Copied this off The New York Times Forum

[Taylor (imported)]

Leaders lead and the imcompetent blame others for their own shortcomings.

They will never learn. Where there are incompetent state and local leaders there will be recurring disasters, there will be unnecessary deaths and injury.

I am sympathetic toward the victims but NOT toward the incompetent and corrupt that should bear responsibility.

Buses couldn't take them very far? That makes it even worse. With the number of school buses and city buses they could have evacuated everyone in a couple of days to at least 100 miles away. They didn't.

My friends, there is even worse to come in our lifetimes. There WILL be a nuclear event. There WILL be a biologic event. There WILL be more disasters. The better you prepare now the less you bleed in the future.

[radar (imported)]

Leaders lead and the imcompetent blame others for their own shortcomings.

<snip>

Buses couldn't take them very far? That makes it even worse. With the number of school buses and city buses they could have evacuated everyone in a couple of days to at least 100 miles away. They didn't.

Those buses that Softee said "would not have handled many people" hold about 50 or so people each. There were over 400 of them, and the mayor had 24 hours, just from the time he declared mandatory evacuation, to get people out of the city and away from harm. Houston is only a 6 hour drive from New Orleans. In 18 hours, two loads of people could have been evacuated, three if they'd only taken the people as far as Port Arthur, and asked the military to transport them the rest of the way.

Numerically, at 50 per bus and 400 buses, that's 20,000 people per trip! Conceivably the mayor could have evacuated at least 40,000, and as many as 60,000 people before Katrina made landfall. More, had he started as soon as the disaster area was declared. But he didn't. Instead, he sent them to the Superdome, and then state officials prevented the Red Cross from supplying those people with food, water and hygeine kits, at a time when the levees were still intact.

My friends, there is even worse to come in our lifetimes. There WILL be a nuclear event. There WILL be a biologic event. There WILL be more disasters. The better you prepare now the less you bleed in the future.

Indeed. Wise words. If this disaster is any indication of our peparedness, then God help us.

[Blaise (imported)]

How many buses were there? I had no idea that the city had that many. Wow.

Operation Hurricane Pam, a game simulation of the storm, happened last year. That simulation was why the hospital authority got its work in order.

Few other authorities seem to have learned from that game play. I really believe that we have seen an immense moral failure of government at all levels to care for poor people. I may be wrong. However, I wonder.

One would think that Michael Brown, Michael Chertoff, Mayor Nagin, and Governor Blanco, at the least, would already have committed suicide. They all sat in their ditty boxes and let the poor die.

[An Onymus (imported)]

You get the feeling from looking at what happened, that public officials, both in Louisiana and elsewhere, were playing the percentages--no major hurricane had hit New Orleans, and the likelihood of a big hurricane impacting the city, seemed remote. Then Katrina actually struck the city, and the mayor, the governor, and others got caught.

I didn't realize before the publicity derived from the hurricane, what a poverty-stricken place New Orleans actually was. Considering how much should have been done to safeguard the city from flooding, and for taking care of people if a flood occurred, it is striking how little was actually done. The city itself apparently didn't have the resources to do much to protect itself.

One thing to remember--managers, as a group, both public and private, aren't really idea men and women. Their job is to follow certain policies and keep things running efficiently. Often, when faced with an unfamiliar situation, they seem either to freeze up or to panic, because there is no cut and dried policy line to follow. As for Mr. Bush, you get the impression that he didn't really understand what was going on, until Air Force One flew over the flooded and wind-destroyed areas on his way back to Washington from Texas.

[Blaise (imported)]

Former United States Senator John Breaux said today during an interview on public radio that the chance of a storm of that magnitude hitting the city was one out of a hundred. He said the congress would not fund all that the Corps of Engineers proposed doing and could do.

Remember 2/3 of the United States drains by New Orleans. This is a national not merely a local problem.

Were there no oil and chemical industry in Louisiana, we would be, I have heard, poorer than Mississippi. Distribution of wealth in the region is uneven. Some people earn good salaries. New Orleans is, however, a center for desperate wage tourist jobs. The history of poverty has deep roots, some of which relate to the migration of farm workers from Mississippi to New Orleans when farm mechanized.

Remember that Louisiana is a state that put building that expletive delete dome above maintaining and restoring its schools. Remember that New Orleans let one of the best symphonic conductors in the world leave the city rather than upset its rigid social structure. New Orleans could not attract Fortune 500 companies because it would not open its social structures to outsiders. If you look at my persona Yahoo group, you can see a photograph that tells you what kind of snits run the city.

I know that it is a bit early to blame people for failures. I want to pop off more than I have, but it is not really time for that--yet.

[Paolo]

If you've ever played "how many kids can we stuff into a school bus" for fun, you'd be surprised how many you can pack in there, especially when there's prizes involved.

Ironic that when there's life involved, not one single bus that holds 66 kids safely was ever driven out. Now the bus is a fish hotel. Makes sense to me...

[A-1 (imported)]

Leaders lead and the imcompetent blame others for their own shortcomings.

They will never learn. Where there are incompetent state and local leaders there will be recurring disasters, there will be unnecessary deaths and injury.

I am sympathetic toward the victims but NOT toward the incompetent and corrupt that should bear responsibility.

Buses couldn't take them very far? That makes it even worse. With the number of school buses and city buses they could have evacuated everyone in a couple of days to at least 100 miles away. They didn't.

My friends, there is even worse to come in our lifetimes. There WILL be a nuclear event. There WILL be a biologic event. There WILL be more disasters. The better you prepare now the less you bleed in the future.

Prophecy on the E.A. board.

No, I mean it.

Look at this. (http://livescience.com/forcesofnature/a ... bulge.html)

And this. (http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnatu ... anger.html)

And this. (http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnatu ... lcano.html)

And this. (http://www.livescience.com/php/multimed ... llowstone_ 02.jpg)

And Finally, this. (http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnatu ... 41025.html)

I suppose that after it happens then somebody will send a couple of Billion dollars to shut us up.

Follow the Money... (http://www.andyfoulds.co.uk/amusement/bushv2.htm)

A-1