Captain's Quarters:
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Section III-B-V lists the tasks assigned to the various city government offices in the event of a hurricane catastrophe. The Mayor has three tasks: to initiate the evacuation, to retain overall control of the emergency operation, and then to authorize a return to the evacuated areas. The city's Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) reports to the mayor and must coordinate with the NOPD, the state OEP, and the regional transit authorities to:
* Supply transportation as needed in accordance with the current Standard Operating Procedures.* Place special vehicles on alert to be utilized if needed.
* Position supervisors and dispatch evacuation buses.
* If warranted by scope of evacuation, implement additional service.
So the failure to order the buses out of their yards wasn't some failure of imagination on the part of Nagin and New Orleans. It isn't a case of the city not understanding the scale of what a Cat-4 storm could do to the city. According to New Orleans' own emergency plan, those buses should have rolled at least as soon as the mandatory evacuation order was given on Saturday, if not when the voluntary evac order came earlier. The city's OEP failed to carry out this crucial part of the emergency-response plan, which is why so many of the poor, infirm, and just plain stubborn citizens got stranded when the levees broke.
And did the city anticipate the amount of people that would get left behind? Apparently so, and designated shelter for 100,000 of them. Curiously, the Superdome does not appear on this order....
Did these shelters remain open, and did they have the resources on hand to provide food and water for 100,000 people? Did the decision to select these locations take into account the probability of massive flooding due to potential levee failure? Most importantly, if the Superdome had no plan for sheltering citizens during a general evacuation order -- and apparently had no provisions to do so -- why did New Orleans stack its citizens like cattle there during the early hours of the hurricane?
Many people have jumped to the conclusion that because the response in New Orleans has produced such a bad result, the underlying reason must have been a lack of planning. Had this document been followed and the city trained to react in accordance to it, it would have produced a far different result than what we see today. How often did city officials review this plan? Did they train to it, as required in the first section? When was the last time they ran drills against this plan?
It sure looks like no one in charge in New Orleans knew of this plan's existence. They certainly skipped over the part where they had the primary responsibility to take care of their own citizens. New Orleans residents should ask themselves why Nagin failed to follow his own disaster planning, instead of sitting on his rear and waiting for the feds to bail him out.
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