WP: Pre-Katrina Emergency Plan for Elderly Faulted

Pre-Katrina Emergency Plan for Elderly Faulted
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; Page A07


Louisiana officials did virtually nothing to prepare to evacuate poor, sick or elderly people as required under a state emergency plan adopted months before Hurricane Katrina hit, according to newly released documents.

State Transportation and Development Secretary Johnny B. Bradberry told Senate investigators that he was assigned the task in April, months before the Aug. 29 storm. But his department had no buses or drivers to execute the mission.

"We have done nothing to fulfill this responsibility," Bradberry said, according to a transcript of a Dec. 21 deposition obtained by The Washington Post. "We put no plans in place to do any of this."...

***

Anticipating 100,000 New Orleans residents might be left behind, state officials spent hours "agonizing" over how to move them in a joint exercise months earlier involving a hypothetical "Hurricane Pam" striking southeast Louisiana, according to a transcript of a Jan. 6 statement by Dolph Diemont, a U.S. Department of Transportation official.

In the end, hundreds of New Orleans school buses were left idle in flooded parking lots after Katrina because their drivers fled. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and Mayor C. Ray Nagin have said the Katrina evacuation was much more successful than expected, but they faulted the federal government for not swiftly delivering help....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013001339.html

I thought Bush actually cared about people...
:sarcasm:

required to stay behind and drive un-airconditioned school buses.

they were having too much fun ignoring Blanco's pleading phone calls.