[Verginius Rufus]

C-SPAN had an interview with John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. He lives in New Orleans and said that one nightmare scenario people had worried about is if they had thousands of people on busses headed out of town, stuck in traffic, and then hit by the hurricane--the death toll would have been horrendous.

I'm not defending the mayor--he failed to see to it that the shelters had adequate water, food, and security, and the school busses could have been used both before Katrina reached shore and during the interval before the levee broke, if he had gotten them to higher ground.

[Overtaxed]

Yeah....stuck on the highway is not where you want to be in a hurricane....so they shouldn't have dilly-dallied so long. Dunno what authority the mayor has to set up shelters outside his city (isn't that the Governor's job?)...above sea level would have been the best place to go.

He did request request that people bring enough food for 3 days. Yeah, right....welfare people are going to provide for themselves.

And he should have bussed them out before the levee broke. Still no place to go, but the storm had passed and any place was better than below sea level with a levee about to go.

[FreedomCalls]

He lives in New Orleans and said that one nightmare scenario people had worried about is if they had thousands of people on busses headed out of town, stuck in traffic, and then hit by the hurricane

Which is why the disaster plan calls for the evacuation order to be issued 72 hours in advance, not 24 like Nagin and Blanco did.