[joinedafterattack]

Mayor Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to develope better evacuation strategy for New Orleans after Hurricane Ivan in exactly one year ago.

[adam_az]

Send this to Drudge - EVERYONE - to make sure he doesn't miss it

[NonValueAdded]

reference bump

[Hodar]

"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.

Let's analyze this logic of Mr. Cook's for a second.
1. Don't eat poison - oops, I warned you so if you do it, it's my fault.
2. Smoking is unhealthy, so if you do it, it's my fault
3. Don't drink and drive; if you do it, it's my fault

And people wonder why Americans believe that the greatest threat that our country is going to see is not some terrorist; but the ALCU.

[PeteB570]

This needs to be sent and resent to all the MSM talking heads. Of course they will ignore it because....

THEY MUST BLAIM BUSH

[devane617]

September 19, 2004 -- I love the date on this apocalyptic warning. Everyone knew it was coming, but no one believed it would happen on their watch.

[NonValueAdded]

Deja freakin vu ... no way can they plead ignorance, none. Note the helping hand of the ACLU in all this ... IIRC, there were some words from Nagin early on about not being able to call the emergency if they didn't have the place to put the people. I suspect we will find that fear of lawsuits gave just enough pause to miss the narrow window of opportunity they had. At some point the question will be asked about what was done between Ivan and Katrina and the answer will be "little or nothing."

[flashbunny]

the entire governmental structure of new orleans and LA needs to be investigated by the feds- were federal dollars misused? Did they fail to plan?

We need to demand a new orleans commission.

[roaddog727]

Looks to me like NO needs a new mayor and LA needs a new Gov.

Impeach both for incompetence.

[the invisib1e hand]

someone needs to tell the mayor of no that the president's job is to run the country, the mayor's job is to run the city.

This is all so Clintonesque on the part of hizzonordamayor.

[Soul Seeker]

Okay, who sunk into AP and filed this? I'm shocked this got through!

[JustAnotherOkie]

How do you spell malfeasance.

I would like to think they should learn how to 'Sing the Blues'.

[mtbopfuyn]

"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, said 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."

Well, Latonya, it's very simple. You have fair warning so if you and your daughter can't put your two brains together to figure out how to get to higher ground then you die. Use that bus token for more than a trip to the store for smokes.

[jackv]

I haven't seen hide nor hair of that crybaby, cussin mayor today. He should be out on the street offering aid and comfort instead of diverting the media's attention from his failures by placing blame on Bush or FEMA!!

[USNBandit]

If leadership in this crisis were represented by a doughnut Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco would be the hole.

[Reborn]

Good grief, thank you for posting this. I had NO idea. No wonder people didn't want to stay in the Superdumb. If I lived in NO and couldn't get out (this time) I think me and my axe would've been better off at home. Mayor Nagin & Governor Blanco should be ASHAMED, and should face serious charges over this! INCREDIBLE!!!!

[jwpjr]

re: Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police . . . acknowledged he never expected a seven-hour-long crawl for the 60 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

That's a strange quote to be coming from the head of the state police. He must not be very good at math if it never occurred to him that a million or so cars trying to use the same few lanes of the same few roads would clog up the system. If his level of perception is typical of the people who have been in charge of hurricane preparations then it's little wonder why there are so many problems.

[SauronOfMordor]

In a rational world, Nagin and Blanco would have issued a notice to evacuate on Friday evening, and mobilized the school busses to get people out of NO

In the ACLU world:

1. Issuing the order to evacuate creates a legal obligation to provide transport to anybody claiming to not being able to afford transport. And not just any transport will do. They wanted Grayhound busses with comfortable seating and bathrooms
2. Transporting evacuees to anywhere creates a legal obligation to provide shelter at the destination, where shelter is defined as including bed, food, clothing, etc

Notice that at no point did they use the word "shelter" in describing the Superdome plans on Sunday. They were very careful to call it "a place of refuge"

The court system and the ACLU have just killed thousands of people in the NO area

[heleny]

Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public.
...
on Tuesday,... In the afternoon, state police took action, reversing inbound lanes on southeastern Louisiana interstates to provide more escape routes. Bottlenecks persisted, however.
...
state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier.

So inbound lanes were reversed on a Tuesday afternoon, and Ivan arrived hours after Wednesday afternoon, meaning the reversed lanes were open only a few hours more than 24 hours. Were the inbound lanes reversed earlier this year?

[Rockingham]

Great find. You deserve five stars and some special time with your beloved.

[WestSylvanian]

I believe the mayor and governor called for an evacuation on Sunday. The airport was closed the day before. How do people evacuate when the airport is closed and the freeways are parking lots?? These two incompetents couldn't organize their sock drawer much less a response to a catastrophe. The idiot mayor had one solution--send people to the Superdome. After that, he was out of ideas. Except to curse out President Bush, of course.