Nagin could've asked Blanco to provide Guardsmen to drive the buses.
Valid point. And there are plenty of CDL drivers who could have filled the breach. But that would have needed to begin on Friday at the latest. And the buses would have needed a destination where the evacuees would at least have a roof over their head and indoor plumbing.
Houston stepped up in a mighty way, and the Astrodome was ready in less than 24 hours. I have high praise and very few criticisms for the government agencies and non-profits that pulled that off. Could they have done it before the storm, without the pictures of horrors in NOLA to galvanize the response and grease the political wheels? Maybe not. But I'm confident they could next time.
My bottom line, as I've posted in other threads, is that people need standing orders. Cops, firefighters, heavy equipment operators, truck drivers, neighborhood watch captains, even Scouts need to know in advance where to go and what to do if communications go down. Everyone in the city needs to know where the nearest hubs for evacuation and aid distribution will be. This needs to be done months in advance, not days or hours.
In disaster-prone areas, every water and sewer bill, property tax bill, welfare check -- any point of contact with the government -- should have a little slip of paper with a list of emergency hubs. Encourage people to tape it up beside the front door so they can check it on the way out. And local governments should have a stash of clean water, at least, at each of those locations.
It's not inconceivable. Half a century ago, most folks knew where their neighborhood Civil Defense fallout shelter was, and they had basic supplies. Most of those shelters were dismantled or allowed to deteriorate after the end of the Cold War.
There were recognizeable signs on the exterior walls -- I have one, tossed out with the trash when one such shelter was decomissioned. It's past time for a concerted effort to set up a similar system in case of natural disaster or terror attack.
I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around, between the city, county, state and federal governments, and extrajurisdictional bodies like the levee boards in and around New Orleans. There will be plenty of time to fix blame, and I suspect the voters will reach their own judgments even before any official investigation gets the chance.
The more urgent need is to learn the lessons, to make sure that if a big storm is headed for Wilmington, or Savannah, or Jacksonville, those buses won't be sitting in flood waters and the cops won't be helpless to stop, or worse, participating in, looting. I expect every city and county government on the coast to be burning the midnight oil right about now to make sure their cities don't become another New Orleans.