Posted on 09/08/2005 7:09:32 AM PDT by BlackRain
School Buses
Claim: Photograph shows school buses caught in a flooded New Orleans parking lot.
Status: True.
(Excerpt) Read more at snopes.com ...
"The best option would be to have a governor who isn't a total butt-head and who could coordinate the shelter setup with you."
The best option would have been to get everybody to high ground first and worry about procedure and hierarchy later, rather than dithering and CYA. Disaster response begins at the local level, or at least should have. It didn't. Accountability radiates upward from there, and it wasn't handled any better at the state level.
Apparently, the Louisana National Guard was handling this and not the police. The thread is here and the following is from an article dated August 29, 2005:
Shelter-seekers find long lines, noisy conditions in Superdome
At the entrance, Joe Barnes cursed the Louisiana National Guard members who were checking people in.
snip
More than 10,000 refugees from Katrina dined on the same instant meals as U.S. soldiers in Iraq, fitting because it was soldiers who were watching over them now.
snip
Yes. Snopes has a history of shading the facts when it comes to political issues. The site operators are Left as the day is long...
No. I'm saying - and I'll I've ever said (read my posts!) is that the buses are only part of the problem. The main problem is that no receiving point was ever set up and that is the fault of Blanco and without a receiving point you can't drive the buses out of town.
I think Blanco is much more culpable than Nagin, by a long shot. In fact, Blanco may have deliberately kept Nagin in the dark.
I think Nagin will eventually sing like a canary about the shenanigans at the Governor's office. If somebody doesn't commit "Louisicide" on him first.
"The main problem is that no receiving point was ever set up and that is the fault of Blanco and without a receiving point you can't drive the buses out of town."
Oh yes you can. What, do you suppose, were the "receiving points" for all the individuals who heeded the belated call for evacuation, and left the city, with absolutely no clue where they were going, other than away from the storm and flooding?
???
Who would want to drive an un airconditioned school bus, full of evacuees, when you have your own family to take care of? Certainly not the regular school bus drivers, what other city employees would do it? Is it even legal to just hand over the keys to city property to anyone that says they can drive a bus? Who is liable in case of an accident?
A kid saved 70 people. The keys were available to him, so he took him and did what needed to be done. In an emergency like this, as you see the water coming in and you know you and many others will die, you do something. You don't just sit there. I will worry about liability later. If the bus drivers didn't want to drive, the people whose lives were threatened were certainly be able to find drivers. Just give them the keys.
One really big thing missed by snopes is that the busses and police cars could have been moved to high ground at minimal expense, prior to the storm.
You are correct. The keys should have been left in the buses, and the gate, unlocked.
The number is stated as Households, not people. Figure 4 per household and it works out exactly.
these buses are all automatic transmission, power steering, etc.
I'm not demeaning the normal school bus driver, picking up and dropping off kids in the dark, bad weather, congested streets and traffic etc is a real responsibility.
HOWEVER in this case it was basically get in, pick up a load of people, and drive out of town.
anybody who could drive an SUV could drive one of these
"So let's say you're the mayor and yeah you have these buses; but no one has set up any shelter to receive those people. What good are the buses to you now?"
You can't be serious with this question, can you?
Supposedly, the Governor of the state has some sort of plan to evacuate NO, and has since Nixon. Let's say, for the sake of complete incompetence, that she didn't have a plan.
About an hour into the first busload of people heading out of NO, cell service will be available. It's probably at that point that FEMA, Red Cross, and Salvation Army - in coordination with some idiot from state government, would start vectoring buses to local high school gyms - 5 to 7 busloads per gym.
It wouldn't take long for even an ad hoc plan to start alleviating the situation at the Superdome.
The more light is shed on this whole thing, the more criminally negligent city and local government become.
Their emergency plans call for evacutations that include public transportation. Doesn't that include the drivers for these buses. If there are no drivers, that only compounds their guilt and does not mitigate it.
And if a 20-year-old non-bus driving young man can commandeer a bus and drive 70 people to saftey, don't you think that Mayor Nagin can find enough qualified people to drive public busses? It is his responsibility to do so.
"Who would want to drive an un airconditioned school bus, full of evacuees, when you have your own family to take care of?"
Anybody who didn't want to be left in a flooded city, to face possibly being killed in the storm, drowning, lack of food, disease, looters... you know, people who actually care about their own lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of their friends and neighbors.
There were more than a few New Orleans police cars driven out of the city and abandoned. Maybe some of these shirkers would have been happy to drive a bus instead.
How would this info be transmitted? Who would know to go to the bus compound, and jump in, and start driving around to pick people up?
"How would this info be transmitted?"
You're acting as if there wasn't an evacuation plan in existence that purported to address just this.
I am defending no one, I don't care if they throw the gov and the mayor into jail. I am just suggesting some reasons why it wasn't done.
What if the drivers said, no, I won't do it, I'm taking care of my family?
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