"Ours are worth too much money to risk damaging them."
Riiight! We are all just sooooo convinced those buses have a higher value because of their recent deep cleaning. There is nothing quite like 3 to 4 feet of nice organic river water to wash away all the problems to which school buses are prone.
We must remember how much fuel Blanco and Nagin saved by leaving those buses in the compound. People are renewable energy sources-fossile fuels are precious.
Only liberal democrats such as Blanco, Nagin and their not so secret admirer, Senator Mary(punch out the President) Landerieu, would have made the tough decision to waste those expendable humans, rather than enriching big, bad, evil oil, by burning the fuel to evacuate those expendable wretches to safety.