The spin that the White House continues to catapults out of
its mists still amazes me. We continue to hear how the City of New Orleans
failed its people because it could not get them all out. We don’t hear about the
80% of the town that was evacuated, just the 20% that was not.
Within that 20% look at some who were not evacuated;
Ambulatory care patients, inmates, hospitals and nursing homes. Those are the
ones that complicated evacuation ten fold. They just don’t hope in a car or bus
and go. They require special care to get evacuated.
I write this, not as a blogger, but as someone who has a
vast deal of knowledge into emergency situations. I have received training from
FEMA and served on three separate fire departments. I can safely tell my readers
this; the evacuation level they did achieve was remarkable.
One image that continues to flow through the media is the
flooded school buses. People are asking why they were not used. One key thing
that comes into play when evacuating using school buses is who will drive them.
You can not throw anyone behind the wheel for risk of numerous accidents that
would have increased the casualty count. New Orleans streets were already grid
locked with a mass exodus from the town. You need competent drivers to operate
those buses, and then you still would be looking at the ambulatory care
patients.
Another consideration to make is where to take all the
people. The convention center and Superdome were already at capacity. The
further from town you take them, the longer you have to wait for that
transportation to return. It is a catch 22 if there ever was one. Consider the
fact that neighboring towns were also facing the same wrath that New Orleans was
facing. They had their facilities being used to that means taking people even
further to evacuate them.
There is talk that the city had implemented an evacuation
plan over the past few years and even sent a CD out to its citizens about it.
The problem is simple; evacuation plans are made but there is no way of testing
them. Imagine the complaints any city council would hear if towns decided to
start running evacuation drills like schools run fire drills. Not only would it
open an opportune moment for the criminal element, but it would disrupt the
lives of American’s who already are over worked. The fact is simple. Evacuation
plans are written in an office and tested when disaster hits.
Next time you hear some right wing pundit echoing the RNC
talking points that New Orleans should have evacuated everyone stop and think
about what I have written for a moment. Take time and call your city and ask
them about their own evacuation plans. Many are out of date. Many do not take
into consideration routes that are unusable for construction. Hospitals, jails
and nursing homes are also the black eye to many. How do you remove all those
that need special care and need to be moved by ambulance? Ambulances become a
scarce thing in an evacuation. They also have to put a priority on accidents
that occur in a mass exodus, in order to keep the arteries out of town flowing.
The truth is that the right is spinning more and more blame
onto the state and local officials because they are afraid to take
responsibility for their own blame. This was the first real test of President
Bush’s Department of Homeland Security, and they have failed. I commend Mayor
Ray Nagin in doing something that no one else has done in this country. He
evacuated 80% of a major city in the face of danger. That is something
unprecedented and when New Orleans is back on its feet as a viable town, he can
look back on what did go wrong and improve upon that. How many other Mayor’s can
say they can evacuate 80% of their city that quickly? Call yours and find out.