Complaint Central

Maybe New Orleans Mayor Nagin would like to explain this picture
before he and the rest of his fellow travelers continue to blast the
feds.

They had plenty of means to get people out. Their claims of "we had no
transportation" are, to be nice, suspect.


*** Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005: An aerial view of hundreds of flooded school
buses in a lot in New Orleans, LA. The flood is a result of Hurricane
Katrina that passed through the area last Monday.(AP Photo/Phil Coale) ***

As regards the National Guard troops and security, the Governor of the state
of Louisiana always had the power to deploy the LA guard in the fashion that
other state troops are being deployed today. It is her failure to do so that
has prompted the President to get the help from other states.

The Mayor of New Orleans, who ordered all those people into the Superdome
(yep, that was his big plan), had the power to bus them out of the city at
the same time. The City of New Orleans moves many more children each day on
school buses than were in the dome. Those buses were available and slated to
be used for school the next day. He could easily have evacuated those people
..but did not.

When ordering a mandatory evacuation you use what resources you have to move
the people...he did not. If it was important and dangerous enough to order
all citizens to leave, it was dangerous enough to help those people to leave
Yet, they did not. After they failed to do so...the busses ended up under
water and useless.

Their evacuation plan was non-existent.

Their evacuation plan was get out on your own.

They know where every school in the state is. Most of them have gyms.

They could have bussed out 100-200 people to each of those gyms 100 miles
inland and left the city empty.

The Mayor failed. The Governor does not appear to have put the National
Guard on alert prior to the storm.

Both of them sat on their butts and waited for the feds to do it all.

In the end, it was FEMA, after the local and state government's failure,
that had to get the job done...but now under much, much worse and dangerous
circumstances.

No, it is not Bush's fault or the fed's fault. We must place blame squarely
where it lies at the feet of the local and state executives who had neither
the desire nor the will to make those calls, irrespective of their political
stripe.