On the one about Nagin turning his nose up at school busses... that one's a lie. They're trying to make it look like Nagin turned down the use of school busses for the purpose of evacuation prior to the hurricane. The fact is that that quote was made after the hurricane had already passed. And he wasn't turning down school busses. He was saying people shouldn't just send school busses... they should send every kind of bus they could get their hands on. He was saying that the paltry few school busses that were being sent weren't anywhere near enough.

Here's what I have to say on the subject of the evacuation plan, of which I have read the relevant parts...

People are using the bus issue as a way to try to shift responsibility away from FEMA and Bush, where it rightly belongs, to the people who were doing the best they could with the resources they had at their disposal.

The evacuation plan gives the local governments the authority to use those busses. But it does not give them the resources to put the busses to use. It doesn't give them drivers for the busses. It doesn't give them enough fuel to get to wherever they need to go. It doesn't give the busses a destiniation. If one of those busses ran out of fuel in a place that was vulnerable in the hurricane, and there wasn't any available fuel, and there were no shelters anywhere near, the people in that bus would be completely exposed to the worst the hurricane could throw at them. And they might die out in the open. 1600 busses would be needed to get all of the people out. That's with 80 people in a bus. That's 1600 bus drivers that would have to be found. Goodness knows how much fuel would be needed to get the people out of harm's way. Accomodations would have to be paid for. That would cost at least $4000 per day per bus, just for hotels and motels.

Mayor Nagin said way back in July that the local government did not have the resources to get people out who didn't have their own transportation in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. Nagin used the city's public tranportation to get people to the designated shelters so that they would at least be in stuctures that would be able to withstand the high winds of Katrina. People were much safer in those shelters than they would have been sitting in a bus by the side of the road. Had Nagin been able to get enough drivers, and if he could have been assured that the busses would have enough fuel to get everyone to safety, I have no doubt that he would have chosen that option rather than sending them to shelters in New Orleans. But that was the best he could do.

Governor Blanco was not just dealing with the logistics for evacuating New Orleans. She also had to worry about all of the other parts of Louisiana that were vulnerable in this storm. The state of Lousiana didn't have the resources to do everything that needed to be done. That's why she requested the assistance of the federal government.

It was the federal government that was in a position to do what was needed. It was responsible for making sure all of the different first responders were able to communicate with each other. It didn't do that. It could have pulled emergency resources in from other states, as well as support, equipment, and fuel from other areas to either get everyone evacuated, or at the very least to make sure all agencies and personnel were in communication and had what they needed in order to do what was needed for the people remaining in New Orleans as well as other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. That was it's responsibility under the law and FEMA regulations. It did not do that.