I’m new to your blog, so I can’t tell if you are joking or not. Are you really trying to point fingers at the city for getting MOST of the town evacuated and ONLY 9,000 people to the safest point in town. I think we’re all agreed that the evacuation could have been smoother, but when compared to FEMA’s response, the city and state get A-pluses.

If this is a joke, you are one sick MFer. I’ll say a prayer for you man.

Sorry Collin… the city did SQUAT to evacuate those people. Everyone who got out did so on their own… and then the mayor and governor BOTH sat on their hands and waited for their people to drown.

Hi.

Me again.

I won’t be here long. You guys should just check this out. It’s mighty…interesting. (sorry, it has nothing to do with buses)

Link

Oh, and I’d just like to point out, I’m not collin. Wow. you guys attract as many moonbats as wingnuts. (although I kind of like that “orc” term)

Source

To: Collin,

This is only a joke if you think it is funny to ignore those who had no money and no transportation to get out of New Orleans. The bus count makes these 2 points 1. there is NO excuse for not providing these buses to take the the poor and needy out of harms way prior to the time when Katrina came ashore. 2. It is a massive loss of money to the city/state (flooded out buses) which may in the end be picked up by FEMA with tax payer money. The buses and many others within easy commute from throughout Southern LA could have taken all that wished to leave and would have thus alleviated much loss of life and a world of suffering that will hurt some lives for the for the forseeable future and it was totally avoidable.

I would point out from your post that those with vehicles GOT THEMSELVES out. A mandatory evacuation should not be limited to those that can get themselves out but move on to include everyone who can leave but has no means. It goes farther than that. It lays out the entire process into grids with a process of buses coming and going, timed to take only the time it takes to board them and be off from neighborhood embarkation places. It is NOT a MANDATORY evacuation when you leave 100,000 +/- of the poorest in a doomed city. The means were readily at hand to have done this right. There was no will to do it although this end result (this hell) had been discussed for years at City Hall. Well thats where we have been this last week - in hell.

There is an incredible irony here. For most of my adult life, four decades ++, I have listened to the sanctimonious rhetoric about the incredible caring and dedication of the liberal Left to the poor and down trodden and the cold hearted rich fat cats of the conservative right,who could’nt care less about that same group. Both of these are wrong and this situation in which it never really OCCURED to the Mayor and the Governor that the Poor should be gotten out and nothing less than that - out of harms way, is compatible with most very caring conservatives.

So if our “post morten” seems ludicrous to you, it does at least allow the pain and wounding an active venue to turn it outward rather than inward for those of us who need it. This has not happened just to the poor of NO, but to a lesser extent, every caring person nation wide who would have done it differently but were not in a position to do so. This had also served to point to just how callous was the disregard for these human lives. Finally, it has been picked up to some degree by the MSM with discussion of the “flooded out buses” and the culpability of the local first responders at City Hall.

You can laugh as you will but I would rather suffer the laughter of every uncaring fool in America than BE an uncaring fool in America.

PS We do seem to have attracted at least one Moonbat and one wingnut!

I’m no leftie wingnut. I think there is plenty of blame to pass around in this disaster, but your bus argument doesn’t make any sense.

Perhaps I’m just missing the point and you can clue me in. People are upset because of the many graphic deaths and suffering in New Orleans. By remarking on the buses you are trying to push that blame back to the evacuation efforts, but there is no logic in your argument. The gruesome deaths that everyone is riled up about did not occur as a result of the hurricane. Even Chertoff says that after the hurricane hit things didn’t look that bad. What everyone is upset about is the aftermath. The evacuation has nothing at all to do with that. Whether these people were in New Orleans at the Superdome or anywhere else, they still had desparate needs following the hurricane. Whether those needs went unmet by FEMA at the Superdome or elsewhere, we’re still facing the same problem - needless suffering and death and embarassment on the international stage because of an incompetent federal agency.

Your bus picture sure is nice, but it is not going to appease the American people. FEMA’s incompetence demands swift retribution.

. Nice Monday Morning QB’ing, Collin!

If you had been paying attention, you’d have known that a Cat 5 hurricane was headed (more or less) straight at NO, several days before it actually struck. There was no reason to BELIEVE (hope, yes, but not believe) that it would be a near-miss. The fact that, days later, it “swerved” could not have been known at the time that the evac should have occcured.

Nice try, tho!

Hi,

Me Again.

Ok, first up, Collin, you’re wrong. Lefties are the moonbats. Righties…righties?.…righties are the wingnuts. Now you know. Otherwise, I think you make, good, albeit not great, points. Except that part of Chertoff saying everyone else was saying this didn’t look that bad. No newspaper I saw said anyone “Dodged a Bullet”

Second, I also think that speedster makes an excellent point.

“If you had been paying attention, you’d have known that a Cat 5 hurricane was headed (more or less) straight at NO, several days before it actually struck. There was no reason to BELIEVE (hope, yes, but not believe) that it would be a near-miss.”

Which leads me to believe that Michael Brown wasn’t actually paying attention, seeing as how he didn’t call up a thousand FEMA people until Monday, which is believe is after the storm had hit.

So let’s see here, he tried to get his boss to approve it on Monday, he gave them 48 hours to arrive, real aid starting coming in on Friday.…yeah, I think the math for that works.

Source

Once more for the NEW people,

City and state planners (past) in NO & LA knew the risks and potential impact of a devastating hurricane in NO, so much so that they had made very specific plans to be implemented in case voluntary and mandatory evacuations were needed. They further knew that a large portion of the population would not be able to get themselves out and planned for that too.

Both of these plans (Emergency Actions Plans) called on the use of buses, as well as any other resource to facilitate the said evacuation.

HERE is the Plan for the city of New Orleans and HERE is the State’s EOP (Emergency Operations Plan) dealing with this topic.

Read the whole thing if you like, but here is the really relevant part on page 13.

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

You might also notice its in the assumptions section, meaning that the authors assumed (which turned out to be a bad move) that the morons actually implementing the evacuation would have already thought of using city transit and school buses when considering moving a large number of people as part of a mandatory evacuation.

It is painfully obvious (which I believe the decidedly unfunny pictures are meant to show) that the Mayor and the Governor did not implement these EOP’s properly. Which, if I may add, is a requirement if you wish to receive federal assistance (via the Stafford Act). They were duty bound to do so and they either choose to or forgot to implement the plan. As to the completely ludicrous The gruesome deaths that everyone is riled up about did not occur as a result of the hurricane argument. First off, do you really believe that?

MSM TV images not withstanding. This is not the first hurricane and past indications & studies show that the overwhelming majority of deaths in a hurricane occur due to drowning during the storm surge or tidal flooding. I know this is complicated so here’s a picture . Once we actually get into some of the flooded areas and start looking, I’m sure we will again find that to be true in this case.

Did people suffer greatly with the delay of federal aid? Undouptably. I saw the pictures too and they surely did look miserable, hungry and thirsty, but alive. Some, particularly the more vulnerable elderly, without question died during this period too (how many & how gruesome ) is really only a guess at this point.

At any rate, it will surely not come ANYWHERE NEAR the number that died during and immediately after the storm and levee break.

So that’s why we issue mandatory “evacuations”, in order to get people out of the danger zone before the storm hits.….….….. ALL PEOPLE, from those that drive Beamers out to those forced to take a school bus —————- errrr, well you get the point.

I changed my thoughts after reading “Ghost Plan for a Ghost town” thread.

The aforementioned plans mentioned in my other post were probable just written as show plans. Kinda like the expensive dolls some people keep behind glass in the home.

You want people to know you have them, but you just never intend to do anything useful with them.

You make some good points Mavs. Here’s a response to two of them.

I said that “The gruesome deaths that everyone is riled up about did not occur as a result of the hurricane,” and you suggested that more people likely died as a result of drowning. I’m not disputing that. However, the point is that although that number may be larger, people are not as upset about it largely because it is directly a result of a natural disaster. People are up in arms about the suffering and deaths that occured as a result of FEMA response. The reason being is that these deaths were preventable if FEMA would have had its act together. That’s what makes this such a sensitive subject and why America is so angry about it.

As for the evacuation and not getting everybody out of the city, many who live in hurricane or similar natural disaster areas take a much different view. Weather forecasters often overhype disasters. When you have lived through enough of these warnings and subsequent aftermaths it becomes similar to the boy who cried wolf. While there are good reasons why people should have evacuated, there are plenty of good reasons why peopled stayed (I can delineate them if requested). The mayor ordered the first mandatory evacuation in the city’s history (yes, including Camille), and for the most part the city was cleared out, so it is hard for most to be overly critical of the evacuation efforts. I cannot think of a larger evacuation in America in recent times, but perhaps someone can fill me in on that. Regardless, whether the people who stayed were right or wrong not to evacuate bears no effect on the fact that FEMA should have been able to save them. The delay was unnecessary and cost lives. That’s the tragic thing about this whole disaster.

Collin,

Good rebuttal, but as to your first point, you could say the same for the local officials as well. While I certainly wouldn’t let FEMA off the hook totally, if you read further in those ghost plans, you would have seen that those plans, in addition to getting the busses rolling, had provisions to set up shelters (with food & water) in them. Plans called for emergency stockpiles of supplies to be on hand. They were not, and like the busses, because this part of the plan was ignored, people played.

FEMA does provide significant assistance to State and Local planners, but the work must be done before the disaster, not during and not after. It’s all HERE .

Again it’s a lot to wade through, but in there, they warn that all local and state plans need to be designed with the fundamental fact in mind; Significant federal Assistance may not arrive for 72-96 hours.

So sure, you can blame FEMA if you want for the gruesome deaths that everyone is riled up about , but you can just as easily say that it’s the state and local official faults as well for not being prepared, which they clearly were not, despite existing plans that would have, if followed, alleviated much of the suffering.

Additionally, if you don’t buy that argument, you could turn to the “Police failed to maintain order” and that caused a horrific problems that delayed the federal response. Relief workers are just that, they are not combat soldiers that expect to get shot it in the course of performing duties. Of course, many people will give you the sob story of “they had poor communication and were so quickly overwhelmed is this unpresidented disaster, so it’s not their fault”. Only the first part of that is true by the way.

In September 2003, the city of New Orleans accepted 5.5 Million dollars in Dept. of Justice COPS Grants to be used specifically to improve disaster communication. They sure didn’t get their monies worth, huh.

——————-

As to your second point, I agree completely, there are a % of people that will, for whatever reason, NOT LEAVE, despite the means to do so. Hell we see that now as some are still refusing to leave. I call them acceptable losses.

I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the THOUSANDS of poor and infirm that showed up to the Superdome and CC. They were scared and obviously did not seem inclined to ride it out alone in their homes (which they willingly left).

Also, there is a significant difference between my mayor and the gov. standing in front of a podium and dryly reporting “please get out” and school busses (filled with panicky people) rolling down my street with people screaming “TIME TO GET THE EFF OUT, NOW”.

It’s easier to ignore the first, the second would just make my butt pucker and I’d WITHOUT HESITATION, and join the fleeing masses. But hey, that’s just me.

It really is easy to blame the “biggest actor” on the scene (FEMA and the feds), because they are the most visible, but if you open you eyes a little more, you see other error that seem insignificant at first glance, but cascaded into monumental problems later on.

Mavs,

You’ve got some good points. It’s nice to find a kindred spirit. Since Katrina I feel that I’m in the middle between those who are screaming to impeach Bush and those who say that FEMA/Homeland Security did a great job. Obviously, neither is the case.

I think the thing to do now, rather than having everyone keep passing the buck, is to put together an investigation independent from both the federal and the state/local government to get to the bottom of it. I don’t know that anyone can feel comfortable about things until we get that ball rolling.

Collin,

One other point, rations (MRE’s and Water)were delivered to the Superdome prior to the storm to last 15,000 people for 3 days… this is the typical time it takes to get the logistics and transfer of equipment, supplies and personnel to a location. The people were asked to bring rations to last for 3 days with them to this ‘temporary’ shelter. Add to that the problem with flooded out highways into NO, and the fact that FEMA also had the entire Gulf Coast to send aid to… and I believe that New Orleans needs to recognize their own failures here. Communications, not referring to their own Disaster Plans for Evaucations, allowing the looters free reign at the very beginning of the disaster. Their OWN plans called for using buses to evacuate those stranded without transportation.… and yet, not a single bus was used (except by citizens that ‘took’ them to evacuate neighborhoods.…). How can you possibly excuse this????? How is this FEMA’s fault???? President Bush called the Gov. and begged for a ‘Mandatory Evacuation’ of the city.… he counted on New Orleans using their own Disaster Plan and evacuating people… that is the real fault of FEMA. They treated New Orleans officials as if they were competent.…

The part that I’m not sure that you are getting is, if these people had been evacuated ‘out of the city’ as they should have been, they wouldn’t be part of “The gruesome deaths that everyone is riled up about did not occur as a result of the hurricane…”

Last point, no matter how well things could go, there would be ‘gruesome deaths’, the heat and humidity was very high and taxing to the elderly and very young, etc.

Collin, you say that “I’m in the middle between those who are screaming to impeach Bush and those who say that FEMA/Homeland Security did a great job.”

Your arguments indicate otherwise. Katrina was certainly they key factor leading to deaths in New Orleans. No hurricane = no deaths.

The President declared New Orleans a disaster area well in advance of the storm and FEMA prepositioned assets accordingly. If you are the FEMA director and you know that (a) New Orleans has an evacuation plan (as we can all now read) and (b) that a mandatory evacuation was finally declared (after significant cajoling by federal authorities), would you have thought to call up those additional 1,000 Homeland Security personnel?

If so, please forward your resume for consideration as the next FEMA director—they really need clairvoyants such as yourself.

Deb - I’m hearing you and I sympathize with your arguments. I think that with hindsight everyone realizes that the evacuation could have been better although I would be interested in seeing a real-life example (e.g. a large city evac pulled off without a hitch).

Putting that to the side for a moment, I think the problem for FEMA, fair or not, is that they were the ones there in the aftermath when things were going from bad to worse. Their job is to come in after a disaster and make things better. Instead, FEMA played the part of Chuck Knoblauch, standing there blowing a bubble and pointing while the runners were flying around the bases. Regardless if their accusations were right or wrong it looks bad and doesn’t solve the problem. I think Bush can score major points with the electorate here by gutting FEMA, or at least Brown.

JavaJack - I like it. A little vitriol is always good. Re: FEMA directorship, I’ll hold off on the resume for now as I have a feeling Bush is going to be seeing plenty of candidates for that position very shortly. May I suggest the aforementioned Honore?

Collin;

There are several key points about the busses that you are missing.

1) Complaining about the busses is not “hindsight”. As has been documented in this very thread, the city and state goverments had already considered and decided to use those busses in case of an emergency just like hurrican Katrina. It was absolutely not something that was first thought of after the hurricane.

2) To me, the issue of evacuating before the hurricane is secondary. The bigger issue is that once the levee broke, the city should have moved as many of those buses to high ground as possible for use in taking people out of the city from the Superdome and Convention Center. One of the reasons people were left in filth and misery there is because there was no transport how. Had the buses simply been driven to those locations and put in the parking lot (easily done because the flooding took hours), thousands of people would have been far better off.

3) Ultimately, the bus issue is archetypical rather than the sum of the indictments against the city and state governments. There are numerous other issues (such as the stupid way the police radio network was set up) but the bus issue is not only a major issue but easy to describe and image.

Thanks for the mention, JunkYardBlog. I hope to post more info at Evacuate The City in the comming weeks.

If readers here have suggestions, please add them to the comment section at my site.

Thanks, again.