(no subject)

[xatalantax]

[from Drudge, which has a lot of good links to Katrina stuff right now]

"WHY DIDN'T YOU DEPLOY THE BUSES DURING THE MANDATORY EVACUATION, MAYOR?...
Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00: 'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating' "

Comments

[gobetween.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about what the municipal buses were doing when they started routing people into the Superdome. Even though it's higher ground, how safe could it be? And this became the plan when the storm was a category 5. The roof started to come off as it was, I can't even imagine what would have happened with a direct hit of a cat. 5... I guess the bus companies had already cleared out, along with the airlines (that part makes me just sick. They cancelled flights over 24 hours beforehand, probably since they would lose money on the empty flights coming in. Flights ran in and out of Pensacola until midnight before the storm hit). Ugg, such a calamity.

BTW, this sounds a bit different from this post of yours. :)

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think there were screwups, stupidity, and corruption .. but I also think there would have been a huge death toll even if things had been done better.

Still, what reasons are the NOLA local leadership giving for ignoring their own plan? I haven't seen them address this at all, even in the midst of the "it's all Bush's fault" stuff.

Apparently a lot of the local cops took off before the storm and even more took off since then. Wonder if the people who were supposed to man these emergency vehicles just bagged, even if the companies hadn't 'officially' pulled out..?

Also it sounds like the other states are being pretty much ignored.

[gobetween.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I haven't seen much from the NOLA leadership on anything, really. I'd like to think they were more concerned with doing rather than reflecting at the moment, but who knows. It will be interesting to see what kind of emergency personel and resources they actually had to work with on the ground. I'm getting irritated with the snappiness of blame all around in light of the lethargic pace of any useful attention. There's a time and place and all that.

I was thinking that it must be really irritating to the people who've lost their cities in Mississippi to be upstaged, but, really, they're getting more attention and probably aid this way. The rest of the country wouldn't give a shit if it was just Biloxi that blew apart. They don't need as much rescue attention as New Orleans, but they will need funds and people to rebuild. Hopefully that will be distributed fairly. The thing that could suck is that this will drain the skilled labor from places in Florida that are still getting life back together again. Hopefully more carpenters, contractors, etc. from elsewhere in the country will consider heading down south to work for a year or so.