By that logic, why issue any evacuation orders at all? The whole idea of an evacuation is to evacuate people beyond the zone where the hurricane has the potential to hit. So if Baton Rouge was potentially in the path, you don't evacuate people to Baton Rouge. People are going to be evacuating from Baton Rouge if that's the case. The idea is to get them away from where the storm's liable to hit at all. It's not like schoolbuses only have a short range. They can go anywhere any other vehicle can go.
Bottom line: School buses were part of the evacuation plan for a hurricane, which the locals completely dropped the ball on.
Where do you live? Did you ever think about hurricane evacuations before last week? I've only had to deal with them for a few years, but I know that being somewhat close has taught me more than I'd know if my only exposure were through the media.
My house was potentially in the path of this hurricane. In a few previous hurricanes, I've seen my front yard two-thirds to three-quarters full of water with the water level probably a foot or two below the level of my first floor. I would not have been surprised if Katrina had flooded all the way to house. I didn't evacuate because I knew that others needed the roads more than I did. I live south of Baton Rouge, but the same thought process is why the authorities didn't encourage evacuation around Baton Rouge or in the parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. If we had been on the roads, more people from New Orleans would have been stuck.
Even if school buses had been used, not everyone would have gone. Many people had transportation and still chose to ride out the storm. Others would have missed the buses and still been stuck in the city. Still others might have feared getting on the buses more than they feared the storm. Some people in the projects have barely been outside the projects even to other parts of New Orleans. They've always survived hurricanes in the past, and the intimidation of being bussed to parts unknown could have been a bigger fear than the fear of the hurricane. The failure to use the school buses at all was a mistake, but critics on the right are trying to paint a picture of everything being just fine if only the city had brought out the buses. That picture isn't accurate.
The state should have had an evacuation plan that included bus transportation to evacuation camps and shelters in places far enough north to be completely out of the path of any storm. The plan should have stated when the buses would be deployed and where pickups would be. If they didn't have those pickup spots and times and those shelter locations already chosen, then their mistake was not having a worthwhile plan. If they did have a real plan, they should have used the buses. Simply stating that they would use buses to evacuate the city is not the same as having a plan.
I'm completely in favor of analyzing and learning from all of the mistakes that were made. I'm not in favor of conservatives and Republicans joining in the blame game that the Democrats have been playing for the last two weeks. Playing that game reduces our credibility and does not lead to solutions to the problems that we face now. This hurricane was going to cause major problems no matter what plans were implemented.
Bill