THEY HAD A PLAN
They just didn't follow it. So they were planning to fail. By "they," I mean pretty much every government official in Louisiana, and by "plan," I mean a signed-off set of procedures they were supposed to follow in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. You know, like the one that just hit. And by "fail" I mean complete catastrophic failure.
Here's the southeast Louisiana evac plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Go to page 13, read paragraph 5. It states:
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.
Well, well. Can you say "smoking gun," Mr. Mayor? Mr. Ebbert? How about a smoking arsenal? I guess whether or not you decide to act is based on how you define "school and municipal buses" and "staging area." Or "hurricane." Or "mandatory," as in "mandatory evacuation."
Also see page 18, paragraph 2a 2 and 3.
Page 20, paragraph 3a 5.
Page 21, paragraph c 4.
Page 29, all of it.
And this is just one part of a 250-page state Emergency Operations Plan.
Consider this strange quote too:
Previous hurricanes evacuations in New Orleans were always voluntary, because so many people don't have the means of getting out. Some are too poor and there is always a French Quarter full of tourists who get caught.
So the existence of people who may be stuck in the bowl actually leads to a decreased hurricane evacuation level to match their helplessness instead of increased urgency and planning for buses? Are you kidding me? Is that called "Nawlins logic" or what? Well, now we know why the President of the United States had to be the one to give the order for a mandatory evac. Sad.
The poor folk provide crucial votes for the local politicians, and the tourists provide the dollars, but yet before a major hurricane they can't even get a bus ride? If the MSM did not exist, President Bush might be seen as a hero now to the survivors of New Orleans for at least trying to force the local pols to get a clue and to think about the poor, sick and helpless for once when it's not election time. That's compassionate conservatism. He feels your pain before you do and tries to prevent liberals from inflicting it.
There is something very peculiar about a city and a state that have a plan on the books for years that outlines what to do when a hurricane is about to strike, yet when a hurricane comes roaring in, the responsible officials just chuck the plan and try winging it. Delaying and then winging it in the face of a monstrous Cat 4/5 hurricane is never, ever a good idea, especially for New Orleans.
So when the situation goes south, the levee breaks and the people who should have been evacuated based on the plan are dying, these same officials who decided to improvise the whole thing now blame it all on the President who begged them to just get everyone the hell out of there already.
Nice.
(I added a couple more paragraphs above since posted just a bit ago. See below for further updates...Chris R)
MORE: Some thoughts on planning vs. failure from a Powerline reader who says the NOLA folks knew all about regular mandatory evacuations. Maybe that was before Mayor Nagin came along.
UPDATE: Yep, it looks like this will go down in history as gross (local) negligence:
A year ago, New Orleans reviewed its hurricane disaster plans after Hurricane Ivan gave the city a major scare forcing the evacuation of nearly 1 million people from the area.What happened last September bears striking similarities to the problems encountered before Hurricane Katrina struck. The only difference was Ivan missed the city.
There were hours-long traffic jams. Those who had money fled, while the poor stayed. The warnings were the same: Forecasters predicted that a direct hit on the city would send torrents of water over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.
"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, told the Associated Press at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."
Advocates for the poor were indignant in 2004 – just as they are complaining now.
"If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.
With Ivan, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then, just hours before the storm was set to hit land, they agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs.
Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.
"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said.
But again, in 2004, no city or school buses were used to take people to safety.
Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.
And, indeed, he didn't do much different last weekend before Katrina struck.
Even the problems that occurred at the Superdome this week had a precedent – during a threat by Hurricane Georges in 1998. An estimated 14,000 poured into the stadium, but theft and vandalism were rampant.
During the threat by Ivan, only 1,100 fled to the Superdome and they were supervised by 300 National Guardsmen, who were able to avoid major crime problems.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged after the Ivan near miss they needed a better evacuation plan.
Wow. Speechless.
As Instapundit has been reminding people, this storm wasn't a surprise. The blogosphere and Accuweather were on top of it very early.
With the local and state governments of Louisiana collapsing both tactically and emotionally, there was nowhere for that sense of frustration to flow other than toward the federal government. And there it will remain until the president succeeds in convincing the nation that he has taken personal responsibility for the management of this unprecedented disaster. At which point the responsibility might well begin to flow back again to the local and state authorities whose negligence in the days preceding the catastrophe border on the homicidally negligent. But not until then.
I think it's starting. The MSM just hasn't caught up to the blogosphere.
UPDATE: Mudville Gazette has more info on the New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan which has a few more specifics but is still not nearly as detailed as you would think it should be in following state guidelines. Both plans are just outlines for what is in other SOPs.
...Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations....Major population relocations resulting from an approaching hurricane or similar anticipated disaster, caused the City of New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness to develop a specific Hurricane Emergency Evacuation Standard Operating Procedures, which are appended to the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.
The SOP is developed to provide for an orderly and coordinated evacuation intended to minimize the hazardous effects of flooding, wind, and rain on the residents and visitors in New Orleans. The SOP provides for the evacuation of the public from danger areas and the designations of shelters for evacuees.
...Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans in coordination with the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and the OEP Shelter Coordinator.
The SOP, in unison with other elements of the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, is designed for use in all hazard situations, including citywide evacuations in response to hurricane situations and addresses three elements of emergency response: warning, evacuation, and sheltering.