DEM 145 BUSSES COULD HAVE GOT THE 250,000 REFUGEES OUT OF HARMS WAY IN JUST 17 DAYS

Note: latest bus count, which includes rapid transit buses is: 1,400 plus; plenty to get 125,000 people out in one run.

The school bus myth: I know, 400 145 school busses set aside to evacuate New Orleans residents just sat there and people died. People like Malkin think that all the mayor had to do was call in the 400 145 bus drivers and things could have rolled.

There is a difference between driving kids to school over city streets and driving refugees over hurricane ravaged roads. The training for this type of driving is intense and requires a different license (in most places, maybe Louisiana allows learner's permits for all I know). Can you see the line of scumbag lawyers just waiting to sue over the use of untrained drivers if there was the inevitable accident?

So the busses sat because....

OK. 400 145 school busses seating 50 (school bus limit) means that 20,000 7,250 people out of 250,000 could have been transported to......... Where? Nobody had any place planned ahead of time in which refugees could be taken. Let us suppose that somebody figured that 100 miles to the North might do it. How long would it take to cover the 100 miles through highways clogged with passenger cars headed in the same direction? From what I've seen of the creeping traffic I'd say eight hours would be minimum. OK, so the hundred miles back to New Orleans could be covered in two hours, which means that drivers have been driving for ten hours. Allowing them to drive another ten right away would almost guarantee terrible accidents (and law suits) so there would have to be another 400 145 trained drivers at the ready.

It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that 400 145 busses could transfer 250,000 people 100 miles---a moronic assumption---in 17 plus days of 24 hour per day driving. So that settles that. The best of the forecasters (Loy) had New Orleans as a potential target four days before it hit. The Mayor is such a moron that he bought and set aside the busses in the first place. Late email informs me that there were only 200 buses. So 12 days. WTF. And how cities like Baton Rouge could possibly absorb a quarter million people.....

Later Add: Sondrak has exact count of busses at 145. So reduce the above figures to 17 days......