Galveston emergency planners said they have 17 city buses and 40 school buses, which could be used to evacuate residents. And now the city is set to make an agreement with the housing authority itself. Posted on 09/02/2005 9:36:38 AM PDT by doug from upland
On August 2, 2005 came this story from a television station in Houston --
GALVESTON CREATED EVACUATION PLAN USING BUSES
FROM THE ARTICLE:
Galveston emergency planners said they have 17 city buses and 40 school buses, which could be used to evacuate residents. And now the city is set to make an agreement with the housing authority itself.
In fact, by late Tuesday afternoon the deal was done. Some buses will now go directly to the housing complexes and pick up residents.
"For safety, they should have some type of transportation so we can get out," said Hill.
Now, we turn to New Orleans.
AP photo showing New Orleans buses partially submerged. Apparently they were not used to evacuate those without cars. Is that President Bush's fault. You can make the case. He should have realized that city officials were both stupid and incompetent. Bush knew.
Those on the left would have you believe that a cut in funding to improve the levee system would have saved New Orleans. Of course, say the Bush-hating, leftist, America-bashing, nonsense-spewing moonbats, if we weren't in Iraq, we would have had the money to improve the levees.
Hey, here's an idea. Maybe Cindy Sheehan's bus could have gone over to New Orleans to help evacuate people rather than heading to the next stop on her AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY TOUR 2005. That would have been refreshing. Maybe the $8 billion spent on PBS since 1969 could have been spent on levees. That certainly would have been a better use of our money. Bill Moyers could have even been given an administrative job to help with the project. Rather than spouting leftist crap over public airwaves for which we pay, that would have been a better place for him. He could have done some good.
"Even with full funding in recent years, none of the flood-control projects would have been completed in time to prevent the swamping of the city, as Democrats yesterday acknowledged."
From the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers --
"These (projects) were not funded at the full ability of the Corps of Engineers to execute the project," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers. "But the important question is, 'Would that have made a difference?' And my assessment is, no, it would not."
I am not happy with the response of the Federal Government. But we can all armchair quarterback this thing. We have never faced anything like this before. On 9-11 the infrastructure remained. Emergency personnel could get to people to give help. And New Yorkers were not looting, raping, and murdering their fellow citizens. They were not shooting at helicopters and others coming to give help. They were not firing on police headquarters. They were not taking hostages. They were not assaulting the hospitals.
There is lots of blame to go around. Could the President have given a better speech? Sure. Could he have come on TV a day earlier? Perhaps. Could the officials of New Orleans have done their job to create an evacuation plan and given people vouchers for necessities, knowing that a huge number of people had no transportation and no resources? ABSOLUTELY.
I don't understand why a temporary tent city couldn't be setup right outside of the flood area. At this location people could have been brought food, water, medical care, port-a-potties, and communications. Authorities could have had a better control & supervision of the tent city. There must be school buses in New Orleans or surrounding cities that could have been used to rapidly move the people to the tent city, rather than languishing in the Superdome. From the tent city location the people could then be relocated to other areas, or free to go on their own.
do you have a link to this picture??
Any one that has never been to LA and New Orleans cannot even imagine the level of corruption and stupidity of that state and city.
An alleged NOLA police officer was on local TV last night explaining that the NO hurricane evacuation plan is about as thick as a phone book.
Another evacuee was interviewed and she claimed she was a disaster compliance officer for the hospital where she worked. She said that they had been through hours and hours of meetings over the years, but when the disaster hit, nobody followed any of the plans of did anything. There was no communication, no coordination, no action.
Blame can come later, but it just seems like whatever plans or systems were in place just completely failed.
Listen, even in the good times, the government of New Orleans is a banana republic at best. Always has been.
That flooded bus picture is damning. Mayor Gumbo should shut his face.
I'm not sure how many 57 buses could have taken, but NO didn't even try with the what, 200 they have in that photo? And what about Amtrak trains (pre-hurricane)? It's not hard to see some obvious places to start.
I pulled it from another FReeper thread. Someone please help. It listed AP and gave the photographer's name.
Snort.
thanks....
I forgot to mention. There was obviously gridlock leaving. It took some time for the authorites to decide to make all the lanes one way --- out of the city.
Thanks for the original link. They could have had huge numbers of buses available for evacuation -- city buses, school buses, buses from nearby cities.
Each community and city has been receiving federal funds to create such plans over the past 3 years. I am somewhat familiar with the plans in my county because I know the assistant emergency management coordinator here. He is a very hard working person, and they took the effort to create a plan and educate local agencies very seriously.
My guess is that NO took the federal money and wasted it on salaries for political friends, and hired a consultant to prepare a 500 page plan that contained a lot of long-worded, fancy sounding paragraphs, that had no real meaning or association with reality.
The picture of the buses is interesting. My observation is that most of the engines are above water and should start. Maybe the water was higher at some point?
Galveston is much smaller. I don't know how many buses would have been available, but it would be interesting to find out. People could have been given a location to catch a bus out of town that was within walking distance.
Point well taken; but, there was some looting. Nothing to this extent. I don't even like comparing the events. Horror is horror, one is not better or worse then another....but there was some looting.
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