Posted on 09/04/2005 10:47:00 AM PDT by NWO Slave
This AP photo shows scores of New Orleans school buses sitting in flood waters after Hurricane Katrina - sitting where they sat instead of being used to evacuate thousands of poor people before Katrina hit.
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 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 people 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 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 commandeered 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.
Touche!!!
I love our military. I think it is amazing that they accomplished so much in such a short time, actually. If the left had their way, we wouldn't even have much of a military. My question to them: if not the military, than who? Can you imagine any other organization doing the job that they are currently doing in the Katrina ravaged cities?
A couple of Freepers have said that Nagin didn't want buses that didn't have bathrooms on them. I'd like to see some sort of confirmation on that. If it's true, considering how who is left is wading in raw sewage....
aerial of your pic:
and a huge aerial, showing more buses:
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24426968.jpg
ZOOM in on the very lower right corner. MORE buses underwater, empty.
ZOOM bottom left-center - more buses.
Taken from: Hurricane Katrina Base Map Index Page
Ray is a stupid, stupid man. That said, did the casino/crime/tourism stringpullers want someone smart?
I WANT AN APOLOGY FROM BLANCO AND NAGIN!!1
APOLOGIZE NOW
"I'm not one of those drug addicts.."
A racist view of the black and poor.
The people running La. and NO need to be lynched.
Where are the aldermen of New Orleans? Those gentlemen should have been right there in the Superdome, taking charge and showing some leadership. I didn't see any of them being interviewed on TV. I suspect that they followed the mayor's example and departed the area posthaste, along with the other rich black and white folks.
They and their families are no doubt holed up in luxury far away from New Orleans, waiting for the mess to be cleaned up so they can go back to business as usual.
What is he mayor of, now? There is no reason why New Orleans has to be rebuilt as a slum. Let's sort out those who can benefit from opportunity from the crooks and drug addicts and get them the benefits of a self-reliance culture in the states where they are relocated. Let's not recreate crime infested slums.
Mayor of WHAT?
New Atlantis.
I might add no one has mentioned how many floors are in that parking structure either. Since the roof is full I would imagine so are the other floors. Many of them vans and trucks I'm sure. Hundreds more vehicles that could have been used to get people out.
The photos show that the in-bound lane to New Orleans was unused and NOT OPENED TO OUT-BOUND TRAFFIC. This is significant as it severely impacted the spped of the evacuation.
The Freeper does not know how to get the images posted.
Does anybody have a secure web site and a Hotmail address he can send the photos to so they can be posted?
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FreepMail to Polybius...........
Well, here is some more information on those pictures. The time stamps were in military time, so, here are the times.
These picture of the causeway, and other live webcams anyone could have seen in New Orleans before, during, ( I don't know now ) maybe, after the storm. These pictures were taken in ( I guess, 3 min or 5 mins apart) .
The first pictures cleary shows all of the vehicles coming out from NEW ORLEANS, and the inbound lanes wide open with no traffic at all ( either way ) on it.
1 # Picture time stamp. 8 / 28 / 2005 - HR : 16:21:02 PM
2# 8/28/05 - HR : 16:25:25 PM.
3# 8/28/05 - HR : 16:34:31 PM.
4# 8/28/05 - HR : 17:04:34 PM.
5# 8/28/05 - HR : 18:52:19 PM.
I was mistaken before, these pictures were taken last Sunday evening.
From picture 1 to 3 , you can see many vehicles getting out of New Orleans, and there are very dark ominious cloud in the sky, and from picture 3 to 4, the traffice starts to clear to a trickle, and the clouds clear up some, but, in the last picture, there are no vehicles on the N.O. causeway.
I just checked some of the pictures, only in one picture, do I see only one vehicle going inbound back into New Orleans.
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You know, at first, I thought he was referring to Marion Berry.
Before Atlantis Sunk it was populated by an advanced population.
I do not think New Orleans should be mentioned in the same sentence as Atlantis.
1. Nagin did NOT order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans until late Sunday morning, just hours before tropical storm force winds came in to the city. By then it was too late to get many folks out. This is important. President Bush declared a disaster area early on Saturday and urged immediate evacuation, but did not have the power to order people to leave. If Nagin had ordered a mandatory evacuation Saturday and gotten those buses rolling, thousands might have been saved from death and misery.
2. By the time the mandatory evacuation order was given, everyone with a TV knew it was past time to go, including probably most of the bus drivers in the city. They were apparently never told to stand on alert in case they were needed to get people out. This should have been standard procedure when any hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico. Pay them an extra $500 if you have to, but you have to make sure you have the drivers or the buses will not do you much good.
It would have been relatively easy to open up contraflow on I-10 to only city and school buses at first. They could have made several trips at least to Baton Rouge, and the last buses out could have kept going on to Texas. LSU has a large basketball arena, field house, student center, and other facilities that could have been used as shelters for thousands. Baton Rouge lost power but not water, so those people would have had water and sanitation. If the evacuation had first focused on the sick and elderly, they could have been taken to hospitals throughout the state. I simply cannot fathom that the City of New Orleans had nobody capable of figuring this out!
Excellent article and it points the finger right where it belongs, to the Mayor. It also should point the finger at the people at the State level who were also responsible before they start pointing fingers.
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