"In both instances after the locals had failed to act in a reasonable manner."
Nonsense. The facts aren't as you state them. Friday was a good 60 hours before landfall. No way that the locals were going to call for an evacuation that early, they didn't have access to computer models with that degree of accuracy. Neither did Max, FWIW. He had several models saying different things. He combined that with his knowledge and made the call. Literally no one else in the world was in the same position. So Nagin did what he was supposed to do, call a voluntary evacuation early the next morning. A voluntary evacuation was the right thing to do because fewer people respond to that and it gives the ones south of New Orleans a chance to evacuate, that is why the procedure is detailed that way in the plans. That was followed by a mandatory evacuation. Again, as detailed in the plans. If you can't grasp this, I don't know what to say. Arguably they could have called the ME a little early, but everyone who wanted to evacuated and had transportation did so. So this is a totally worthless line of discussion.
"Bull. We know there were hundreds of busses available. "
Maybe 500, probably less. At about 40 people per bus, that is a max. of 20,000. Far less than the remaining residents. Less than the number that eventually made it to Houston.
"It sure as hell wasn't FEMAs."
Never said it was. In fact, I don't know of anyone who has mentioned it as a responsibility of FEMA's except for you. I guess this qualifies it as a straw man.
"You are working overtime to lay this on the federal government which is not where the responsibility belongs. "
Not overtime. Just pointing out that it shouldn't take 5 days to respond. In the past, we've always responded quicker. While there were a lot of things the locals could have done better, they did get 80% of the area evacuated, something that never happened before. They did it early enough that no one had to ride out the hurricane in their cars, something that has happened in the past. Your claim of putting 30k in Baton Rouge on buses ignores two things, make that three. They didn't have the buses, they didn't have the drivers and Baton Rouge didn't have room for 30k plus the ones that already evacuated there. What, you think they should stretch out in fields?
They had a plan. While there were holes, they weren't just winging it like you imply. They did wing the Convention Center, arguably that should have been in the plan. They did have first responders, although not the number they had planned on for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, their plans for communications didn't have enough redundancy. But none of this would have been a major problem if FEMA had held up their end of the bargain. FEMA did things like require the volunteer firemen from other states go through sensitivity training while fires burned in downtown NO.
As far as the rest where you detail my logic, yet another straw man. You are good at beating those bad boys to bits... |
