Story here at Baton Rouge's ABC affiliate's website:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml
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.
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."
Think the freepers will apologize to Nagin and Blanco?
Update [2005-9-19 22:21:21 by waitingtoderail]:A few people to forward this story to (cut and paste into your email - send more suggestions):
hannity@foxnews.com, colmes@foxnews.com, oreilly@foxnews.com