SURVIVORS RECALL ALL THE PARKED RTA BUSES
Posted by Chris Regan
JunkYardBlog
Now that survivors are speaking out, the media may need to explain why they ignored the buses in favor of bashing the feds:
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To hurricane survivors Richard Allen and Sandra Montegut, their recent arrival together at Camp Couchdale has been just another, albeit more comfortable, chapter in the struggle to gather the scattered jigsaw pieces of their lives in the wake of Katrina.
The pair, fellow residents of New Orleans' eastern district, finally landed at Camp Couchdale following a three-day bus ride. The neighbors spent a week in the horrifying post-storm conditions of the Superdome, sleeping in shifts and defending one another from the criminal element that quickly surfaced there. ...
"The saddest thing, though," Montegut added, "was all the guardsmen standing around the place, just aching for the order to straighten it all out. I felt so bad for them, because I knew they felt that was what they should've been doing."...
Both Louisianians placed the blame for New Orleans' societal breakdown squarely on the shoulders of the mayor and the governor. "It felt like they were in the middle of some big power play. They weren't concerned about the people at all," alleged Allen.
Montegut, an insightful social service/forensic specialist employed by Louisiana's prison system, had gazed at a parking lot full of unengaged Regional Transit Authority buses from her position at the Superdome, and wondered why they were not being used to evacuate people from the deteriorating conditions.
"[Mayor Nagin] blew it, throwing his hands up in the air and blaming Bush for days - all the while, he could've been taking care of obvious solutions like that instead of telling people who hadn't the means to leave simply to 'get out'." According to her, the RTA buses sat in their same spots even as school buses came to carry the storm-worn from the shelter.
"When they originally sent the RTA buses out to bring people into the Superdome, it was the feds who made those arrangements, not the local government. It was just unbelievable, the lack of preparation on the mayor's part - even when he knew about the possible severity of the approaching storm," she said, shaking her head.
As many harsh words as the two had for their government, an equal amount of praise was given to local volunteers they had encountered in the course of recovery efforts.
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Too bad they didn't have Cable TV news available on the Superdome Jumbotron. FEMA's complete failure to provide the evacuees with live TV analysis of their situation prevented them from learning that it was all George Bush and the feds' fault. Now it will takes weeks of TV-watching for them to really understand how Bush failed them. Some may never know the truth of their own plight or how the biggest story of the entire disaster, according to the big media, was not the buses or lack of orders for guardsmen (as survivors think) but how the people in New Orleans looked "so black."
(Small-town newspaper article via Free Republic)
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