What I don't understand is why didn't the local government use the resources available? How can there be hundreds of school buses and intact roads, yet we have the incident happen at the stadium a few miles away?
What I don't understand is why didn't the local government use the resources available? How can there be hundreds of school buses and intact roads, yet we have the incident happen at the stadium a few miles away?
Finally, you sir or madam have asked the correct question. The bathetic crowds seen on TV were the left behinds that had neither the sense or resources to self evacuate. All of NOLA’s ‘black leadership’ had done what the overwhelming majority of the citizenry had done. They got in their cars and drove off a day or two before the storm arrived. Nobody thought the city was going to flood to the degree it did. The multiple failure of the floodwalls and the Industrial Canal/IntercoastalWaterway levees stunned everyone. The dysfunctional mayor Ray Nagin and the even more incompetent crew at city hall didn't even have a real evacuation plan. so there was no structure in place to even provide for the evacuation of those who couldn't leave on their own nickel. The people who ran the school bus operation for Orleans Parish Public School District had left town and the gates were left locked at the bus pound.
AMTRAK railed all their coaches out of town and notified NOLA City Hall they were doing so and would let the city load the train (a long one 22 cars) at the rail and bus station in downtown. The city never responded and the train pulled out with a handful of AMTRAK employees on board.
When all the’black leadership’ and ‘civil rights leaders’ turned on the TV in Baton Rouge or Atlanta or where ever they had gone to and saw what was happening they made haste to get in front of a microphone to shout ‘Bush did it’ ‘Racists whites are to blame’ to deflect the heat from them. The failure of local and state government to plan for the worst case and the complete failure of leadership in the state and parish level made a disaster even worse. The governor was totally useless and never came to grips with the disaster, the national guard was(and still is) commanded by a complete buffoon who has now held his position under three governors, NOLA government simply collapsed. However much wealthier Jefferson Parish did little better as its Parish President a greasy toad named Aaron Broussard did what comes natural to him in a clinch, panic. He is now famed for conducting ‘Aarons Retreat’ in which he led a convoy of some 30 parish vehicles across the Causeway just before it was closed to hunker down in Franklinton the seat of Washington Parish. Among those taken on this journey with the pump operators . Much of NOLA would flood if lift pumps didn't keep pumping water out. The pump operators shut the pumps down and left on Aaron's command. The pumps have elevated back up diesel power units in concrete buildings. The structures weathered the storm. About 30% of the very large unincorporated municipality of Metairie flooded.
What happened in NOLA was the result of incompetent, dysfunctional and sometimes just plain cowardly leadership. Interestingly the ‘underprivileged’ who dem pols emote so much for are those who took it on the chin being left essentially stranded in the city.