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2005-09-09 Home Front: Economy
Ray Nagin: School Buses Not Good Enough
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Posted by Steve 2005-09-09 10:05|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 What an asshole
Posted by Cheaderhead 2005-09-09 10:35||   2005-09-09 10:35|| Front Page Top

#2 Greyhound or drowned!
Posted by Mike 2005-09-09 10:41||   2005-09-09 10:41|| Front Page Top

#3 Is it extreme to believe Nagin and Blanco should be decorating lampposts?
Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford  2005-09-09 10:51|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/]  2005-09-09 10:51|| Front Page Top

#4 Nagin should of payed more attention to Harry Chapin, "the Greyhound is a dog of a way to get around"
Posted by Cheaderhead 2005-09-09 11:06||   2005-09-09 11:06|| Front Page Top

#5 I'm like man, you've got to be muthafuckin kiddin' me! This is a natural muthafuckin disaster, so get every muthafuckin Greyhound fuckin bus line in the country to move their muthafuckin asses to New Orleans! Cause my peeps ain't ridin no muthafuckin piece of shit yellow schoolbus. Shit.
Posted by Andy 2005-09-09 11:20||   2005-09-09 11:20|| Front Page Top

#6 Um... call me crazy, but if the schoolbus is good enough for kids on an almost weekly basis, aren't they good enough to get people out of the city to prevent drowning?
Posted by mmurray821 2005-09-09 11:48||   2005-09-09 11:48|| Front Page Top

#7 When you let yourself get to the place where you have to rely upon the "hound" to save you it's time to throw in the towel.
Posted by MunkarKat 2005-09-09 11:57||   2005-09-09 11:57|| Front Page Top

#8 Sorry Sir, but Greyhound is a private company. On the other hand, those school buses belong to the local department of education, which is typically a government entity.......
Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-09-09 11:57||   2005-09-09 11:57|| Front Page Top

#9 Again,Local goverment in Louisiana inept,incompetent,incomprehensible BOOBS!!!!!
Posted by ARMYGUY 2005-09-09 12:06||   2005-09-09 12:06|| Front Page Top

#10 I wonder if lawyers are going to be able to turn this into liabilitiy and wrongful death claims against Nagin and the city of NO. The law suits are going to keep the lawyers busy one decase for each month of clean up.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-09-09 12:22||   2005-09-09 12:22|| Front Page Top

#11 Perhaps this is more to the point,
Ray Nagin: School Buses Not Good Enough
Posted by Gir 2005-09-09 12:26||   2005-09-09 12:26|| Front Page Top

#12 I heard one of the LSU professors (Traffic Engineer) yesterday talking on Hannity's show (this professor actually wrote part of the City's Evacuation Plan in hurricanes) and he just stated the facts (as engineers are used to doing). He claims the City (alone) had over 300 school buses AND 500 City transportation buses. Assuming you'd actually watched the storm (remember it hit Cat 5 on Saturday after lunch, I believe, even going up to 175+ mph SUSTAINED winds at one point Sat.) and called for evacuation using all of those resources, you could've saved THOUSANDS! I believe someone here at RB did the #s before on the school buses, but here's my rough estimate:

* 450 City buses (assume 90% function; probably low, but this is New Orleans) at say 40 people/bus = 18,000 people (you could probably pack more in if you wanted).
* 270 School buses (again, assuming 90% are functional) at say 30 people/bus (this low too, but I'm being conservative) = 8,100 people

NOW, assume you started this on Saturday. You could've made say at least 2 trips to Baton Rouge, and possibly 3, if you went on in to Sunday. Even if you just planned logistics on Saturday, and made only 1 trip to Baton Rouge (or wherever else) on Sunday, that's still 23,000+ people you wouldn't have had to pick off houses or find their corpses now in their attics. At 2 runs to Baton Rouge (1 round trip, and the 2nd, you'd just stay in Baton Rouge), you could've evacuated 46,000+ peeps. And, that's not including all the cab drivers, etc. that may have helped out. Even if the Mayor's estimate of 20% of the City staying behind (approx. 100,000 people) was right, we all know that not 100% of those people COULDN'T find a way out. Say even 75% for some reason couldn't get out...to save well over 50% of them, just by using the City's own buses would've been impressive. It's even come out now that the Director of the Nat'l Hurricane Center called the Mayor at home on Saturday and told him point blank what this would do to "his" city (and that's when we pretty much knew it would hit N.O. directly or close enough to breech the levees, probably) and even probably told him to evacuate RIGHT THEN! Mayor didn't call for "mandatory" evacuation until Sunday, I believe, only 18 hours before the storm hit.
Posted by BA 2005-09-09 12:35||   2005-09-09 12:35|| Front Page Top

#13 Nagin: Beyond stupid.
Posted by Bobby 2005-09-09 12:46||   2005-09-09 12:46|| Front Page Top

#14 Between the Bus fiasco and the banning of the American Red Cross and Salvation Army, it's almost like Nagin coulda been a Cable TV* executive.

Oh yeah, that's right.

* ...you will be rescued sometime between Monday at 8AM and Friday at 5PM. Or not. Thank you for using NOLA's customer response section.
Posted by Dave 2005-09-09 12:58||   2005-09-09 12:58|| Front Page Top

#15 GREAT analogy, Dave!
Posted by BA 2005-09-09 13:05||   2005-09-09 13:05|| Front Page Top

#16 LOL Andy, Robert Crawford! Unbelievable. Just a thought, but it would have done a lot to calm the kids to have their families driven to safety by their own SCHOOL BUSES, and would have served to build a sense of community overall. Just a thought . . .
Posted by ex-lib 2005-09-09 17:04||   2005-09-09 17:04|| Front Page Top

#17 Is it just me or is NAGIN saying GREYHOUND, NOT DUBYA, ACTUALLY CAUSED THE HURRICANE, ORDERED THE LEVEES BLOWN, AND ORDERED A POLICY OF GENOCIDE AGS NO'S BLACK SURVIVORS, ala AL SHARPTON and GUMBO-GATE!???? * Reminds me of when HOMER SIMPSON asked a one-eyed new bartender for a simple clean glass, and the bartender replied, "HERE YOU ARE, YOUR MAJESTY" while sarcastically genuflecting. As a private company that is also a national carrier, theres no law that forbids GREYHOUND, etc. from voluntarily participating or contributing to local emergency planning or operations, free at cost or discount, nor when requested by public authority. NAGIN is basically saying that NO either couldn't afford any type of city contingency plan, or that it wasn't a priority even in the best of times,thus da plans are useless before you even start. Lest we forget, parks full of milyuhns and zilyuhns of long-haul Trailer-Trucks and Vans were also flooded out - methinks between death by drowning or starvation, and riding an uncomfortable 40'+ commercial container to safety, the container will win. Iff soldiers or civies can ride Army Deuce 1/2's, civies can ride industrial Trailer Trucks and other vehi-i-i-ckles.
Posted by JosephMendiola 2005-09-09 22:59||   2005-09-09 22:59|| Front Page Top

#18 Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.

I know that this is a tragedy, but Hizzoner the Mayor's statement cracks me up. Sorry.
Posted by Alaska Paul">Alaska Paul  2005-09-09 23:22||   2005-09-09 23:22|| Front Page Top

23:47 Cheaderhead
23:44 Captain America
23:43 AJackson
23:43 ed
23:42 ed
23:39 OldSpook
23:37 IT Insider
23:35 Bomb-a-rama
23:35 Jan
23:35 ed
23:28 Jan
23:28 Tony
23:26 Bomb-a-rama
23:22 Alaska Paul
23:08 Alaska Paul
22:59 JosephMendiola
22:45 Phil Fraering
22:36 DanNY
22:34 Rafael
22:20 JosephMendiola
22:14 AJackson
22:11 Alaska Paul
22:08 Alaska Paul
22:00 JosephMendiola









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