 5-8 registered drivers and start making phone calls.

Planning.

Coordination.

Action.

It helps too, not to deliberately cut the sheriffs land line (Lifeline?).

[WestHoustonDem]

2. I do!

All of the school bus drivers evacuated NO, leaving no one to drive the buses. I heard this from some evacuees in Houston.

[LostinVA]

3. They have been literally at least 100 threads

about this over the last two-three days... this is one of THE main RW talking points transferring blame from * to Nagin and Blanco. And, here is another thread.... Jesus. If you honestly want to know, a quick search will give you the answers.

[Pirate Smile]

4. A thread from earlier this morning:

"Proof - NAGIN did USE the SCHOOL BUSES to take people out
Edited on Wed Sep-07-05 04:06 AM by DoYouEverWonder

at least until 3 people died on one probably because of being stuck in traffic and the HEAT for so long.

Traffic was backed up for hours with people trying to leave NO. Keep in mind school buses have no AC or bathrooms. Imagine beginning stuck with a bus full of people and no where to go to the bathroom.

After this is appears that Nagin stopped using the buses and begged FEMA to send Greyhound type buses instead to take people out.

Once again, it looks like Nagin did everything humanly possible while FEMA was too worried about maintaining a good image to bother saving lives.



UPDATED: 9:26 am CDT August 29, 2005

3 Die While Fleeing Storm

An official with the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office said three residents of a New Orleans nursing home fleeing Hurricane Katrina aboard a school bus died Sunday during an evacuation to a Baton Rouge church.

The names, ages and sexes of the dead were not available.

Don Moreau, chief of operations, said the coroner's office responded to a call from emergency medical technicians to a Baptist church, which was the destination for the bus of nursing home patients. Once there, Moreau said one person was dead inside the church and another was found dead inside the bus.

He said the person in the bus appeared to have been dead for some time.

http://www.wdsu.com/news/4909184/detail.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4675831

[FormerRepublican]

20. This needs to be sent to the Main Stream Media

[raggedcompany]

5. well, there's this, but I don't know if these are "the facts."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4667154

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074549">Times Picayune from Aug. 28th

Mayor Nagin issues mandatory evacuation for New Orleans

As of 9:30 a.m., Mayor Nagin has issued a mandatory evacuation for New Orleans.

The Superdome has been opened for people with special needs and as a shelter of last resort. Residents should call [phone] to reserve space in this shelter.

The city has set up ten pickup areas to take people to emergency shelters. RTA buses will be picking up citizens for free and take them to these shelters. The number to call for pickup areas is 1-800-469-4828.

The pickup locations are

McMain High: 5712 S Claiborne Ave New Orleans, LA 70125

Rabouin High:727 Carondelet St New Orleans, LA 70130

Mondy George O Elementary: 2327 Philip St New Orleans, LA 70113

O.P. Walker: 2832 General Meyer Ave New Orleans, LA 70114

Abramson: 5552 Read Blvd New Orleans, LA 70127

S.T. Reed : 5316 Michoud Blvd New Orleans, LA 70129

Sylvain Williams: 3127 Martin L. King Blvd. New Orleans, LA. 70125

Augustine Middle:425 S. Broad St. New Orleans, LA. 70119

Warren Easton: 3039 Higgins Blvd. New Orleans, LA. 70126

MLK Jr. Elementary: 1617 Caffin Avenue New Orleans, LA 70117

N.O. Mission, address not available at time of publish.

Mondy Center, address not available at time of publish.

William Franz , address not available at time of publish.

Residents are asked to bring food for 3-5 days, pillows, blankets, and any other supplies needed.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Who owns the buses?

Many school systems use private companies to provide bus service. A mayor just can't waltz in and commandeer buses. Nobody has answered the question of who owns the buses.

But it really doesn't matter. Responsibility for disaster management officially fell to Bush once he signed the emergency declaration.

Bush took responsibility. And then did nothing for four days.

--p!

[blondeatlast]

11. What's more is that FEMA CAN commandeer transportation.

States and cities don't have the power to commandeer buses from commercial interests.

But, surprise, surprise--FEMA didn't.

[rocktivity]

7. It was up to FEMA to ensure that those buses had somewhere to go.

A responsibility they officially took over on August 26.

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing...

:headbang:
rocknation

[Silverhair]

8. Let's suppose it is true. Then ask the next questions:

Where would he take them? He is mayor of a city, NOT governor of a state. Does he just run the people to another city and dump them on a street corner? He needs a place to take them to - a shelter in a safe city.

Since a hurricane is hundreds of miles wide, and since it can change course, he has to take the people far inland, say about 200 miles inland. So you are looking at an 8 to 10 hour round trip for the bus. They could have gotten a maximum of about three runs. So you are still talking about most of N.O. not being evacuated.

And that is without taking into account the traffic jams.

[quaoar]

12. They likely would have driven to Baton Rouge

Which is normally only about 90 minutes away -- except of course that Interstate 10 to BR was a parking lot, so figure about 20 hours to get there.

[Silverhair]

13. Even if you could get every one out, where could you dump them?

Can you imagine all those people decending on one city?

BR would have been a poor choice. If the hurricane takes a left zig, it would still be a CAT 2 or 3 in BR.

Nagan was in a really bad situation. Those 400 busses were no help to him at all.

[quaoar]

14. There are three main evacuation routes out of NO

West on I-10 to Baton Rouge, the closest city.
East on I-10 to Biloxi, Mobile and Pensacola (bad choice this time)
North on I-55 to Jackson (smaller than BR) and Memphis.

The majority of people who evacuate tend to go west to Texas. The buses could have kept on going until they got to Houston. Of course, that doesn't answer the questions of what do you do once you get there, or how many drivers you can find who haven't already fled the city, or handling sick or otherwise difficult passengers along the way, etc.

[Silverhair]

16. All too true.

And the questions you and I have address are just the beginning, and obvious ones.

Basically, the poor were just stuck in N.O.

[JaneQPublic]

19. At the time of the evacuations, Baton Rouge was also in Katrina's path

So was East Texas, and so was farther west along the Gulf Coast.

In order for the Mayor to get NOLA residents out of harm's way (according to the best predictions at the time), he'd have to send the buses pretty far inland.

To say he could've just sent them to Baton Rouge is an example of Hindsight is 20/20.

[htuttle]

9. The official disaster plan said to take people to the Superdome

This was the plan worked out long before this the hurricane between the city,state and FEMA. The mayor DID send city buses around to bring people to the Superdome, as the plan directed.

Should the mayor have ignored the plan, attempted to load 50,000 people onto buses, attempted to find 400 qualified drivers (with CDL air brake endorsements, to boot) in the middle of that chaos, hotwire all 400 buses (oh yeah...what about GAS?), then drop all 50,000 people off in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway, unplanned and without any sort of support or organization? Would that have been 'safer', or would it simply have created another chaotic situation on the side of the highway in Arkansas or Texas somewhere?

Not to mention the crowd control issues with loading 50,000 people onto buses without a fraction of the manpower needed to do such a thing.

This is just another idiotic right wing talking point. I can't believe that people keep asking this question here 20 times per day.

The president signed a declaration of emergency Saturday night that said the Feds and FEMA were taking full responsibility. The lame response is Bush's fault, totally and completely. Both the mayor and the governor followed the pre-approved disaster plan to the letter. Bush's FEMA did not.

[democraticinsurgent]

10. Thanks to all

I apologize, this apparently was discussed a lot here already. I did do a quick search and came up empty, i find the search capabilities of DU to be not so great sometimes. And I'm too busy work-wise to stay with things when they're as fast moving as they are right now...

Anyway, you all have provide a bunch of good answers. Of course I know the responsibility rests with the feds...and ultimately with shrub. I'm trying to corral all the facts so I can deal with RW idiots who relatives, friends, etc.

[July]

18. Yes, the plan calls for evacuating to temporary shelter for those who

could not move on their own. The temporary shelter was the Superdome. Nagin followed the plan.

The question of evacuating OUT OF NEW ORLEANS was not really an issue at first, and people expected to return to their homes. When the levees broke, and then when food, water, medical help weren't showing up, the need to get people out of the city became more urgent. The feds were the only ones who had the resources and manpower to deal with these problems.

[ClassWarrior]

15. 400 Trolls Used to infiltrate DU: anyone know the real story?

NGU.