--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 9/4/05 4:11:09 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > Why didn't the mayor send these buses out to pick up the poor > > during his mandatory evacuation? > > News flash: Buses don't drive themselves. > > So neither the governor nor the mayor had a plan to rescue or > evacuate NO poor.
Oh, how odd, somehow everything else in my post must have dropped off somehow. Here it is again (I can post it as many times as necessary): ...The City was acutely aware of the problem of evacing the poor and others who couldn't get out, but didn't have the resources to do it. Even with the claims on Drudge, the reality is the City didn't have 200 bus drivers to volunteer to drive them. The young man who comandeered a school bus was great, but imagine just grabbing two hundred drivers and sending them in heavy traffic to evacuate--the number of problems involving accidents would only make a difficult evacuation harder. City resources were focused on securing the city and moving people within the city to shelters including the Superdome. An action that saved innumerable lives. During Ivan, only 1200 people showed up at the Superdome. Since Ivan, the City improved its plan and had city buses run routes for people without cars to places where other special bus routes ran people to shelters. This time, 20-30,000 people got there. If there was a mistake, it was not designating another shelter of last resort--such as the Convention Center (this would have helped additionally because there would have been some real security planned). The State and the City were acutely aware that a mandatory evacuation would still leave at least 100,000 behind. There simply is no infrastructure to solve that problem anywhere in the nation. Knowing that, the City was working to make the Superdome retrofitted in its rehab to provide exactly the kind of improvements that would have alleviated the suffering--power sources and sewage modifications. http://www.archpundit.com/archives/012870.html Evacuation Preparedness Times-Picayune (New Orleans) July 24, 2005 Sunday In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind; Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult By Bruce Nolan, Staff writer City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation. In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the city in the event of an evacuation. "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," Wilkins said in an interview. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. "But we don't have the transportation."... Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action. "The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill said. In addition to the plea from Nagin, Thomas and Wilkins, video exhortations to make evacuation plans come from representatives of State Police and the National Weather Service, and from local officials such as Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, and State Rep. Arthur Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Allan Katz, whose advertising company is coordinating officials' scripts and doing the recording. The speakers explain what to bring and what to leave behind. They advise viewers to bring personal medicines and critical legal documents, and tell them how to create a family communication plan. Even a representative of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals weighs in with a message on how to make the best arrangements for pets left behind. Production likely will continue through August. Officials want to get the DVDs into the hands of pastors and community leaders as hurricane season reaches its height in September, Katz said.... http://www.archpundit.com/archives/012862.html ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
