Posted on 09/03/2005 8:18:09 PM PDT by Smelly_Fed
Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster plans 05:09 PM CDT on Sunday, September 19, 2004
By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press
Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land.
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans.
Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept dry by a system of pumps and levees. As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.
Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do.
"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."
Advocates for the poor were indignant.
"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.
(Excerpt) Read more at wwltv.com ...
Shame on Mayor Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not learning from their mistakes the last time.
I still don't see how this is the President's fault. Somebody needs to explain that to me in shorter sentences, I guess.
I nominate this for "Duh" Headline of the Year!!!!
This has been going on since forever. The odds finally caught up with us.
Sure they had a plan. The plan was whatever happens figure out some way to put the blame on Bush.
What plan? You mean like Kerry's 'Plan', the one that didn't exist?
1. Tell rich people to leave
2. Open Superdome for everyone else
3. Leave town
4. Sit on ass and wait for the feds to come in
5. Bitch
So the city apparently had a plan to shelter people in Super Dome in case of hurricane, but they had no emergency power system and no stocks of food or water.
This is all Bush's fault!
Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html
LOL, thats the size of it. Please allow me to add another step.
New Orleans disaster plan:
1. Tell rich people to leave
2. Open Superdome for everyone else
3. Allow 200 life saving buses to waste in flood.
4. Leave town
5. Sit on ass and wait for the feds to come in
6. Bitch
Louisiana Evacuation Plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Page 13, paragraph 5:
"5. 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. "
6. Blame Bush
7. Have liberal MSM shout, "Yeah! That's right! It was Bush's fault!!"
New Orleans disaster plan:
1. Tell rich people to leave
2. Let poor people drown.
3. Blame Bush.
Shoudn't that be the "'Duh' Headline of last Year"?
"The plan was whatever happens figure out some way to put the blame on Bush."
You know the old saying - Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan. If everything had gone right in handling this disaster, and there was remarkably little loss of life, the liberal media would be saying, "None of this is Bush's doing at all."
There were more than 120 schools. If each school had 10 busus, they had more than 1000 by my figuring. I have found no source, yet, but am looking.
I believe what they failed to do is criminal... and will yield the same results as with Bubba...
Good work. Incredible shame. What buses are in the 2nd pic, are they city buses? This clown should be thrown out of office.
Note the petrol slick from the school buses (5 o'clock, top picture). Given that this is a photo at a random moment in time it seems likely that they were all gassed-up and ready to go.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.