Randi is tearing apart "Nagin didn't use the buses"

[ohio_liberal]

Why didn't he use the school buses? Because he used the mass transit buses :)

[fooj]

1. Isn't it a repeat?

:shrug:

[ohio_liberal]

2. Is it?

Oops. Well, it's worth listening to again if you didn't catch it the first time :blush:

[MsTryska]

19. yeah - what's the deal?

I thought Mike Malloy was subbing for her the entire time she's out. So whycome I only heard Mike once, then a best of show, and then that british lady, and then today's a best of show as well? what is that all about?

did Mike flake?

[ClintonTyree]

3. They would have made them sit in the back anyway..........

n/t

[mirandapriestly]

5. heh heh, so true, so true.... nt

[derby378]

4. I'm glad she tackled it

That question did come to my mind the first time I saw those buses, no FReeper commentary needed.

Fortunately, ginbarn set me straight on the pitfalls of using those buses during an evacuation. No AC, no toilet, stuck on a gridlocked interstate for hours - hard enough on the young and healthy, but for some elderly folks, it proved to be a death sentence.

[ohio_liberal]

6. Randi read a list

Mayor Nagin released a list of pickup locations on Sunday. RTA buses were picking people up.

And you're absolutely right about why the school buses weren't used. They were not suitable for evacuation.

[mirandapriestly]

8. I didn't know that. So he did use busses, just different ones.

Thanks for posting that. Her show plays later here, I'll listen, sounds good.

[mirandapriestly]

9. I didn't know that. So he did use busses, just different ones.

Thanks for posting that. Her show plays later here, I'll listen, sounds good.

[unrepuke]

11. Between a schoolbus and drowning in sewage - I'd hop on the bus

[ohio_liberal]

15. Who was to drive the buses?

The voluntary evacuation was 24 hours old, the mandatory evacuation was in force. The city was emptying. The evac plan states that RTA buses are to be used. Who was to drive buses after the plan, already in progress, was changed?

edited for clarity

[nyhuskyfan]

25. What about the choice between having some shelter and none at all?

The first issue before the flood was surviving the Hurricane itself. Given the 150 mph winds on the way, what would your choice be between staying at the Superdome (or in one of the other local schoolhouses serving as shelter) and driving a bus to no place in particular?

[mirandapriestly]

7. argh, that Nagin & Busses has been a freeper favorite...

who would drive the busses? With no Fema communications (they were supposed to provide communications) how would he get the busses to the people? If that's the best they can do, they are really pathetic. I think I read Hannity is the culprit on that one.

[chalky]

10. Just tuned in. Is she in studio? She sounds fuzzy, like she's

broadcasting from location somewhere.

[DinahMoeHum]

12. Something else - apparently the Greyhound and Trailways buses

were no longer operating by that time. They had shut down.

(please correct me if I'm wrong, thanks)

:evilfrown:

[ohio_liberal]

13. Sounded to me like they were not operating

n/t

[chalky]

14. As I recall, Greyhound shut down on Saturday, and Amtrack shut down Sunday

gotta search my links.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

16. Walter Maestri was asked the question on Bill Maher

Walter Maestri was the emergency managment chief for Jefferson Parish. I distinctly remember him telling Bill Maher on last week's show that the school buses in the famous photo actually were used. They supposedly tranported nursing home patients out of the city and then were driven back to their yard just before the storm hit. Did anyone else hear this?

[ohio_liberal]

17. Hadn't heard it before now

Maybe someone can come up with a video clip.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

20. Maestri said the buses were used

when Maher showed the photo. Another DUer said that they were used to transport nursing home patients and brought back. I just wanted to make that clear.

[chalky]

21. Thanks, ANLN! Just googled Walter Maestri & came up with this:

The transcript isn't online yet, but it will be, and on Friday night's "Real Time With Bill Maher," Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, commented on that famous image of municipal buses parked waterlogged in a flood zone.

The photo, plastered prominently all over Drudge, came to symbolize the ineptitude on city officials. Why weren't the buses put into service to save people?

Maestri, the chicken little (in a good way) of Louisiana crisis planners, told Maher, "The buses were used, and then brought back to get another load of folks. The problem is that a number of people, particularly in the city of New Orleans, didn't have the resources themselves to be able to leave....The buses were used to get as many people out as we possibly could."

Maestri said that three generations of New Orleans residents never faced a storm of Katrina's magnitude and simply thought they could ride it out, viewing those who ordered an evacuation "as prophets of doom and gloom."

Kind of puts the dent in the argument that local officials were the ones asleep at the wheel.

http://www.readingeagle.com/editor/archives/2005/09/new_orleans_bus.html

One of MANY links debunking the bus lie.

Go to the link above--it'll take you to the RealTime website, where THAT transcript will soon show up.

[chalky]

18. Bingo. I KNEW I remember her saying this re FEMA, doctors and MEs.

Glad to hear it again.
For once, I'm glad we're getting a "best of" show.

[KharmaTrain]

22. Where Were They Gonna Go

Yep...school busses and who was going to drive them?

A bit of common sense here. The city was already jammed with traffic that was barely moving. Putting several hundred busses jamed with panicked people being FORCED from their houses would have created an additional strain on the roads.

Also, where were these people going to go to? Surely the closest shelters that could handle that number of people were hundreds of miles away...if that close. So you get them in a bus and then say to drive...drive where?

This "debate" is moot as the problems weren't evacuating the people BEFORE the storm. It was AFTER. It was why it took the most powerful country in the world...the richest, the most sophisticated...5 days to finally get food and water to this city and all the screw-ups that occured along the way.

These morans are the same ones who would shriek if one of those busses had rolled into their lilly white neighborhood and messed up their rosy-red high school gymnasium.

[txindy]

23. He used the buses with air conditioning

Rather than letting people die on the road in the sweltering school buses that would have certainly sat in gridlocked traffic for over 12 hours. School buses would've been ovens, killing the elderly and sick.

[Ksec]

24. Cant you see the little old ladies who take those school bus jobs

driving straight into Katrinas devastation? 1000 bus driver go into NO and evacuate 50 thousand people in a day ,during a hurricane. How utterly weak. The repubs are really desperate.