American Daughter Media Center - Katrina's Timeline
Katrina's Timeline - from the time it turns towards NOLA, until Thursday night.
It's not pretty, folks. It's all down there, from the forecasts to the newscasts. There was warning. There was time. There just wasn't the will.
People died because the mayor dithered. Not Bush. People died because the mayor tried to wing it, ignoring his disaster plan. Why? Who knows. We do know there was a disaster plan, we do know that school buses were part of it. We know the buses went unused while Nagin called fro Greyhound to send down 500 of them - while he had well over 500 buses to hand sitting unused.
A disaster plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on if it isn't followed. Might as well fold it into paper airplanes and throw them at the hurricane for all the good it'll do.
Update: Damn. This was published on July 25th. Found over at Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: New Orleans's Hurricane Evacuation "Plan"
So, don't even try. Looks like that was the new disaster plan...In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind; Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult By Bruce Nolan, Staff writer, New Orleans Times-Picayne, July 24, 2005:
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.
Well, that'd explain why the buses weren't used...
J.