"2000 buses"
Maybe 200.
Where you going to get drivers? Where will the people be taken?
I believe there were about 2000 school and municipal buses underwater after the storm.
You are correct, nobody but approved union drivers can drive an automatic bus out of New Orleans. -sarcasm
That is why they have emergency plans. They are supposed to have a plan to get the drivers, etc. They simply ignored it.
That would have been decided between the Mayor and the Governor, had both not been asleep at the switch.
Drivers?
Did you not hear of the guy who took a school bus after the storm and picked up 70 people and got to Asterdome before the leased govt greyhounds. By the way, he had never driven a bus before.
There was time before Katrina to use ALL buses to mandatory evacuate several hundred miles west of storm and stay in the MANY REST AREAS ON INTERSTATES THAT HAVE HUGE PUBLIC BATHROOMS ACROSS THIS NATION. The US
Weather Bureau had a predictable path for Katrina within a hundred miles, that small shift to left was a possibility.
Don't let that moron off the hook, they showed pics of the thousands of buses in schoolyards and the several hundred public transit buses on tv.
Anyone over ten years of age?
Anywhere above sea level?
Hell, a sixteen year old who had never driven a bus before drove one filled with people all the way to Houston.
Maybe they could find a few more Jabbar whatisname. He weren't afraid to grab the bull by the horns.
http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/archives/excuses_excuses%20~1.JPG
As someone who has written and developed disaster plans I can tell you that the question of drivers should have been contemplated in advance. I mean come on, we are talking about a risk that this community has known for decades, this is not rocket science. And where do they go? Out of the path of the hurricane would have been a good start.
It's called planning. Simply implementing the pre-existing emergency evacuation plan would have gotten the buses running. The mayor was simply incompetent. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
1. If buses were available it would not have been hard to get someone to drive them.
2. Where would they go? Higher ground ! Do not think it would have been hard to spot a group of buses.
500 buses, none deployed prior to or after the hurricane. To where? Those 80 elderly who drowned in a nursing home, as one example, would have been happy for a ride 2 miles away to higher ground. There is NO excuse, no matter how hard you try.
Anyone who can drive a pickup truck can drive a school bus. They have automatic transmissions and are like driving big vans.
