Katrina Damage
- Thread starter BillyBob
- Start date
HisLight
New member
Dave Miller said:
Do they not have buses that would carry people out of New Orleans? I am sure that they likely had both bus and train service New Orleans. I do not recall hearing about a stampede of people who were turned away in either case. I understand it takes money to buy a ticket. I saw a number of the po' folk that got stranded smoking cigarettes. I am fairly certain that they didn't acquire that habit post Katrina. I am also fairly certain that if you spent money on cigs rather than saving up enough to have an emergency exit in the event a hurricane comes to visit, you need to rethink your priorities.
I am not saying that they ought to have been abandoned by the local, state and federal government. I am saying that their expectation that someone else would be responsible for their safety was misguided.
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Morpheus
New member
Since FEMA had never developed an evacuation plan for New Orleans after two years of discussing it, (they kinda left the locals out of the loop in these discussions), the city of New Orleans had developed their own evacuation plan. In this plan they anticipated in advance that about 100,000 people would not be able to evacuate for whatever reasons. This plan included the Superdome as a last-ditch shelter for those people.HisLight said:
Gaviidae
New member
Morpheus said:
So in other words, the city screwed up by not figuring out how to get these 100,000 people to safety.
I would certainly not want FEMA in charge of creating an evacuation plan for every city. They should be a resource but it's up to the cities to create an evacuation plan. After all, they know what is best for their city and their people.
Here's an interesting article on the evacuation system and response.
Here's a piece of info I didn't know about:
But we still don't know what happened to New Orleans' $7 million grant in 2003 for a communications system that would connect all the region's first responders.
HisLight
New member
Gaviidae said:
I wonder if anyone has figured out how many people they could have saved if they had filled up everyone of those buses with people and driven them out of town before the storm. I realize that it wouldn't have taken everyone out of town. Leaving people AND buses stranded in a hurricane is just dumb.
Army of One
New member
Aha, you finally figured it out, BB. All the professional bus drivers have taken jobs over in Iraq, working for Haliburton.:chuckle:BillyBob said:
PureX
Well-known member
About 6,000 people per trip (100 busses w/ 60 people in each bus). The busses wouldn't have come close to getting the estimated 100,000 people that were left behind, out. Neither would the trains.HisLight said:
I think ya'll are underestimating how many busses and trains it would take to get 100,000+ people out of a city. (Keep in mind that all the highways out of the city were jammed, so the busses could not have made more than one trip.)
Gaviidae
New member
PureX said:
That's 6,000 less people in harms way and 6,000 less people to rescue.
I awoke early, as I often did, just before sunrise, to walk by the ocean's edge and greet the new day.
As I moved through the morning dawn, I focused on a faint, far away motion.
I saw a youth, bending and reaching and flailing arms, dancing on the beach, no doubt in celebration of the perfect day soon to begin.
As I approached, I realized that the youth was not dancing to the bay, but rather bending to sift through the debris left by the night's tide, stopping now and then to pick up starfish and then standing, to heave it back into the sea.
I asked the youth the purpose of the effort. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach and they cannot return to the sea by themselves," the youth replied. "When the sun rises, they will die, unless I throw them back into the sea."
As the youth explained, I surveyed the vast expanse of beach, stretching in both directions beyond eyesight. Starfish littered the shore in numbers beyond calculation. The hopelessness of the youth's plan became clear to me and I countered, "But there are more starfish on this beach than you can ever save before the sun is up. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference."
The youth paused briefly to consider my words, bent to pick up a starfish and threw it as far as possible. Turning to me he simply said,
"I made a difference to that ONE."
