On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:43:46 -0700, "Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's
Cocaine Snorting *****" <eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/19/21446/6996

FEMA Told LA Gov Not to Use School Buses to Evacuate: "Not
Air-Conditioned"
by waitingtoderail
Mon Sep 19th, 2005 at 18:04:46 PDT

Story here at Baton Rouge's ABC affiliate's website:

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml

/article
Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
mmillhollon@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen
Blanco still wants one question answered.

Where were the buses?

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into
New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways,
overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down
the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air
conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana
Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own
buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

During the delay, misery and mayhem mounted in the Dome, thousands
gathered in desperation at the nearby convention center, and Americans
watched in shock as dead and dying New Orleans residents were
broadcast on national television.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent
them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the
National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area,
more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the
state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the
FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk
to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the
magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not
500,'" Blanco recounted.

"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.

Card promised to get Blanco more buses.

Later Wednesday night, Blanco walked into the State Police
Communications Center and asked if anyone knew anything about the
buses.

An officer told her the buses were just entering the state.

"I said, 'Do you mean as in North Louisiana, which is another six
hours from New Orleans?,'" Blanco recalled in the interview. "He said,
'Yes, m'am.'"

It was at that point, Blanco said, that she realized she had made a
critical error.

"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she
said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in
one day's time."

It was late Wednesday. The buses wouldn't get to New Orleans until
Thursday. By then, many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or
dying.

The buses weren't the only resource to arrive late, Blanco said.

It took days to get a communications system and outside troops. In the
first days after the hurricane hit, Louisiana National Guard
communicated by sending text messages on cell phones.

The death and destruction multiplied as looters armed themselves and
residents languished waiting for rescue.

Brown was the first bureaucratic casualty in the massive governmental
breakdown in responding to Katrina.

He resigned last week amid criticism that he responded sluggishly to
the hurricane. Brown lashed out a few days later, telling The New York
Times that Blanco and her staff were "incapable of organizing a
coherent state effort."

Brown said that, on the day before the storm hit, he asked Blanco and
Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau, head of the state's National Guard, what
resources they needed.

"The response was like, 'Let us find out,' and then I never received
specific requests for specific things that needed doing," Brown told
The New York Times last week.

Blanco said it shouldn't have been up to her to provide a list.

"Specific things, my God," she said. "(If) they didn't know that we
were in the middle of search and rescue and needed to evacuate people,
then they were not on the ground with us. We needed buses and
helicopters."

Besides, Blanco said, she thought Brown was in control of the
situation.

"I had security in the knowledge that there were 500 buses," she said.
"Mike had emphasized the buses to me personally. That was not my first
concern until I realized that they were not there."

Meanwhile, the state continued to send school buses into the affected
areas.

One of Blanco's aides, Leonard Kleinpeter, said FEMA told him at one
point that the state could stop sending school buses because the
agency was going to bring in helicopters and use them instead of the
commercial buses that still weren't there.

Blanco told Kleinpeter to ignore those instructions.

"She said, 'I'll be damned. You keep loading the wagons on the school
buses,'" Kleinpeter said.

Kleinpeter said he now wonders if FEMA temporarily halted its buses
because the agency thought helicopters would work better.

By Tuesday, the day after the hurricane, Brown was ready to cede
control of state and federal relief efforts to the White House.

Two days later, President George W. Bush met with Blanco on Air Force
One and asked her for control of the troops that were finally pouring
into the state. Blanco asked if Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour would
be under the same regime. The answer was "No."

Blanco told Bush she'd get back to him in 24 hours. The president
didn't wait. That night, the White House faxed a memorandum of
understanding for her to sign to cede control of the troops. Her
answer was "No."

"If I thought that it was going to bring one more resource to bear, if
I thought that he was denying me resource because of it, and I don't
think he was, then it might have been something that I would have
considered," she said.

"By that time, we were already getting the resources and commitments,"
the governor said.

It wasn't the response that the White House wanted. People close to
the Bush administration started criticizing Blanco, saying she bungled
the state response.

When Bush returned to the state a few days later, he didn't tell
Blanco he was coming. The night before that second visit, Blanco
learned about the visit from a news reporter and wrangled an
invitation to accompany Bush on his tour.

There was a noticeable tension between the president and the governor
throughout the trip.

"What was going on is the national media people started picking on the
president. So the White House began to defend the president. So they
turned some guns on me," Blanco said.

"It was a colossal waste of our time and energy to get into the blame
game," she said.

Blanco said things are now fine between her and Bush.

Bush has since acknowledged that his administration failed to respond
adequately to the hurricane. The president has ordered a review of the
sluggish response.

"Four years after the frightening experience of Sept. 11, Americans
have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of
emergency," he told the nation in an address from Jackson Square
Thursday night.

"When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I as
president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution," Bush
said.

Blanco is less emphatic in taking blame for the breakdown.

She said she takes responsibility "for assuming that help was on the
way" when it wasn't.

Blanco said she's also learned a lesson.

"In the end, in a really dangerous, life-threatening situation, there
is no army that's going to be there to save you," she said. "It's
going to be person-to-person, helping each other. Some people are
putting their lives on the line to help other people whose lives are
at risk. And that's the bottom line."

/end article



To all the folks complaining about the "drowned" school buses, hey
guess why they weren't used! FEMA said not to, they would send
air-conditioned commercial buses to save people. Only they didn't send
them until Thursday. This according to the Louisana governor. Update
[2005-9-19 23:24:25 by waitingtoderail]:It has been pointed out that
this doesn't really refer to the buses shown in that photo. I'm not so
sure about that. When was that photo taken? It's established that at
least SOME buses were used to transport people to the Superdome, which
was the plan. Would 10,000 more people in the Superdome have worked
well? The plan was followed by the local officials. It broke down
AFTERWARD when the buses which were supposed to transport people out
did not come. The number of people left in the city was about what was
expected by the Hurricane Pam exercise. They should have known.

* waitingtoderail's diary :: ::
*

From the above linked article:

"Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into
New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways,
overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down
the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air
conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana
Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own
buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent
them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the
National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area,
more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said.

..Blanco...realized she had made a critical error.

"I assumed that FEMA had staged their buses in near proximity," she
said. "I expected them to be out of the storm's way but accessible in
one day's time."

It was late Wednesday. The buses wouldn't get to New Orleans until
Thursday. By then, many of the sickest and the weakest were dead or
dying."

Oh yeah, STFU, Fred Stone.

She won't.


--

Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)