Pastor Kim

Douglas Brinkley’s book “The Great Deluge,” discusses Blanco’s bus efforts on Monday and Tuesday. She eventually commandeered all teh school busses in the state.

Blanco has a timline on her website that discusses it, too.

In summary, busses started to arrive in Metairie on Tuesday night, or before dawn on Wednesday. They encountered large crowds around Causeway and I-10 interchange and couldn’t get much further for next few days, while more people kept arriving.

As far as your other comments, the two sources I cited discuss those in greater detail than I can relate in this space.

One more thing – most NO people I’ve talked to were really impressed by the pre-storm evacuation. More than 1,000,000 people. They had a lot of problems with Huricane Ivan, but they ironed them out and ran a very effective evacuation for Katrina. Some who were in Houston for Rita couldn’t believe the traffic mess and were doubly impressed with New Orleans’ Katrina evacuation.

” It takes scott kiser only a split second to name the one city in the US and probably to world that would sustain that most catastrophic damage from a category 5 hurricane, New Orleans says Kiser”

The Stafford Act from the FEMA website:

sec 501: says a) the governor is to request assistance (done in the SOE) and the President may declare the emergency exists (done in the FEA)
b)tells president he can excercise authority in sections 502 and 503.

sec 502: says
a) 1. (most important so i will quote exactly) “direct any Federal agency, with or without reimbursement, to utilize its authorities and the resources granted to it under Federal law (including personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and managerial, technical and advisory services) in support of State and local emergency assistance efforts to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, and lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe;

a)2. “coordinate all disaster relief assistance (including voluntary assistance) provided by Federal agencies, private organizations, and State and local governments;”

a)3 through 7. but i like 3E the best “provide technical and advisory assistance to affected State and local governments for management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety”

b) Whenever the Federal assistance provided under subsection (a) with respect to an emergency is inadequate, the President may also provide assistance with respect to efforts to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, and lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe.

sec 503: basically goes over costs.

Did she make any effort to utilize state resources or her influence as governor to organize an evacuation of New Orleans and the surrounding areas BEFORE the storm hit?

Did she make any effort to get buses from sources other than FEMA? As a resident of Louisiana, I am certain there are enough buses in this state, both privately and publicly owned, to have evacuated everyone who had no other means of escape. Also, if the evacuation had begun early enough, some of the buses could have made more than one trip. One really didn’t have to go very far to escape the reach of the storm. Schools, LA Guard bases, churches all over the state could have been utilized as shelters before the storm as well as after.

What bothers me most about this whole thing is that the focus of the investigation, the press, the politicians, and the people is entirely on how to respond to a disaster after the fact vice PREPARATION FOR DISASTERS. I realize unpredictable disasters will occur and response planning is crucial. However, the real shame of Katrina is the amount of time the people of Louisiana and Mississippi had to get out before it was too late! This was not a terrorist attack, or an earthquake, or a biological outbreak that could not have been predicted or prevented.

“Better safe than sorry” is not just a cliché! Sometimes you have to evacuate when the best the weatherman can say is you “might” get hit. Yeah, it’s a pain in the rump if the storm turns the other way. Yeah, it costs money to shut businesses down and give employees a few days off to evacuate “just in case.” Yeah, the kids will miss a few days of school. Yes, it’s difficult to organize evacuation assistance and enforce a mandatory evacuation without help from FEMA, but that’s part of the job GOVERNOR/MAYOR! If you don’t care enough about your own people to take matters into your own hands (beyond making some phone calls), how can you expect others to care?

I can’t help but wonder why major disasters (the kind where the people affected had NO WARNING) haven’t been handled so badly in other states during this same president’s term? Is it because the elected officials and the people of those states did something differently in response to a tragedy in their own back yard, or is it more likely that President Bush & FEMA officials just don’t give a darn about LA & MS?

Anyone who believes the stories of explosions being heard has not spent much time riding out hurricanes. I have ridden out major hurricanes and minor ones: Betsy, Camille. Hurricanes are LOUD. The sound of the roaring wind makes it hard to hear anything else. But there are other noises, LOUD noises: trees ripped from the ground, houses blown apart, flying debris crashing. Near the Industrial Canal levee, surely the noise of that barge breaking loose and bashing into the wharf and levee sounded like a war.

The same levee breaches that flooded the Lower 9th Ward also flooded Arabi.

The same levee breaches that flooded Bywater, Treme, Broadmoor, the Upper 9th Ward also flooded Gentilly, Lakeview and Uptown.

Many, many white families are homelss today due to the same levee breaches that destroyed black families’ homes.

TV has distorted this crisis. This is not a poor black people crisis. This is an American crisis.
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And Henoch, I really hope your kidding and just trying to make a joke, although sadly I have seen some other just as unreasonable conspiracy theories being thrown around.