Judging from what I have read so far, I would say that FEMA dropped the ball with hurricane Katrina, but I don't think they even had it to begin with. Senator Mary Landrieu criticized them for not using trains at their disposal:
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csa | 11:44 AM |
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Amtrak and 360+ buses (not to mention the school buses) could have evacuated a whole lot of people. Thanks for sharing the info. Some of the idiots in my village are actually suggesting that transit is to blame for the tragedy. Their argument: if everyone had cars, they could have evacuated.
Clearly from your post, transit could have been the solution, it just wasn't utilized.
Did you see Randal O'Toole's recent commentary on New Orleans? If only New Orleans had not spent so much money on public transit and had instead bought cars for everyone, that city wouldn't have so many people stranded in the flood waters, he said:
http://www.ti.org/vaupdate55.html
Of course, it doesn't answer the question of why existing, available resources were not used for evacuation before the situation became really dire.
Randall O'toole's commentary is a case of someone being blinded by their own ideology. In theory, if everyone had a car they would have a way to evacuate. But there would be nowhere to park them; the roads would be so congested (even with all lanes going out) that evacuation would be terribly difficult and would take much more time; you assume that every one has the money to keep a car fueled and in working order; in non disaster times New Orleans would be a much more congested and less livable place; etc.
O'toole has rewritten this same argument for universal car ownership instead of transit many times, and many people have refuted his arguments. You can probably find this back and forth on planetizen.com
All quiet on the Transit front?
