Posted on 09/07/2005 3:18:30 PM PDT by angkor
I'm prepared to give New Orleans Mayor Nagin the benefit of the doubt on the school bus unavailability.
In the June 9 2005 Orleans Parish School Board meeting minutes - posted elsewhere on FR in another thread - it's clear that the Board was not providing Nagin with any support whatsoever on making the buses available in an evac (let alone drivers).
And since this very discussion had been ongoing for at least a year (again evidenced in the minutes), I presume they hadn't signed-off on it by Aug 27th either.
In addition, the Orleans Parish Schools had been under management by a New York management restructuring firm (Alvarez & Marsal) since July, due to extensive corruption and payroll padding, and to the Board being $45 million in the hole.
So as of July, the City would have been negotiating use of school buses for evac with the management company Alvarez & Marsal, not the Board, which appears to have been stripped of many authorities.
Due to the terrible financial woes, I would guess that Alvarez & Marsal might have said something like, "Sorry, no money, no bus drivers, no gas. No can do. Can't help you." Again, just a guess.
So I am going to assume that Nagin was caught between a rock and a hard place on this particular issue, and had no viable means to deploy the buses.
The culprit may have been the Board, not Nagin.
New Orleans school system opens in turmoil
Thursday, August 18, 2005; Posted: 11:56 a.m. EDT (15:56 GMT)
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the buildings are old and deteriorating.
http://www.nops.k12.la.us/index.html
"Since July 2005, Alvarez & Marsal has been working to improve the finances and operations of the New Orleans Public Schools."
http://www.alvarezandmarsal.com/en/
"Alvarez & Marsal's global services include:
Turnaround Management Consulting
Crisis and Interim Management
Performance Improvement"
At the suggestion of writer Michelle Malkin last Friday, I have cobbled together a blogsite called Texas Clearinghouse for Katrina Aid to serve as a clearinghouse for refugee efforts in Texas.
Texas is getting more refugees than any other state -- that's fine, we'll take them all -- but we need help providing them with food, clothing, and shelter.
If you are a refugee, you can information that will help you find relief. If you want to donate or volunteer, you can find someone who needs you.
Right now the site mostly covers Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas but I will add various churches, schools, and other charities in Lubbock and Austin tonight. My wife was down at Reunion Arena in Dallas yesterday handing out care packages and spiritually ministering to the refugees as a representative of her employer. She says that the situation is tragic and that there's a lot of work to be done. There are so many children who don't know where their parents are or even if their parents are still alive.
There are a lot of churches and other organizations in Texas that need help in dealing with the problem and I would appreciate it if you would get the word out.
Many thanks,
Michael McCullough
Stingray blogsite
Right. And the point is that he did NOT have that authority until he declared a state of emergency. By that time all of the bus drivers were bugging out. Because, to say it again, the School Board provided zero practical assistance in preparing for evac, even in the June 9 2005 meeting, where these questions were SPECIFICALLY discussed.
he was completely unprepared to exercise executive authority in a crisis.
No point in arguing that, since I agree. Point is, other N.O. officials appear not to have helped. Second point (and the point of this post) is that others are culpable, perhaps the entire N.O. government.
he had the option of conscripting just about anyone to the task, including the 8,000 national guardsmen that the governor refused to deploy.
Again, just my point: he was getting it on one side from the malfeasant School Board which provided neither buses nor drivers, and on the other side from Blanco who wouldn't authorize the N.G. for driving or bus security (drivers and bus security were also specifically discussed in the July 9 2005 School Board meeting).
Just deputize teachers or community leaders to find a responsible driver. Heck, just point the people towards the buses and they will know what to do.
You need to read the July 9 2005 School Board meeting minutes, posted elsewhere on FR.
There was a great deal of negligence and lack of planning in many quarters of N.O. government.
It's all too easy to blame it on one [incompetent] person when the entire government was in fact negligent.
Why? They were running the entire N.O. School Board at the executive level.
"They didn't help" is no excuse when you have several thousand people who died on your watch and YOU are the person immediately responsbile.
Mayor Nagin and Mayor Giuliani better not be in the same room at the same time. Mayor and anti-mayor tend to blow up when they come in contact.
I'd truly hate to have Rudy cease to exist in exchange for such a worthless piece of anti-mayor.
They are a sophisticated outfit. I'm familiar with their work. They have no intention of getting sued out of existence for issuing stupid orders that get people killed.
You're missing the point.
No. I get your point. You wish to excuse the failures of Mayor Nagin because other people didn't cooperate with him. You're simply wrong. There is no excuse for the chief executive of New Orleans, the person with the ultimate responsibility for everything that happens within his jurisdiction, to have failed so utterly.
Other people didn't cooperate with him. In a disaster involving the survival of tens of thousands of the people you are responsible for you have those uncooperative people within your jurisdiction arrested or, "in extremis," shot.
What you don't do is whine about it on TV, particular if you are not willing to then cede your authority to those you want to come bail you out.
You can't say "save me, save me" and then claim that your saviors have to get permission from you for every decision they have to make to do the job.
I've been in charge of emergency scenes. You're either in charge or you're taking orders. He wanted someone else to take the responsibility, but he wanted to be in charge. Doesn't work that way. I had a knock down drag out fight (legal) with a city cop over precisely that issue at an accident scene I responded to as an ambulance driver. Under New York law the senior medical personnel is in charge of patient care at an accident scene (or was under the "good sam" laws in the mid 70s). I won. The cop ended up losing his job (not directly over that incident, but it was the next to last straw).
It is absolutely true that, in an emergency, you lead, follow or get out of the way. Nagin did none of these things and people died.
I heard on Bill Bennet show the Red Cross was waiting in the wings to deliver the food, water and supplies to the SuperDome and the Convention Center but the Louisiana's Emergency Management Agency/Homeland Security did not allow them to go. They didn't want to attract more people if they found out aid was available.
FEMA/Homeland Security does not have jurisdiction over the Red Cross.
When was Louisana under federal control? I heard the Governor still has the National Guard under her control.
Where is the Lt Gov?
Even if we make that assumption, there were city buses that could have been deployed.
The main responsibility and authority for operational aspects of evacuation in Orleans Parish lies with the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) within the Chief Administrative Office of the City. The authority to make the final decisions related to an evacuation rests with the Mayor of New Orleans. Evacuation decisions are made in coordination with OEP staff, other City directors, and members of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force, made up of top elected officials in all the Southeast Parishes and municipalities and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD). The private and public economic costs of closing an entire geographic [Page 144] area for several days are significant, so the decision to evacuate has to be carefully considered, based on the severity of the storm, the likely storm path, and the time required to prepare and move citizens away from the city. Evacuation decisions and status updates are broadcast on the City's cable access channel and communicated to all media.
"Houston wasn't wiped out and dealing with a civil insurrection:.... Nagin had ample opportunity to get the buses BEFORE the city was wiped out and could have avoided the mayhem that followed, looters, death of people that could have been saved before the hurricane hit. It's all about lack of leadership on behalf of LA and the mayor.
Why don't we ask Alvarez and Marsal directly why they did not make the buses available to evacuate the people?
Contact form: http://www.alvarezandmarsalnops.com/form.html
They were deployed. To shuttle people to the Superdome.
The idea that with a predicted major disaster bearing down, the head of the school board or even someone in charge of the bus barns wouldn't allow buses to be used is just ludicrous on its face.
Remenber all the networks trumpeting NOLA had dodged the bullet Monday afternoon?
The levee didn't give until Tuesday morning, and water rose in the city relatively slowly. So there was second chance to use the buses. Plenty of time for communication and even paperwork.
So in other words, 'The Buck Never Got Here.'
Absolutely wrong.
I'm trying to understand (or postulate) why he was so negligent.
It is ridiculous to assert that he was sitting in a his LazyBoy eating Doritos as events unfolded on Friday through Sunday. He clearly was on the scene doing something, even if it was an inadequate something.
We know with 100 percent certainty from the June 9 2005 School Board minutes that the issue of school bus use in evacs was being discussed by officials from the School Board and the City. In June. So the issue was still not resolved - after years of discussion - as late as June 2005. 12 weeks before Katrina.
What I am thus holding-up as a possibility probability is that Nagin and many Orleans Parish School Board officials were collectively negligent for not deploying the school buses.
It is facile and not remotely believable to assert that only one or two public officials were responsible for this malfeasance. Many were negligent. I want to know who they are.
I'm trying to broaden the net of responsibility within the New Orleans city government. Seems like you're trying to narrow it to one or two scapegoats.
And the word for the day is 'commandeer'
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