Response to school buses not being used.

[alfredo]

Would you ask a bus driver to leave his/her family behind so he could help strangers?

Would you sacrifice your family?

[snot]

1. Some were BEGGING to help, but were prevented--and get this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4628124
kid that saved a bus load of people is now in jail for
stealing bus
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/09/jailed-for-saving-lives.html

In Massachusetts We'd Call This Yankee Ingenuity

A friend on a lawyer listserve sent me this story. This kid is
definitely getting a pro bono lawyer. He found an abandoned
bus in New Orleans, packed it with survivors, and drove it to
the Astrodome. The reaction of the officials? They're going to
charge him with theft. Unbelievable.

This kid is a hero. They should give him a medal. He evacuated
100 people faster than FEMA.

The link is to the video from the television story, followed
by the transcript.

Taking refuge in the AstrodomeThursday, September 01, 2005
Updated: 07:55 PM

HOUSTON -- NEWSCHANNEL 5 crews were in Houston as some
desperate refugees arrive in a stolen bus.

HOUSTON -- Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were
transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an
extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to
escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.

About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the
first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly
welcomed.

The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass
through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus,
said they were desperate to get out of town.

"If it werent for him right there," he said,
"we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus
for us."

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it
sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven
hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a
bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to
Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

"It's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow
passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where
we're safe."

During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads
out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.

One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life
surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and
hungry.

Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside
the dome.

But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find
himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said,
"as long as I saved my people."

Sixty legally chartered buses were expected to arrive in
Houston throughout the night. Thousands of people will be
calling the Astrodome "home," at least for now.

[Joebert]

2. To be fair

If there were all the buses that we've seen in some of the pictures, they could have been used.

If the bus driver didn't want to leave the family, they could have been in the front row.

There are plenty of people with a drivers license to drive a bus (not that you NEED one, but it shows you probably can handle that size vehicle safely)

What it shows, is that with notice, there was no plan to deploy and utilize those buses.

[idiosyncratic]

4. Where would the buses have gone? With a hurricane bearing down

on Louisiana, where would you have sent the buses?

One bus turned over and a passenger was killed when the buses were finally taking people out last Thursday, when the weather was good.

Even if there were 250 buses, and you could have gotten 50 people on each bus, that still left a lot of people behind, who would have still needed food and water beginning Tuesday . . .

[Igel]

8. That's the kind of stuff that should have been in the

state's evacuation plan. Blanco said they had one, and were implementing it.

In any event, much of LA was minimally affected.

And getting even 10k people out of NOLA would have meant fewer people squeezed into the Convention Center and Superdome, needing water and food.

The main problem was lack of time. And, I think, a piss-poor plan. We have government precisely for this sort of thing. It let its citizens down.

[txindy]

10. Many people who evacuated in their own cars didn't even make it out.

The roads out of NO were so gridlocked that they sat in place hour after hour. Finally, with Katrina bearing down on the city, officers had all of those on the roads who hadn't reached safety turn around and go BACK to NO to take shelter from the storm. So, even many who did have the notice and means to get out simply could not do so.

Besides, the NG was promised to the city to drive the transports for evacuation. The NG was supposed to have drivers for the buses. The city was told the NG was coming. And coming. And coming. Katrina got there first. In fact, Katrina got there five DAYS ahead of the NG. The feds control the NG now. Homeland Security. Feel safe, yet?

[Spazito]

3. Read this, it explains the issue of the buses very well

In comments on Thursday, Sep. 1, in an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News, President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached."

In comments to the press on Sep. 3, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff remarked, "That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight", and called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."

It's not our fault," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, in charge of the deployment of National Guard troops in New Orleans. "The storm came and flooded the city."

In other words, Katrina was an Act of God no one could have foreseen, and the politicians we elected to protect us from disaster are not responsible for the unimaginable horror we have witnessed this week.

A horror unimagined by anyone, except by every hurricane scientist and government emergency management official for the past forty years and more. It was a certainty that New Orleans would suffer a catastrophe like this. Every 70 years, on average, the central Gulf Coast has a Category 4 or 5 hurricane pass within 80 miles of a given point. Sometimes you get lucky--for a while. New Orleans had gone over 150 years without a strike by a hurricane capable of overwhelming the levees. Sometimes you get unlucky. There's no guarantee that New Orleans won't get hit by another major hurricane this year. We are in the midst of an extraordinary period of hurricane activity, the likes of which has not been seen in recorded history. Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis, which both had storm surges capable of breaching the levees in New Orleans, smashed into Pensacola in the past year. Either of these storms could have destroyed New Orleans, had they taken a slight wobble westward earlier in their track.

Hurricanes are an inescapable part of nature's way on the Gulf Coast. Nature doesn't care about tax cuts and fiscal years and budget crunches. Nature doesn't care that a city of 500,000 people situated below sea level lies in its path. It was certain that New Orleans would sooner or later get hit by a hurricane that would breach the levees. How could the director of Homeland Security not be familiar with this huge threat to the security of this nation? How could the President not know? How could all the presidents and politicians we elected, from Eisenhower to Clinton, not know?

The answer is that they all knew. But the politicians we elect don't care about the poor people in New Orleans, because poor people don't have a lobbyist in Washington. The poor people don't make big campaign contributions, and those big campaign contributions are vital to getting elected. In all of the Congressional and Presidential races held over the past ten years, over 90% were won by the candidate that raised the most money.

So there was little effort given to formulate a plan to evacuate the 100,000 poor residents of New Orleans with no transportation of their own for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. To do so would have cost tens of millions of dollars, money that neither the city, nor the state, nor the federal government was willing to spend. Why spend money that would be wasted on a bunch of poor people? The money was better spent on projects to please the politicians' wealthy campaign contributors. So the plan was to let them die. And they died, as we experts all knew they would. Huge numbers of them. And they keep dying, still. We don't know how many. Since the plan was to let them die, the city of New Orleans made sure they had a good supply of body bags on hand. Only 10,000 body bags, but since Katrina didn't hit New Orleans head-on, 10,000 will probably be enough.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to safely evacuate 100,000 people with a Category 4 or 5 hurricane bearing down on you. There are only a few routes out of the city, and a full 72 hours of warning are needed to get everyone out. That's asking a lot, as hurricanes are very difficult to predict that far in advance. The National Hurricane Center did pretty well, giving New Orleans a full 60 hours to evacuate. The Hurricane Center forecasted on Friday afternoon that Katrina would hit New Orleans as a major hurricane on Monday, which is what happened. New Orleans had time to implement its plan to bus the city's poor out. However, this plan had two very serious problems--it wasn't enacted in time, and it could only get out 20% of the people in a best case scenario.

The mandatory evacuation order was not given until Sunday, just 20 hours before the hurricane. I have not been able to ascertain from press accounts when the busses actually started picking up people. The mayor says 50,000 made it to the Superdome and other "shelters of last resort", leaving another 50,000 to face the flood waters in their homes. Although 80% of the city was evacuated, it is unclear whether any of the city's poor made it out by bus. And it is very fortunate that Katrina did not hit the city head-on, or else most of those in the Superdome and other "shelters of last resort" would have perished. The death toll from Katrina would have easily surpassed 50,000.

Even if the evacuation plan had been launched 72 hours in advance, it almost certainly would have failed. A local New Orleans news station, nola.com, reported in 2002 on the evacuation plan thusly:

In an evacuation, buses would be dispatched along their regular routes throughout the city to pick up people and go to the Superdome, which would be used as a staging area. From there, people would be taken out of the city to shelters to the north.

Some experts familiar with the plans say they won't work.

"That's never going to happen because there's not enough buses in the city," said Charley Ireland, who retired as deputy director of the New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness in 2000. "Between the RTA and the school buses, you've got maybe 500 buses, and they hold maybe 40 people
each. It ain't going to happen."

The plan has other potential pitfalls.

No signs are in place to notify the public that the regular bus stops are also the stops for emergency evacuation. In Miami Beach, Fla., every other bus stop sports a huge sign identifying it as a hurricane evacuation stop.

It's also unclear whether the city's entire staff of bus drivers will remain. A union spokesman said that while drivers are aware of the plan, the union contract lacks a provision requiring them to stay.


So, if one does the math, 500 busses times 40 people per bus yields 20,000 people that could have been evacuated in a best-case scenario. Only 20,000 out of 100,000. That isn't a half-hearted effort, it's a one-fifth hearted, criminal effort. We're talking about the lives of 80,000 people or more sacrificed, from a disaster that was certain to happen. By not having a plan to get New Orleans' poor out, our government caused the unbelievable suffering and the needless deaths of thousands of Americans. This was not a natural disaster caused by an act of God, it was an unnatural disaster. In his excellent 2001 book, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, Ted Steinberg writes: "Calling such events acts of God has long been a way to evade moral responsibility for death and destruction." He shows in the book how countless politicians over the past one hundred years have done their best to evade this moral responsibility when preventable disasters struck. Our current leaders are no different.

The most prosperous and technologically advanced nation in history surely could have done better. Was it really too expensive to have the vehicles, people, and workable plan in place needed to evacuate New Orleans? "A society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable", said George W. Bush in his State of the Union of Feb 2, 2005. By that measure, the people of this country have responded magnificently. The outpouring of aid, sympathy and prayers for those affected has been tremendous. But by that same standard, our government has failed. Its not just the current administration--every elected government since the days of Eisenhower has failed us. As I've outlined above, the problem is not likely to go away until the amount of money a candidate raises is no longer the primary factor determining who gets elected. Our elected officials won't care for the poor, as long as it is the rich who determine who get elected.

What can we do to help prevent such a disaster from recurring? Well, I encourage all of you to support election reform initiatives such as public campaign financing and Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) over the coming years. Maybe then I can check a box to vote for a candidate who will actually care for the needs of the poor in New Orleans and elsewhere in this county, instead of the usual "lesser of two evils" from the miserable two-party system that let thousands die and tens of thousands more suffer so unbearably.

Dr. Jeff Masters"


http://www.weatherunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=94&tstamp=200509

[aikoaiko]

7. Yes, it would have been difficult and more importantly costly.

The scenario by Masters excludes round trips by buses and bringing in busses from Baton Roughe and surrounding cities. Only a few of the major highways were contrflowed, getting back in the city was easy. All they had to do was get the people out the "bowl".

As afar as Bush, Blanco, or Nagin or anyone else saying that "no one anticipated the levees breaking" well then they must not read their own FEMA (state and federal) reports.

Truth is, I think, they hoped the levees would hold, and didnt want to spend the money to evacuate the poor, elderly, and infirmed. Now a much bigger price must be paid.

[aikoaiko]

5. Driving a school or municipal bus is about as difficult as a station wagon

The worst thing that could have happened was a few jumped curbs when making a right hand turn. All modern buses are automatic, but a few relics are still manual.

Any LEO could have done it for sure.

[txindy]

13. Gridlocked roads. Even many cars didn't make it out.

Driving the buses wasn't the issue. Getting anywhere with them certainly would've been. The police would've sent them back into the city to take shelter from the approaching Katrina just as they did with many carloads of people who had been stuck on the roads out of NO for many hours.

[kerryin2004]

6. Was there enough time?

Hell, it took a few days to evacuate the Superdome so how would they be able to do so in a quick and orderly manner? IF they wanted to evacuate everyone the fed's should have come in and directed the mission and pulled every greyhound bus and school bus within 400 miles of NOLA as well as Miss. Funny China can do it but we cant.

[Old and In the Way]

9. China can now, but won't in the future.

The problem is cars. Today, China has a very efficient bus system because that's what the country can afford. But they are adapting the Western mentality of car ownership and they are beginning to see the problems with congestion and secondary road systems unable to support them.

I think this OP is quite instructive. I think there is some truth to local failure, but I can also see that it would have to go like clockwork to be successful. Certainly, NO would be hard pressed to finance this type of program in today's economy. Think this Republican Congress will spend $100BB to assure adequate evacuation programs for the poor in this country? I don't.

[TX VN VET]

14. Evacuation is a local government responsibility

Hurricanes are not predictable enough to have the fed's in charge of evacuation. What if they had used all their resources to bus the people out of NO and then it swerved and hit Houston or somewhere else. The time it would take the Fed's to form an evacuation plan for every city that could be subject to some form of natural disaster is unsurmountable.
The Feds should have been there much faster than they were, and much more prepared when they got there but local officials also could have done much better

[Robeson]

11. Forward them the video of the man on Meet the Press. Enough said.

[nonconformist]

12. My question is bus them to WHERE?

Blanco requested 5 million dollars before Katrina hit to assist with evacuation specifically. The money was never received, no reason given.