Is Blanco to Blame?

[JustRalph]

yeah, that would have stopped me from finding buses........

[Secretariat]

Originally Posted by JustRalph

yeah, that would have stopped me from finding buses........

It is impossible for you to have read this article. You responded almost immediately upon me putting it up. Either you're the fastest reader in the world or you just read the headline.

Try again. There is some amazing assertions in the whole article. Not just the first paragraph.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/...lanco001.shtml

[Tom]

AP reported today that Congress allocated a half a million dollars in 1997 to prepare contingency plans for NO. Two years later, with no results, Congress mandated that they come up with a plan for evacuation in the event of a Cat3 or better hurricane of a levee failure. They spent the money on planning for some causeway over the lake, to the casinos no doubt.

Sec, face facts - LA and NO were completerly irresponsible and are a showcase for liberal welfare states - they sat on thier butts waining for someone else to come in and take care of them.
Now Mayor McCheese is telling people to go back in to totally uninhabitable areas - dangerous areas - with no regurad for thier safety whatsoever. Probably so he will not look like the chowderhead he really is on TV. Desperate to look like a leader. Ha! Looks like an imbicle to me.
You want to help NO? Let it rest in peace - Do Not rebuilt on that site. Let the Mississippi River flow naturally - as it should have always been.
Do Not set up trailer parks for displaced people - filter them out of the area and let the entire country absorb them. There are millions of rental units open and ready and would cost a lot less than the current plan. Let many cities absorbe the people, don't put them into man-made pockets of poverty whehe continued failure is a certainty (George Will today)

[schweitz]

The buses needed to be used before the hurricane as it calls out in NO evacuation procedure. I don't doubt that after the hurricane FEMA was going to bring in buses but since the levee then gave way there was no point.

[JustRalph]

Originally Posted by JustRalph

yeah, that would have stopped me from finding buses........

I read it........You must have just posted it. It took me ten seconds to post the reply..........What part of my post do you not understand. No matter the situation or whatever, buses entering the state etc.......... I would have been rounding up every damn bus available. Air conditioned or not. Think about that photo of the buses sitting in water a few blocks from the Super Bowl..........in the service I learned a phrase (and a stage of planning) that has served me well over the years. In several police situations and the like it has allowed me to get the maximum effect and it has never let me down. "Maximum use of available resources" obviously they never heard of this axiom in N.O. It has to do with compiling a list of resources early on in any situation that requires serious planning. It also has a stage where you compile a secondary list of resources that are available to you from other agencies etc. Sometimes referred to as "on request" resources. You never count on those resources on the secondary list until they actually arrive on location of your incident. When of course you add them to your original list of "on scene " resources. You have to make decisions of life and death on "what is available now" I would surmise that Gov. Blanco counted on resources she actually didn't have........damn shame.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by JustRalph

I read it........You must have just posted it. It took me ten seconds to post the reply..........What part of my post do you not understand. No matter the situation or whatever, buses entering the state etc.......... I would have been rounding up every damn bus available. Air conditioned or not. Think about that photo of the buses sitting in water a few blocks from the Super Bowl..........in the service I learned a phrase (and a stage of planning) that has served me well over the years. In several police situations and the like it has allowed me to get the maximum effect and it has never let me down. "Maximum use of available resources" obviously they never heard of this axiom in N.O

.

Not so, JR. City officials knew (or certainly should have!) all about "maximum use of available resources" because their own Emergency Management Plan -- you know...the document that has "mysteriously" disappeared recently from the city's website. Here is how this particular section reads:

QUOTE
The City of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Those evacuated will be directed to temporary sheltering and feeding facilities as needed. When specific routes of progress are required, evacuees will be directed to those routes. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed. (emphases mine)

Sadly, none of those 500+ resources (i.e. buses!) were utilized. And no attempt was made to recruit the personnel "to assist in evacutation procedures" (i.e. to drive those buses).

The two lame excuses most often offered by libs (in fact both of these were offered by Sen. Landrieux on different occassions!) are a) the buses were all standing in deep water, and b) the mayor has a hard enough time getting people to work and getting things done on a sunny day, let alone when things are bad. Unbelievable!

Of course, the buses weren't always standing in water and should have been moved long before then. And if the mayor is that incompetent and is lacking in leadership qualities, then he has no business pretending to be a major city's leading elected official.

But unfortunately for the people of NO really poor judgment pervaded just about all the decision-making processes that were made at the city and state levels. Remember: Mayor Tweedelee Dee didn't get around to ordering a mandatory evacuation order until Monday morning -- right after Party Town's extended Happy Hour ended -- 20 hours before the storm made landfall. Evidently, the city officials forgot this paragaraph that is also in their Plan:

QUOTE
3. Sheltering: Formulates a comprehensive system of accessible shelters of adequate size.

The SOP is limited as it is not designed to address the protection of personal and real property, yet is developed to cover the total New Orleans geographic area. The timely issuance of evacuation orders critically impacts upon the successful evacuation of all citizens from high-risk areas. In determining the proper time to issue evacuation orders, there is no substitute for human judgement based upon all known circumstances surrounding local conditions and storm characteristics. (emphases mine)

As stated previously, If the city had taken to heart its own Emergencey Management Plan, it would have greatly mitigated the urgent need for thousands of misery-stricken people to be rescued from the Flood Bowl. As the plan itself states, "there is no substitue for human judgment..."

Perhaps everything went to hell in a hand basket because Mayor Tweedelee Dee didn't implicitly understand that the phrase means "sound" judgment.

Boxcar



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[Secretariat]

Here are a few excerpts from the article since from reading the above posts it is obvious that some of the posters did not read it, skimmed it, or are so biased they made up their mind before even reading it.

"Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

"I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said. "Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first concern until I realized that they were not there."

Meanwhile, the state continued to send school buses into the affected areas.

One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one point that the state could stop sending school buses because the agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the commercial buses that still weren't there.

Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.

"She said, 'I'll be damned. You keep loading the wagons on the school buses,'" Kleinpeter said.

Two days later, President George W. Bush met with Blanco on Air Force One and asked her for control of the troops that were finally pouring into the state. Blanco asked if Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour would be under the same regime. The answer was "No."

Bush has since acknowledged that his administration failed to respond adequately to the hurricane. The president has ordered a review of the sluggish response.

"When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I as president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution," Bush said."

"I as president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution." If only some of the other posters here would get on board and agree with the President.

[boxcar]

Sec, you're the one who doesn't get it! Hours after the hurricane hit... FEMA promised to send fleets of buses into the city. No one would have had to rely on FEMA after the fact if Mayor Tweedelee Dee had exercised sound judgment before the fact.

To your way of thinking it was far better for the Mayor to contribute to the disastrous results of the storm viz-a-viz all his poor decisions, and then have FEMA come charging in afterwards on their white horses to clean up after all his unexplicable, mind-boggling blunders.

It's far better to blame FEMA for being "late" than it is to blame Mayor Tweedelee Dee for failing to act in a timely fashion by following the mandates and guidelines in his own City Emergency Management Plan that would have greatly mitigated the urgency of the relief and rescue efforts, if he had.

You Libs need to get your heads screwed on straight!

Boxcar