Uh Mr. Mayor, what about all those school buses that were submerged in the flood waters? Did you ever consider for one second that those now useless busses could have been deployed on Saturday to get those people out?
Mr. Mayor also fails to mention that he was supposed to order the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans a full 72 hrs. before the hurricane hit. NOT 24 hrs. He himself cost countless lives by adopting a wait and see attitude in the days before being hit.
http://www.weather.com/newscenter/specialreports/hurricanes/vulnerablecities/neworleans.html
Half of the 1 million people who live in the metro area evacuated as Georges drove toward the city, resulting in gridlock on the roads. Since Georges, city officials designed a plan that would provide a more orderly evacuation. It is to begin 72 hours before a storm hits, and end when the winds become too dangerous for motorists, according to Hijuelos.
The challenge will be convincing people to leave some three days before a hurricane makes landfall.
Why didn't he do that? They have known for 40 years that something like this could happen. Why weren't plans made by the mayor, and the governor for dealing with a disaster? Why did they wait til Saturday to call for evacuations? Why didn't the governor have the national guard and state police on stand-by? (I've read that there weren't enough police in NO long before Katrina struck).
All these questions, and many more could be asked, but now is not the time. The mayor seems to have regressed to a 10 year old child having a temper tantrum, and blaming everyone else for his mistakes.
Too bad, the people of NO need leadership- they are not going to get it from their elected officials.
By the way all you, screaming about how much help they are not getting- It took 3 days to deploy the national guard during the Los Angeles riots- that was with everything working- the roads were clear, the had electricity, phone service, everything- the area was no where near the 90,000 square miles of damaged area from Katrina- it still took 3 days to get the guard to the riots.
I don't understand this at all. Not at all. Florida commandeers school buses to evacuate the elderly, so why were all those elderly left in New Orleans?
If the LA-SPCA had the forsight to evacuate all their animals to Houston-SPCA on Saturday, I'm at a complete loss to understand why NO didn't undertake a massive evacuation of its elderly.