Posted on 09/11/2005 2:54:36 AM PDT by InvisibleChurch
Sunday, Sept. 11, 2005 12:39 a.m. EDT Ray Nagin: Flooded School Buses Not My Fault
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Friday that it wasn't his fault city school buses weren't mobilized to facilitate the Hurricane Katrina evacuation he ordered.
Appearing on NBC's "Dateline," Nagin was asked by host Stone Phillips: "What was mobilized? I mean were national guard troops in position. Were helicopters standing by? Were buses ready to take people away?"
"No. None of that," the Big Easy mayor replied. "Why is that?" an incredulous Phillips asked.
Nagin replied: "I dont know. That is question for somebody else."
The Louisiana Democrat didn't explain just who the "somebody else" was, saying only:
"All I can do is [say] that I was dealing with it as a mayor -- how do I prepare my city for an incredibly powerful storm? So immediately we tried to get as many people out as possible."
The "Dateline" exchange was only the second time Mayor Nagin had been asked about the failure to use his city's school buses, hundreds of which sat 1.2 miles from the Superdome.
Two days after the levees broke, Nagin told a New Orleans radio station that he wanted Greyhound Bus Lines to send their entire fleet rather than launch an evacuation in public school buses.
"One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here," Nagin said.
"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
"mayor" nagin your no jeb bush!!!!
It is beyond me how the MSM and others can point fingers at Bush and FEMA while ignoring the failures of this moronic mayor and the goofy governor????
cnn.....clinton news network.......abc......all about clintons......cbs......clinton broadcast network......nbc.....nothing but clintons.......
How would HE have the authority to ORDER a PRIVATE company to bring in their busses to evacuate his city rather than order the resources for which HE IS in charge to be used?
What an idiot!
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.
Maybe New Orleans has a shadow government. < /sarcasm >
Great graphic!
She had to provide a place to put all the evacuees. She failed to do so. So yes, this ultimately is the fault of Blanko for not using all state and federal resources available. I add federal to the mix since President Bush declared the state a disaster area before the storm made landfall. I hope they nail her fat incompetent a$$ to the wall in this.
Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans in coordination with the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and the OEP Shelter Coordinator.
Joseph H. Matthews is a deputy fire chief and is the Director of Orleans parish Office of Emergency Preparedness.
He plays both sides, ala Bloomberg of NYC. Nagin used to be in the GOP. Switched to DEM. Nagin endorsed Jindal in the last governor's race. Jindal lost to Blanco.
More likely they will switch to a different story than turn on their own.
The honor of that goes to one of our own:
| You Promised You'd Never Forget. You Promised. |
You are putting the cart before the horse if you add the Feds to the list of screw-ups because the President issued a pre-Katrina disaster declaration. That was done to ALLOW the state officials to move folks, food & water into emergency shelters using federal funds, etc. Instead, you got two idiots refusing to do their assigned duties for what reason we will never know. Sad, isn't it? The President tried to help them beforehand, and they still screwed the pooch!
Nagin couldn't pass urinalysis.
Mobile Alabama used it's buses. Still working on Mississppi.
School buses and the city's transit system were made available Sunday afternoon to assist anyone needing help escaping the flood threat. Shelters opened Sunday at six schools in Mobile County. Baldwin County opened shelters at five schools. Around the state, 26 shelters were being opened for evacuees.
http://www.gulflive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-5/112528164020840.xml&storylist=miss_news
Budget problems forced closure of some schools and elimination of some classes at schools that remained open. It was unclear until a few weeks ago which schools would shut down.
...
Last spring, when the district appeared close to missing its payroll, the federal government said $70 million of its money couldn't be accounted for.
...
When a new budget was adopted in July, 800 jobs had to be eliminated. Five schools were to be closed, numerous others were involved in consolidations or relocations and some lost classes because enrollment has declined. And just two weeks ago, the budget adopted in July was found to be out of balance -- by perhaps as much as $48 million -- because revenue was overestimated and salaries and benefits were undercounted.
...
School board president Torin Sanders, who is black, denounced the plan as a means of "disenfranchising" those who elected him and other board members. But the board voted 4-3, with the three black members dissenting, to hire the firm.
On Saturday night after issuing a voluntary evacuation order Nagin consulted with his legal staff to determine the city's liability for closing hotels and other businesses before issuing the mandatory evacuation order on Sunday morning: Nagin said late Saturday that he's having his legal staff look into whether he can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he's been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses. "Come the first break of light in the morning, you may have the first mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," Nagin told WWL-TV.
http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1125213007249320.xml?nola
Link below to more on the Orleans Parish school board and Mayor Ray Nagin's legal dickering over buses and liability.
http://bilges.blogspot.com/2005/09/painfully-right-on-buses.html
That's unconscionable. You guys, most of you, grew up down there. You guys knew big hurricanes were inevitable down there, even if you didn't know long-term exactly when one was coming. And you and the city are capable of coordinating with lots of "somebody elses", for purposes less dire than major disasters (...can you say "Carnival time"? I knew you could...). Why would it be that hard to set up plans with "somebody else" when both you and "somebody else" knew that people might actually die if you didn't? Were you and "somebody else" stone stupid, or did you and "somebody else" just not care?
Unnngh...
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