Looking for Someone to Blame?

**Shek** · 03 Sep 05,, 19:50

Sorry for the long post here, but this blogger exposed a lot full of now flooded school buses that are parked a mile from the Superdome. However, instead of having them fueled and manned for an evacuation, they were ignored and now are waterlogged, meaning that someone other than the city has to handle their mess.

http://junkyardblog.net/archives/wee...28.html#004748

September 02, 2005
LOCAL SCREWUP: BUS-TED! **lots of updates, scroll down
Or, if you prefer, The Buses of New Orleans.

This is infuriating:

An angry Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans' emergency operations, watched the slow exodus from the Superdome on Thursday morning and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency response was inadequate. The chaos at the nearby New Orleans Convention Center was considerably worse than the Superdome, with an angry mob growing increasingly violent and few options for refugees to leave the scene.
"This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," Ebbert said. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

Ebbert's job is to coordinate New Orleans' response to emergencies. Somebody should show him this picture and tell him to stop blaming everyone but himself:

New Orleans owns those buses. Here's their significance:

I count 205 busses. When I was a kid, I remember that school busses could carry 66 people. If that is still the case, 13,530 people could be carried to safety in ONE trip using only the busses shown in that picture.
One trip.

Houston is 350 miles from New Orleans. At 50 miles per hour, 13,530 people could have reached Houston in seven hours. Turn the buses around. 14 hours later another 13,530 people are in Houston, far away from Katrina's wrath. In a little more than a day's time, you've gotten the poorest people who wanted to leave but couldn't leave on their own out of the city. And you don't have to drive them as far as Houston. It's the closest huge city, but there are lots of smaller towns you could ferry people to more quickly. The shorter the drive, the more trips you can make. Pretty soon 26,000 saved becomes everyone saved. If anyone left behind in the storm survives and then loots, at least they're not endangering thousands of innocent people. Those innocent people aren't there to be endangered. They're somewhere else.

You see, buses have these interesting features on them, Mr. Ebbert, called wheels. They allow buses to move about the streets of a city under the control of a human. Because of their wheels, buses can go to where the people are and offer them a ride. You could tell people to congregate at street corners for easier pickup. Moreover, since the buses are on the road picking up people and moving them out of the city, they're not in the path of the flood when the levee breaks. So you can keep using them to get the few stragglers who managed to survive the storm and the floods. And you can use them to haul in supplies. Troops. Whatever you need.

But since no one mobilized these buses before the storm--ahem, Mr. Ebbert--since no one mobilized them before the storm, the poor in New Orleans had no way of getting out. And now the buses are waterlogged and useless. All 205 of them. They will go on the expense side of the ledger instead of the asset side. That's your fault, Mr. Ebbert. The blame rests with you, sir. You knew the city owned those buses, you knew where to get them, where to fuel them and you probably had a list of the drivers who operate them. Yet there they sit, half submerged.

One emergency manager with half a clue and a couple hundred drivers could have more or less saved New Orleans from turning into Mad Max territory. Terry Ebbert can blame everyone else all he wants, but this crisis is almost entirely his fault.

Now that National Guard and probably true federal troops will be put into New Orleans to quell the violence, and since the city is crawling with journalists and videographers, we're liable to get something on our TVs that will look like a cross between Waco circa 1993 and Tiananmen Square circa 1989. But with the added twist of a racial component. Great.

And it all probably could have been avoided with judicious use of a couple hundred school buses--those inside the frame above as well as the probably dozens of others outside it.

UPDATE: Here's a tight satellite view of the bus lot. It looks to me like there are more than 205 buses there. That's a freeway next to the lot, in the upper part of the frame. It leads to the Superdome in one direction and out of the city in the other.

Here's a link to a wider view, cropped so that the Superdome is in the lower left and the bus lot is in the upper right. They're not that far apart--a mile or two maybe. That view is cropped down from a much larger image, which is here. Fwiw.

I will say this--if the city's emergency planners couldn't figure out that the bus lot, the freeway and the dome make a pretty tight emergency staging and evacuation system all by themselves, those planners are beyond incompetent. Ebbert and his staff should be held accountable for this to the nth degree.

DRUDGE ASKS: Why didn't you deploy the buses during the mandatory evacuation, Mayor?

Good question.

WELCOME Corner readers!

MORE: I guess the local NO officials will blame Bush and FEMA for this, too.

UPDATE: The one guy in that entire city who actually used a bus to drive people to safety gets bus-ted for it? This is too much.

"If it weren't for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."

Eighteen-year-old [Jabbar] Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there. ...

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."

Ouch! That last line just dropped like a sledgehammer on some local politicians. Who does Jabbar Gibson think he is? He's "an American citizen." As one reader just commented: "Jabbar Gibson for Mayor!" When cops are telling people to go to hell because it's every man for himself, Jabbar's actions are far from outrageous. It doesn't look at all like a busjacking for instance.

MORE: Superdome refugees weigh in:

At the New Orleans Convention Center, some of the thousands of storm victims awaiting their deliverance applauded, threw their hands heavenward and screamed, "Thank you, Jesus!" as the camouflage-green trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in this increasingly desperate and lawless city.

"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here," said Leschia Radford.

But there was also anger and profane catcalls.

"Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!"

And this:

"If you want to save a life get a bus down here," said Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter. "I'm asking the American people to help save a wonderful American city." Her voice cracking with emotion and her eyes bloodshot from fatigue and distress, Carter said pledges of money and other assistance are of secondary importance right now to the urgent need for transportation.

"Don't give me your money. Don't send me $10 million today. Give me buses and gas. Buses and gas. Buses and gas," she said. "If you have to commandeer Greyhound, commandeer Greyhound. … If you donn't get a bus, if we don't get them out of there, they will die."

And finally this from Mayor Nagin himself:

"I need reinforcements," he pleaded. "I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. ...

I've done it all man, and I'll tell you man, I keep hearing that it's coming. This is coming, that is coming. And my answer to that today is BS, where is the beef? Because there is no beef in this city. "

Nagin said, "Get every Greyhound bus in the country and get them moving."

The lesson: "It's the busses, stupid." Even if you can't fill 'em up full of people before the storm, you drive them up the road and then back again later to pick people up after the storm passes and the city floods.

From Random Jottings:

And it's important to remember (well, it wouldn't be if certain people crazed with partisan venom weren't slinging stupid accusations non-stop) that the responsibility for planning for a predictable disaster is local. Not federal. It is the job of San Francisco to plan for earthquakes (and we do); to have the necessary communications and organization to coordinate emergency response. Including asking for and coordinating state and federal help when needed. New Orleans has been facing the possibility of flooding for at least 40 years, with the Mississippi flowing right through town, well above the height of many buildings. ...

The thing is, it is extremely difficult for outsiders to accomplish much when they are groping around unfamiliar territory. They can spend days just finding out what's needed, and establishing communications.

Well said.

UPDATE: Galveston, TX is on the ball.

The city of Galveston is taking action in case of a major storm.

You don't have to look far in Galveston to find kids being kids. But Renee Hill knows something the little ones don't.

They live in the Palm Terrace public housing complex, and if a hurricane threatened the city they'd be among the most vulnerable.

Most people here couldn't evacuate without assistance.

"I think about it but I don't know what I'm gonna do though," said Hill. "You know, it's like you don't have a car, where you gonna go? Who'll come get you?"

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.

Yeah. They should.

MORE: Bill Hobbs is on the same page. He notes that New Orleans public transit has 364 buses it could have used to carry out the mandatory evacuation. Those buses could have ferried 22,000 New Orleans residents to safety in one single trip. But they were never pressed into service.

Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina. According to this Freep post, Ebbert has quite the resume and a salary to match:

Ebbert, 60, has been directing the city's new Office of Homeland Security and Public Safety since his appointment by Mayor Ray Nagin on Feb. 11. A highly decorated war hero and the former executive director of the nonprofit New Orleans Police Foundation, Ebbert has been given major powers and responsibilities as an executive assistant to the mayor. His duties are commensurate with his $114,676 annual salary.
Ebbert is charged with coordinating the city's terrorism response capabilities and obtaining federal and state funds for homeland security. He also will oversee the police and fire departments, the Office of Emergency Preparedness and city Emergency Medical Services, and the 911 Center or Orleans Parish Communications District.

His duties extend beyond a crisis or special events such as Mardi Gras. Ebbert has responsibility for the daily operations and planning of all those departments as well as the management of their budgets, Nagin told Gambit Weekly last week, after presenting his plan to re-organize city government to the City Council. "Mr. Ebbert is responsible for all matters related to public safety," the mayor said.

$114,676 for doing what, exactly? Blaming others for his own failure? If Ebbert has any honor, he'll resign, give back every cent of salary he has taken since assuming his powerful office, and wait for the lawyers of New Orleans to catch up with him. And they will.

As for Mayor Nagin, he and his profile in pathetic leadership police chief should resign as well. That city's government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of clowns is capable of giving them.

If you're keeping track, these ***** let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans--in one trip--get ruined in the floods. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.

UPDATE: Looks like the bus lot now has a name: "Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool"

**Shek** · 03 Sep 05,, 20:22

Hurricane Katrina was a man made disaster created by Halliburton to reap a windfall of profits. How the LSM has missed this, I don't know. Down with Halliburton and their sock puppets in the White House!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sept. 1, 2005, 8:30PM

AROUND THE REGION

CONSTRUCTION
Halliburton hired for storm cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.

**Bill** · 03 Sep 05,, 21:45

"Along the Gulf coast, the damage is comparable to a nuke. Of course, with a nuke, you don't have time to evacuate."

No, it's not.

It's what the BLAST damage from a nuke would've done.

You're totally discounting the fire and radiation damage.

A nuke would've evaporated down town NO instantly, shattered the entire levee system, started tens of thousands of fires instantly, killed hundreds of thousands instantly, destroyed all electronic circuitry such that it could not work again even once the area was reached by workers and attempts at repairs made. None of the vehicles would've worked to get people out.

And on top of that, the entire city would be completely flooded with highly radioactive water.

This tragedy, while utterly devastating, is but a SMALL sample of the problems we'd face from a nuclear attack on New Orleans.

**Leader** · 03 Sep 05,, 22:09

Originally Posted by shek

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbin...0509020719.asp

Where are the Guardsmen?
Right where they ought to be.

So is the war in Iraq causing troop shortfalls for hurricane relief in New Orleans?

In a word, no.

A look at the numbers should dispel that notion. Take the Army for example. There are 1,012,000 soldiers on active duty, in the Reserves, or in the National Guard. Of them, 261,000 are deployed overseas in 120 countries. Iraq accounts for 103,000 soldiers, or 10.2 percent of the Army.

That’s all? Yes, 10.2 percent. That datum is significant in itself, a good one to keep handy the next time someone talks about how our forces are stretched too thin, our troops are at the breaking point, and so forth. If you add in Afghanistan (15,000) and the support troops in Kuwait (10,000) you still only have 12.6 percent.

So where are the rest? 751,000 (74.2 percent) are in the U.S. About half are active duty, and half Guard and Reserve. The Guard is the real issue of course — the Left wants you to believe that the country has been denuded of its citizen soldiers, and that Louisiana has suffered inordinately because Guardsmen and women who would have been available to be mobilized by the state to stop looting and aid in reconstruction are instead risking their lives in Iraq.

Not hardly. According to Lieutenant General H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, 75 percent of the Army and Air National Guard are available nationwide. In addition, the federal government has agreed since the conflict in Iraq started not to mobilize more than 50 percent of Guard assets in any given state, in order to leave sufficient resources for governors to respond to emergencies.

In Louisiana only about a third of Guard personnel are deployed, and they will be returning in about a week as part of their normal rotation. The Mississippi Guard has 40 percent overseas. But Louisiana and Mississippi are not alone in this effort — under terms of Emergency Management Assistance Compacts (EMACs) between the states, Guard personnel are heading to the area from West Virginia, D.C., New Mexico, Utah, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Washington, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, and Michigan. Thousands have already arrived, and more will over the next day or so.

The New York Times has called the military response “a costly game of catch up.” Catching up compared to what, one wonders. National Guard units were mobilized immediately; 7,500 troops from four states were on the ground within 24 hours of Katrina — a commendable response given the disruptions to the transportation infrastructure. The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction this time was less than three days officially, and DOD had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid request from the moment Katrina hit. DOD cannot act independently of course; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the lead agency. Requests for assistance have to be routed from local officials through FEMA to U.S. Northern Command and then to the necessary components. In practice, this means state officials have to assess damage and determine relief requirements; FEMA has to come up with a plan for integrating the military into the overall effort; DOD has to begin to pack and move the appropriate materiel, and deploy sufficient forces. This has all largely been or is being accomplished. Seven thousand mostly Navy and other specialized assets are currently in the area directly supporting hurricane relief, and a much larger number of other forces are en route. The process has been functioning remarkably smoothly under the circumstances.

It is hard to understand what more should, or realistically could have been done up to this point. A disaster of this magnitude is certain to be politicized, but it seems early in the game to be assessing blame for a response effort that has only been underway a few days in a crisis that is still developing; particularly such a rapid response. Moreover, it is simply not plausible to use the situation to critique the force structure in Iraq. The Guard is demonstrating that it can fulfill both its state and federal responsibilities, as it was designed and intended to do. Of course, it is impossible to win in these situations; critics will always find a way. A year ago after Hurricane Charley, the president was accused of responding too quickly, allegedly to curry favor with Florida voters. Back then only a few fringe characters tried to make the Iraq/Guard connection. It is a shame that the Times has drifted in their direction.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and an NRO contributor.

http://worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=8044