Posted on 09/02/2005 12:58:04 AM PDT by BenLurkin
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - First the federal government took the buses they had hired to evacuate them. Then their hotels turned them out onto the desolate streets.
They trudged for blocks to walk over a bridge, but officers wouldn't let them cross - and fired a few warning shots over their heads to convince them.
And the night was coming down.
Despairing, dozens of trapped tourists huddled on a downtown street corner and waited for dark.
"I grew up in an upper-middle class family. Street life is foreign to me," said Larry Mitzel, 53, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive."
The fate of tourists in dozens of hotels here was caught up in the days of chaos and confusion that came after Hurricane Katrina's 145 mph winds.
Many smaller hotels shut down. The largest housed hundreds and hundreds of guests and took in refugees from the storm. How many remained Thursday was unclear.
Tourists and hotel managers alike condemned government officials for ignoring them.
"The tourists are an afterthought here," said Bill Hedrick of Houston, who came to town on business and was trapped with his wife and elderly mother-in-law.
"We're appalled," said Jill Johnson, 53, of Saskatoon. "This city is built on tourism and we're their last priority."
Peter Ambros, general manager of the Astor Crowne Plaza in the French Quarter, said, "Guests who bring business to the hotels are treated 10 times worse than the people at the Superdome."
He helped arrange the hiring of 10 buses to evacuate 500 guests from his and a nearby hotel - at a cost of $25,000.
Then the Federal Emergency Management Agency commandeered the buses and police told the guests to go to the nearby convention center, where a crowd left without food, water or security was growing angry.
Instead, the tourists - dragging their rolling luggage through broken glass, smashed bricks and trash - tried to cross a huge bridge blocks away.
They were turned back when another group trying to cross began to threaten the officers, said Whit Herndon, 32, of Jonesboro, Ark.
As night approached, the tourists stuck close together on a corner of the downtown waterfront and within sight of a police gathering point.
Officers brought them food and water and promised buses would come for them. Most prepared to sleep, sheltered by a concrete overhang.
The tourists put on a game face and prepared to sleep.
Ann Robertson, a 50-year-old vocational counselor from Nashville, Tenn., looked on the bright side. They had food, there was safety in numbers - but then she looked at the sky.
"I don't know," she said, "I never slept on the street before."
If this is the case, (and I think it isn't ) then one rescuer for each victim wouldn't be enough. In New Orleans, it would have taken six foot high Border Collies carrying automatic weapons to control the situation.
You should have left when you were told to leave... now you can just wait like everybody else. You had money and means so I have little sympathy for you staying when a MANDATORY EVACUATION is called! Idiots.
I can tell you this. When we were vacationing in Florida in '92, when Andrew hit, we listened to the first warning to evacuate the island we were on.
We didn't wait for anybody to tell us twice.
We were on the road headed north, and didn't stop till we were halfway up the state.
Although if we had not already had a rental car, I'm not sure what we would have done...that would have been dicey. Probably would have gotten a ride with others who had cars, I suppose.
But I wouldn't have waited around for a second warning.
I believe it was CNN, Paula Zahn.....or maybe Aaron Brown.
It was the scariest interview I've heard all week.
He said he wanted to help, but he wouldn't go back there.
The same way the other 200,000 left.
The mandatory evacuation order was called after nearly all flights out of NOLA had been cancelled by the airlines. And, rental cars ran out on Saturday. So no, tourists in many, many cases had no means to evacuate. They were put out on the streets to weather the storm on their own, like many others. NOLA dropped the ball big-time. They had the tools to effectively evacuate those without transportation and failed.
It's a pretty big assumption that all tourists even heard what was coming, let alone got a reasonable explanation of what it meant from locals. Really, Friday evening was when things became pretty apparent that this storm would be a problem. By mid-day Saturday, there were no rental cars and many flights had already been cancelled as airlines worked to get their planes out of harm's way.
But the school busses remained untouched.
Your points are valid. Nontheless, wiser choices could have been made. It is the same type of thinking that compels some individuals to be gunowners and others not. The latter group assumes that someone will take care of things. The former group is hopeful that this is the case, but wants to have the ability to handle things on their own just in case. In a situation like this, if you can't rent a car or get a plane or bus ticket, you buy a used car and sell it at the other end, or you buy a bicycle. The point is that you take the initiative to be in control of the situation.
It is foolish to put blind faith in the government to take care of things.
Considering NO is a major tourist destination there should have been contingency plans to evacuate tourists. I think a few chartered 777's would work. I'd cancel all the normal flights and just have charter flights to major hub airports like DFW, IAH, and ATL. That way they could catch flights to anywhere from those hubs. Return flights from those airports could be used to fly in additional high value emergency supplies so they could be prepositioned and ready to go to deal with the aftermath of the storm.
"Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205"
The FAA reported this, i just linked to it from ABC (it was the shortest link). I think they are a pretty reliable source when it comes to air traffic. Who would be more reliable? I mean, if you can't believe someone who is in contact with ALL the air traffic in NO, who are you going to believe?
My nephew had a flight booked but missed his flight because of the traffic, trying to get to the airport. (Fortunately he managed to get a ride out of town before the hurricane hit.)
bfl
"Tourists had the means to get out." Uhhh, no. Some, perhaps, but most not. The airlines quit flying before most could get out, rental agencies quickly ran out of cars. To their great credit, many hotels tried to sustain them, but eventually they too were overwhelmed.
When I said means, it meant they had funds. However, it appears that some just never got out of the tourist mode.
This is one of the most immoral, and idiotic statements I've seen on FR in a long time. The government stole the privately paid-for transportation that was desperately needed, leaving these travelers literally out on the street. The fact that Jill Johnson is not a citizen should not make any difference, she is here legally, and she is right about tourism being a important economically to New Orleans, and it is appalling how badly they are being treated.
Even if you don't care about them-thar furiners; most of the tourists are probably Americans. No doubt tax-paying Americans. Whose buses were stolen to shuttle a bunch of public-aid recipients from the Super-Dorm to the Astro-Dorm.
As for claims on this thread that the tourists have it coming, because they should have gotten out...flights were canceled Sunday, and there were no rental cars available. They were stuck...unlike many that chose to stay in the city who had cars.
Even if you believe in the socialist maxim, "the greatest good for the greatest number," this is a stupid policy. The buses were only going to haul their seat capacity of people out of the city. The tourists once gone are no longer a worry or concern of the city, they can then take care of themselves (but of course, they aren't much of concern now...)but the Astro-Dormers will still be a burden even when moved. So the city/FEMA is actually better off getting the tourists out.
In addition, high-handed actions like this make it impossible for people to help themselves, or for private parties to help, since their resources will likely be stolen by the government. So everybody is left to the inefficient and capricious mercies of a hodge-podge bureacracy.
In reality the government official who stole the buses didn't give more than ten seconds thought to any kind of cost-benifit analysis. He had some job to do, look free buses, and its no skin off his nose if the tourists get left out on the street, because its not his job.I've also seen that private SUVs are being confiscated, think those are owed by ferriners?
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