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last time here
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Google "big easy to big empty"   |
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Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:36 pm |
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twotap
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And in a related story.
Why are scores of school buses sitting in the flood waters of New Orleans today? Blame New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who is one reason things have gotten worse, not better, in his stricken city since it was hit by Hurricane Katrina. His laissez faire approach to looting allowed the looters to become increasingly armed and violent, interrupting rescue and recovery operations.
But even before Katrina hit, he failed his poorest citizens horribly. He told them to evacuate the city - and then gave his city's poorest residents no way to do so.
Nagin lashed out at federal officials yesterday for the government's relief efforts, pleading for the government to round up "500 buses" to send to New Orleans to evacuate survivors.
But Nagin, who ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans before Katrina hit, ought to be made to answer this question: Where are the buses of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority? Under water? Destroyed? Why?
Before Katrina hit, the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority operated at least 364 buses, probably more. (The latest stats I found are these from 2002. NORTA's website likely has more accurate stats but the site is, understandably, down.)
A more important question for Mayor Nagin is this one:
Why weren't NORTA's 364 buses used to ferry poor people out of New Orleans before Katrina hit?
It's a legitimate question. After all, Nagin knew he had tens of thousands of poor people in his city who had neither money nor vehicles to self-evacuate before the storm arrived. So, why didn't he order NORTA to send its buses into the poor neighborhoods to provide transportation to anyone wishing to leave?
If each bus could hold just 60 people, NORTA's 364 buses had the capacity to take almost 22,000 peope out of harm's way per trip. Given that Nagin ordered the compulsory evacuation of the city two days before the storm hit, there was sufficient time for more than one trip - sufficient time to move tens of thousands of the city's poorest residents out of New Orleans by bus before Katrina arrived.
Even if the buses only made one trip, one in five people now trapped in New Orleans wouldn't be.
But Nagin never sent NORTA's buses and drivers into the city's Ninth Ward, its poorest section, to offer the people there a realistic way out.
Critics will ask where, exactly, the NORTA buses would have taken tens of thousands of people. My answer: the first town they came to 100 miles or so west of New Orleans. Would that be ideal? No, but leaving 100,000 poor people trapped in a below-sea-level city about to be hit by a hurricane stronger than the city's levees were build to withstand wasn't exactly ideal, either.
Nagin is screaming for buses now, but when he had them he failed to use them. People aren't dying in New Orleans today because of what the federal relief effort is or isn't doing. People are dying in New Orleans today because Mayor Ray Nagin failed to get them out before Katrina hit.
People are dying - perhaps by the thousands - because of his failure.
UPDATE: A commenter notes that the New Orleans Public School system also had buses - hundreds of them. Why weren't they pressed into service to evacuate the thousands of residents who had no way out? (After posting this update, I found the flooded buses photo via a link posted by a commenter over at BloggingForBryant.)
In the days before the hurricane struck, the possibility of commandeering the city's two big bus fleets - the transit buses and the school buses - was much discussed on this Metafilter thread.
One person, "Amberglow," wrote at at 11:15 AM New Orleans time on August 28: "They ought to get every bus in the city comandeered and just get people out of there. even boats and barges up the Mississippi would work."
But ... they didn't.
Instead, the transit buses were used to shuttle people to the Superdome. And the school buses were left parked to drown in the floodwaters, each flooded seat representing a person that could have been moved out of harm's way.
UPDATE: Hey, I'm not the only one who thinks Nagin blew it. Brendan Loy checks in, as does B. Preston at JunkyardBlog, and Glenn Reynolds. Interesting, though, that they're focusing on the school buses, but I was talking about Nagin's failure to use the city's transit system buses to evacuate poor people before the photo of the drowned school buses surfaced.
Preston writes:
Here's a tight satellite view of the bus lot. It looks to me like there are more than 205 buses there. That's a freeway next to the lot, in the upper part of the frame. It leads to the Superdome in one direction and out of the city in the other. ...The Superdome is in the lower left and the bus lot is in the upper right. They're not that far apart - a mile or two maybe. I will say this - if the city's emergency planners couldn't figure out that the bus lot, the freeway and the dome make a pretty tight emergency staging and evacuation system all by themselves, those planners are beyond incompetent.
He's right. And their incompetence cost lives - perhaps thousands of lives.
Also wanting answers from Nagin about the unused buses: David Frey of TigerSmack, an LSU sports blog.
And the Cracker Barrel Philosopher calls the drowned school buses the "Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool." Ouch.
UPDATE: Sept. 3: Lots of good stuff overnight in the comments, including the fact that Louisiana Gov. Blanco didn't call an evacuation until after President Bush begged her to do so, and the fact that the official hurricane evacuation plan for southeastern Louisiana says this:
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.
So, Nagin is doubly incompetement, the flooded unused school buses being a testament to his failure of vision and his failure to either know or follow the written plan. |
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Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:55 am |
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Dave Starr
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| Not to mention the millions in federal aid still in state & local hands that they haven't disbursed. Paperwork, bureaucracy, theft, who knows? |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:35 am |
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willy
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| What happened to all the Money THE RED CROSS from DONATION to the KATRIA fund.. |
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Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:49 pm |
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last time here
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oh yeah...nagin is not at all free of guilt. as a matter of fact the displaced
residents are none too happy with him.......a shame..
Last edited by last time here on Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:09 pm |
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00SL2
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quote:
twotap schreef:
And in a related story.
Your point? Date and source of your article, please. There was much more than buses under water, and many people second-guessing what was going on in New Orleans.
Might be helpful to have the real timeline on the Katrina story:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/katrina/timeline/timeline.html |
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Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:26 pm |
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twotap
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Sun Jan 20, 2008 8:26 am |
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last time here
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now see 2tap, you must read ALL sources of information in order
to have a "balanced" view of truth...... 
why do you always copy & paste conservative blurbs only????? |
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Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:43 pm |
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FlintConservative
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quote:
last time here schreef:
now see 2tap, you must read ALL sources of information in order
to have a "balanced" view of truth......
why do you always copy & paste conservative blurbs only?????
Why is it ok for the liberals to quote Bill Moyers ad nauseam but the conservatives need a "balanced" view of the truth? |
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Sun Jan 20, 2008 1:53 pm |
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last time here
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i've never listened to bill moyers... i just view
all opinions and facts, then form my own.
no talking head influences my opinions.
remember when patti hearst got kidnapped and by the time she was
rescued she was thinking like them?? thats what tucker, hannity, carlson,
limbaugh and o'reilly do to y'all!!
Last edited by last time here on Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:10 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:03 pm |
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twotap
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quote:
why do you always copy & paste conservative blurbs only?????
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Because thats the best way to counter the liberal BS posts that keep coming up. Blind em with the facts. |
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Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:24 pm |
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