Llama School

Fun with numbers: How to fail at pushing a media bias talking point

Dafydd ab Hugh posts in an attempt to savage a recent AP article on military recruitment.  But for someone using the "mind of a mathematician", his argument falls apart.

First, the AP article states that most believe the army needs an extra 30,000 to 50,000 troops to meet its overseas commitments, and then Dafydd says:

A quick calculation:  so our force is just too small -- we desperately need to increase it... by 3% to 5%.

Already I'm scratching my head. Three percent? That's the total increase that we need to be a powerful fighting legion once more?

No...the article said that we need 30-50,000 to meet overseas commitments.  We currently have about 18,000 troops in Afghanistan and about 140,000 troops in Iraq.  That's about 160,000 in current conflicts.  An extra 30-50,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan would increase troops in these theatres by 19-31%. 

He then notes that the Army may miss its recruitment goals by only 8.75% and is only .7% of the entire Army.  True...but that's not the point of the article.  The article notes that this is the worst shortfall in recruiting since 1979, and this demonstrates that it would be difficult to increase the size of the Army by 30-50,000 troops.

Also, he mentions that the Army has exceeded its recruitment goals over the last four months.  Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal, in June, published an article entitled To Fill Ranks, Army Acts To Retain Even Problem Enlistees.  Some excerpts:

To keep more soldiers in the service, the Army has told battalion commanders, who typically command 800-soldier units, that they can no longer bounce soldiers from the service for poor fitness, pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse or generally unsatisfactory performance. Typically such decisions are made at that level. Instead, the battalion commanders must send the problem soldiers' cases up to their brigade commander, who typically commands about 3,000 soldiers.

"Basically it is another set of eyes reviewing cases. It lessens the chance that we will separate people who might still make good soldiers," says Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Army officials say the move isn't unprecedented. The service made a similar decision in 1998, when the strong economy and lack of a clear mission left the military struggling to meet recruitment goals.

Still, some Army battalion commanders are less than pleased with the Army's decision to try to keep more problem soldiers in the service. "It is the guys on weight control ... school no-shows, drug users, et cetera, who eat up my time and cause my hair to gray prematurely," says one Army battalion commander. "Often they have more than one of these issues simultaneously."

And some battalion commanders question whether it makes sense for brigade commanders to make decisions about which soldiers can cut it and which must go because the brigade commanders have less daily interaction with the soldiers and their immediate commanders.

One commander says the growing attrition problem can be traced to a slip in the quality of new soldiers as recruiters have increasingly struggled to hit their monthly quotas. "There are guys showing up at units with physical problems or other issues who you would not have seen a couple of years ago," says the commander.

Why brag about meeting recruitment levels recently when recently, the Army has decided to lower its standards for recruitment?

Finally, Dafydd discusses reenlistment:

But among soldiers who have actually fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who therefore know what is really happening on the ground from personal experience, re-enlistment rates were met. In fact, since the goal is to retain more people than normal (to meet the goal of increasing troop strength by 30,000 -- right?), it's safe to bet that the re-enlistment goals were higher than in previous years... which means there are more veteran troops in the Army than before, which would partially mitigate the lower numbers of raw recruits.

There's an important question to ask here.  What were the re-enlistment goals?  First, we have no idea what percentage of troops were expected to re-enlist to make retention, and we have no idea if these retention percentages have changed over time.  If the retention percentage goal was high, then meeting re-enlistment has some meaning.  However, if the retention percentage was either relatively low or has decreased over time, then making this goal is less impressive.

More importantly, what number of Army members re-enlisted?  I haven't been able to find anything for 2005, and (interestingly) the Army hasn't published actual retention figures in their last four recruitment and retention press releases (see the numbers for August 2005 and note that all numbers are published except for active duty retention).

The only numbers I've been able to to find for Army retention were from 2003.  In that year, the Army recruiting goal was 76,000, close to this year's goal.  What was the retention goal?  13,833.  They made their retention goal that year with 14,599 soldiers staying.

Now we have no data for 2005, and it's possible (though highly unlikely) that the goal for this year is much much larger.  But if retention goals are similar for 2005, then making retention isn't as impressive as Dafydd is making it out to be.  In fact, these numbers highlight the need for recruitment.  7,000 non-enlistees is almost half of a retention goal of 15,000.

The AP story isn't some example of liberal media bias.  They're simply telling that the Army is having problems recruiting, an important thing to know for the purpose of seeing how easy/difficult it would be to add to our active forces. 

Brown's testimony to Rogers: Pin the blame on the locals

Michael Brown, former head of FEMA, testified in front of the House Select Committee today.  Questions by Harold Rogers (R-KY) were focused on identifying if the evacuation notices for Louisiana were issued late, and who was responsible for issuing these evacuations.  As you'll see in the post, the questions were designed to put blame on state and local officials.  But in doing this, both Brown and Rogers are deceptive regarding the evidence about the evacuation.  Most of the testimony answering Rogers' questions is below, with commentary.

ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Brown, I want to deal with the timeline -- specific timeline. And we need to be brief and terse and to the point with this.

First question, though, is how important in the greater scheme of things was the failure to evacuate New Orleans?

BROWN: Chairman Rogers, in my opinion, it was critical. The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated.

ROGERS: When did the National Weather Service forecast that storm would hit the New Orleans area?

BROWN: When did they first forecast that?

ROGERS: Yes.

BROWN: I don't know off the top of my head, Mr. Chairman. I would have to go look at...

ROGERS: Well, let me ask you this: The National Weather Service say that that took place at 4 p.m. Central Time on Friday the 26th. Would that be consistent with your understanding of what happened?

BROWN: Yes. Because we were fully activated by that time.

ROGERS: Well, that's 56 hours before the Katrina landfall, correct?

BROWN: That's correct.

ROGERS: And they were told, I understand, that this would be at least a Category 4, possibly 5, hurricane.

BROWN: I know, Congressman Rogers, that I was on those conference calls. I had separate side-conversations with Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center, just about every day, even including Sunday night prior to landfall.

So, yes, there's no reason that anyone should not know there was a potentially catastrophic 5 hurricane.

ROGERS: Was it known by you and others that the floodwall around New Orleans was only rated to take a Category 3 hurricane?

BROWN: Yes. That was a fact that came out of Hurricane Pam, that the levees may or may not hold, that the storm surge may or may not top them. They could top -- the storm surge could top the levees without breaking, and they could top and also break the levees. So we knew both of those were potentials.

ROGERS: So 56 hours before the hurricane made landfall, the National Weather Service had told you and the world, as well as the mayor and the governors, that this was a Category 4 or 5 that would flood the city. And yet was there any action taken by the local officials to evacuate the city at that time?

BROWN: There were eventually -- and I'll get you the names real quickly.

ROGERS: Well, the question is there was no evacuation order in spite of that dire warning, correct?

BROWN: That's correct.

ROGERS: All right.

At 5pm EST on Friday, Hurricane Katrina was near Key West.  The predicted path had made a major shift, now predicted to hit at the Mississippi/Alabama border, dangerously close to New Orleans.  However, at this point in time, it was still difficult to predict if the hurricane would hit near New Orleans.  At the 5pm Friday hurricane probability report, there was a 15 percent chance of Katrina coming within New Orleans.  Cities with a larger probability of being hit included Apalachicola, Panama City, Pensacola, Buras, LA, (all 17%), Mobile (16%), and Gulfport, MS (16%). 

The local government was concerned with the predicted path of Katrina, as the governor declared a state of emergency for the state on Friday evening.  But this is obviously too early for the state to call for an evacuation, considering the relative uncertainty of Katrina's path at the time. 

Back to the testimony...

Now then, on Saturday what happened, if anything, on Saturday in terms of warnings to the local officials?

BROWN: Well, I can tell you that on Saturday, our emergency response team, the National Emergency Response Team, was activated and deployed to Baton Rouge. St. Bernard Parish was briefed on the activities and the forecast. The Region Four Atlanta office was fully activated. The Region Six office was fully activated.

ROGERS: What I want to get at, what I'm driving at here is the time line of the evacuation or lack of it and how much warning time you and the local officials had to evacuate the city. That's what I'm trying to focus on here. Let's be real brief and terse on that point.

So on Wednesday, the hurricane liaison team was formed. On Thursday, you had the teleconference with state and local officials, as well as federals, about the potential. On Friday, around 4 o'clock, the National Weather Service issued a warning, Category 4 or 5 on the way. And, oh, by the way, the levee only takes a Category 3.

No evacuation yet ordered, correct?

BROWN: That's correct.

ROGERS: Now, on Saturday -- the director of the National Hurricane Center testified last week that he personally called all three governors and the mayor of New Orleans -- personally called. He said he had only done that one time in his life. I think it's 35 years of service.

He personally called them to give them warnings that this was the real thing. Are you familiar with that?

BROWN: Yes, sir, I am, sir.

ROGERS: And was the evacuation then ordered by the governor and the mayor?

BROWN: No. The evacuation was not ordered until sometime Sunday before noon.

ROGERS: And that was only after the National Weather Service advisory said that Katrina was a quote, potentially catastrophic, quote, storm?

BROWN: That's correct. That's correct.

OGERS: But the evacuation was not ordered until what time on Sunday?

BROWN: I know that I tried to reach the governor numerous times Sunday morning. Finally...

ROGERS: What time did he issue the warning?

BROWN: Pardon?

ROGERS: When did he order the evacuation?

BROWN: I recall sometime between 11 and 12 o'clock on Sunday.

ROGERS: On Sunday?

BROWN: On Sunday.

ROGERS: And then the landfall took place Monday morning?

BROWN: Monday morning, about 8 o'clock.

Brown is reporting the time of the mandatory evacuation in New Orleans, which was ordered on  Sunday at noon.  But a strongly worded voluntary evacuation was called for by the Mayor on Saturday afternoon.  Furthermore, other at-risk parishes had issued voluntary or mandatory evacuation notices earlier on Saturday.  Here are some examples:

9AM - Mandatory evacuation for St. Charles Parish
Saturday - Mandatory evacuation for Plaquemines Parish
Saturday - Voluntary evacuation for Jefferson Parish, mandatory evacuation for Grand Isle, Crown Point, Lafitte, & Barataria
Saturday - Voluntary evacuation for St. Bernard Parish.  T
Saturday - All residents must evacuate by noon on Saturday.

Other counties such as Lafourche and Terrebonne had also issued evacuation notices on Saturday.  To state that evacuations weren't ordered until Sunday in New Orleans or elsewhere in Louisiana is blatantly wrong.

Now an obvious question to ask here is "Why didn't the Mayor call for mandatory evacuations earlier?"  Louisiana evacuation plans called for the coastal areas (such as in Plaquemines Parish) to be evacuated before other areas.  In past evacuations, traffic jams caused by evacuations out of New Orleans and other areas clogged the roadways, making it very difficult for citizens from more coastal parishes to evacuate.  So plans were made to call for the evacuation of coastal areas first, followed by more inland areas such as New Orleans.  The Mayor was aware of this, and referenced this on Saturday before the hurricane hit.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, in a joint afternoon news conference with Gov. Kathleen Blanco, warned residents to take Katrina seriously. Hoping for yet another near miss could be deadly, he said.

“This is not a test. This is the real deal,” Nagin said. “Things could change, but as of right now, New Orleans is definitely the target for this hurricane.”

The mayor said he would stick with the state’s evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a heard start.

“We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving — right now, as a matter of fact,” Nagin said.

So why the focus on the "late" evacuation?  To pin it on state and local officials.

ROGERS: Now, under federal, state and local law, and the Constitution, and the division of powers between the federal and state governments, who has the authority to order the evacuation of a city or a state or an area?

BROWN: Well, I can tell you the federal government does not, and the state and locals do.

ROGERS: Is that pursuant to -- pursuant to what?

BROWN: Well, it's pursuant to state law.

I mean, the Constitution first establishes the concept of federalism; that there are sovereign states. And the states determine how their cities are governed, through either home rule or statutory law or whatever, determine what authorities those mayors have or do not have. But that ultimate responsibility lies with the governor and with the mayor.

ROGERS: So you had no authority to order an evacuation of New Orleans?

BROWN: That's correct. And that's why my regret is is that I could not do more personally to convince them to order that evacuation sooner than what they did.

ROGERS: When did you first ask them to evacuate the city?

BROWN: We first started talking to them about that on Saturday. And I became very passionate about it Sunday morning.

ROGERS: And what was their response?

BROWN: The one time that I got through to the governor Sunday morning before the evacuation order was announced was that she was working on it and she was going into a meeting with the mayor.

ROGERS: Well, now, there was an evacuation plan in place, was there not?

BROWN: Yes.

ROGERS: And how did that come about?

BROWN: Well, between the state doing its normal planing, and then FEMA coming in with the Hurricane Pam exercise -- between those two events, they had a fairly robust plan in place.

ROGERS: So as of July '04, when the actual operation Pam took place, there was an evacuation plan in place for the city of New Orleans awaiting the order of the governor and/or mayor to make it happen, correct?

BROWN: That's correct, sir.

ROGERS: So they had a plan in place and didn't pull the trigger.

BROWN: No, sir.

ROGERS: That's it.

Now this is all true...the responsibility for evacuation lies with state and local officials.  But this information isn't being presented to enlighten.  They're being presented to spin a specific story: state and local officials didn't call for an evacuation early enough and that this failure "was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated."  This point can be debated.  But not based on the "evidence" discussed by Brown and Rogers at the hearing.

Mayor Nagin and the School Buses FAQ

This post is a summary of the evidence and arguments surrounding the "flooded school buses" story after Hurricane Katrina.  I'm posting this summary as an example of how people can take a picture, surround it with poor argumentation and minimal research, and weave a story of local incompetence that (at least in this case) doesn't exist.  The school bus meme was used as a prime example of a screwup at the local level.  However, an examination of the evidence shows that the Mayor's decision not to utilize the school buses saved lives.  What follows is a basic history of the school bus story, followed by answers to various arguments conjured up by those pushing the local incompetence story.  If others have evidence/arguments to present that are not covered in this post, feel free to put it in the comments.

How did the school bus meme start?

The focus of the media and various blogs on the school buses likely started with the dissemination of various photos showing a large parking lot filled with school buses in about 2-4 feet of water.

These pictures were picked up on various blogs. The first posts were at Junkyard Blog, with a post entitled Local Screwup: Bus-Ted!. A few days later, this was followed up with posts on The Corner, Michelle Malkin, Captain's Quarters with multiple posts, and other sites. The story was then discussed in a Wesley Pruden editorial in the Washington Times, and claims in this story (for instance, that there were 2,000 flooded school buses) were repeated by Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, and other media outlets.

In most accounts, the school buses were used as a symbol of local incompetence in the wake of Katrina. However, there is ample evidence that the Mayor’s decisions regarding utilization of the school buses saved lives.

Was there an evacuation plan?

The evidence for an evacuation plan comes from three sources, the Southeast Louisiana Emergency Operations Procedure, the New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan and two articles in the New-Orleans Times Picayune.

Both the SE Louisiana EOP and the New Orleanw plan mention evacuation, but are short on details regarding how the evacuation would be carried out. Here are the relevant excerpts from the SE Louisiana EOP regarding evacuation and the usage of public transportation:

Part II: B, Assumptions

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

Part III: Evacuation, B. Concept of Operations

1. Precautionary/Voluntary Evacuation

a. Risk Area Parishes:

7. Local transportation resources should be marshaled and public transportation plans implemented as needed.

8. Announce the location of staging areas for people who need transportation. Public transportation will concentrate on moving people from the staging areas to safety in host parishes with priority given to people with special needs.

2. Recommended Evacuation

a. Risk Area Parishes:

2. Mobilize parish/local transportation to assist persons who lack transportation or who have mobility problems.

3. Mandatory Evacuation

a. Risk Area Parishes:

4. Designate staging areas and other facilities as last resort refuges. People at these locations who cannot be evacuated in time to avoid the storm will remain and take refuge in the designated buildings.

5. Assist persons with mobility limitations to find last resort refuge. Mobilize all transportation resources and request assistance from the state as needed.

 

There may have been plans with more detail regarding the use of public transportation in evacuation, but none on the web that I am aware of. However, extra details regarding these evacuation plans can be found in reporting in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. To our knowledge, two recent articles discuss the evacuation plan. First is from the May 31^st, 2005 Times-Picayune entitled Preparing for the Worst: Officials rework evacuation strategy. The relevant excerpt regarding evacuation is posted below:

Busing planned

The busing evacuation plan is a work in progress. Details likely will remain murky until time to implement the plan, because officials don't want people heading to a particular place expecting a ride. Those without transportation need to be planning now how they'll get to safety, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Joseph Matthews said.

"It's important to emphasize that we just don't have the resources to take everybody out," Matthews said.

He said the viability of the bus plan depends on whether Regional Transit Authority and New Orleans public school officials find enough volunteer drivers.

New Orleans is in an unusual situation, compared with neighboring parishes, because more than a quarter of its residents have no personal transportation. According to the most recent census data, about 134,000 out of the city's 480,000 people are without cars, said Shirley Laska, director of the University of New Orleans' Center for Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology.

If the buses are used, Matthews said those on board will have to be patient.

"Lets face it," he said. "In time of an emergency, if we wait until the new contraflow plan is put in effect to begin this plan, it will take anywhere from four to six hours to get people as far as Baton Rouge.

"And we have to arrange for things as simple as finding strategic points along the route for bathrooms and water, for security and medical personnel to accompany the convoy in case of medical needs."

Matthews said the plan is to take people from 10 pickup points throughout the city to one or more shelters north of Interstate 12.

City officials also are cooperating with the American Red Cross, Total Community Action and the University of New Orleans in developing a faith-based hurricane response system that includes a buddy system for evacuation.

Our second source is from the July 8, 2005 Times-Picayune article entitled RTA buses would be used for evacuation. The relevant excerpts:

New Orleans has plans to deploy scores of buses from the Regional Transit Authority to evacuate people without transportation if Hurricane Dennis threatens the city, City Hall said on Thursday.

Such an effort would be both unprecedented and, apparently, far short of the city's needs.

At the same time, it appears emergency planners' efforts to establish church-led private transportation networks have fallen flat.

...

If events warrant evacuation, the Regional Transit Authority will contribute part of its 364-bus fleet to an effort that will end at undisclosed shelters north of Lake Pontchartrain,  RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said.

Not all the buses will be available, she cautioned. "We might be talking about as many as 100," she said.

The agency would hold much of its fleet back to continue operating on city streets until forced to shut down by a city curfew. The number of evacuation buses is further limited by the number of volunteer drivers who sign up to drive them away, she said.

Even if the entire fleet was used, the buses would carry only about 22,000 people out of the city -- far short of the 134,000 people estimated to be without cars in a recent University of New Orleans study.

Why didn't they follow the plan? And what did they do in lieu of the plan?

One reason they may not have followed the evacuation plan is because the planned shelters were north of Lake Pontchartrain. This region was right in the center of the predicted path of Hurricane Katrina. This could have been a factor in not using city resources to evacuate.

But more importantly, Mayor Nagin stated that the city didn’t have enough drivers for the evacuation. From an interview with Mayor Nagin on Larry King Live:

KING:  A couple other things, mayor.  Why weren't buses utilized?

NAGIN: Well, you know, we had the buses, you know, high and dry as we thought they would be. There was our normal procedure. It had ever flooded in those areas but Katrina was an awesome storm, so when the storm hit, it started to flood and when 17th Street Canal burst, there was no way to get to the buses and that's why they were flooded but even if we had gotten to the buses, Larry, drivers were an issue. We didn't have enough drivers.

We barely had enough drivers to get people to evacuate to from the homes to the superdome as a shelter of last resort. For the people that probably would have need buses, we would have needed about 1200 buses and drivers. And we don't have those kind of resources.

If they didn’t have enough bus drivers, why didn’t they ask non-bus drivers to evacuate the city?

There are too many risks, including theft, vandalism, etc. But the risk of an accident is likely the largest concern. If there was a bus accident during an evacuation, backups would increase making evacuation even more difficult.  Major backups would discourage evacuation by people in the city, as well as limiting the ability of people on the road to get out safely.

What did the city do instead?

They focused their efforts on moving citizens to shelter before the storm hit.  Here is a report from the Salt Lake Tribune:

As many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport, so the city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome.

The Baltimore Sun also reports that city officials used sirens and bullhorns to round up as many people as possible into the shelters, presumably using city buses.

And a first person account from Metafilter:

That's not entirely correct. While it is true that there was no clear plan of evacuation (at least to the everyday citizens of New Orleans), on-the-fly plans involving buses and the Superdome fell into place quickly. Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, clear days and even though police drove around with bullhorns, begging people to at least head for higher ground, many people never even attempted to evacuate or seek shelter.

As ridiculous as it sounds to...well, let's just say it...more educated people, SOME PEOPLE JUST WON'T FUCKING LEAVE.

They won't. They just won't. The believe that they are better off in their own hands and they know if it gets TOO bad, the rescuers will come to them.

I know people involved in the evacuation effort and NO ONE was denied help if they asked for it.

Couldn't they use the drivers they had to evacuate the city instead of taking them to the Superdome?

Evacuations started in earnest on Saturday morning, with the mandatory evacuation coming on Sunday. In an optimal situation, buses would be able to make one trip a day in and out of the city. Any one bus could be used, at most, twice. However, a bus in that same time period could be used a much larger number of times to move people from points in the city to the Superdome. Focusing city efforts on moving people to the Superdome would likely save many more lives

Was the Superdome in the plans? 

The Superdome was not specifically mentioned in the City of New Orleans plan posted online. However, this passage makes it likely that the Superdome was part of the evacuation plans.

"Last Resort Refuges and Super Shelters are described in specific SOPs covering their applications."

But wasn’t the Superdome horrible?  Wouldn't evacuating the people have been much better?

The conditions were less than ideal (though the reports of mass chaos and murder seems to have been exaggerated).  However, considering that there weren't enough resources to evacuate the city, the Superdome was a much better place to be than out in homes during the hurricane.

But the Superdome couldn't withstand the winds, correct?

The Superdome was built to withstand 200-mph winds.  However, there were questions regarding whether wind patterns due to newer high-rise buildings would cause major damage to the Dome.  However, using the Dome seemed to be a necessary risk because other planned shelters could not either withstand high winds or were in flood prone areas. From a WWL-TV article after Hurricane Ivan:

On the surface, the Superdome seems like the most logical choice for an emergency shelter, and city officials are leaning in the Dome’s direction for future shelter needs instead of schools.

“Anything above a category two makes them pretty much ineligible because they’re not wind resistant enough and they're in flood prone areas it looks as though we're pointing to the Superdome in being reinforced with the proper back up system as shelter of last resort,” said Nagin.

It appears a facility as large as the Dome could hold up in hurricane conditions but Bill Curl, spokesman for the Superdome, says that is yet to be tested and if there is no other choice then maybe the Dome could serve as a shelter.

“Only in dire emergencies. The Superdome is not a shelter,” said Curl.

According to Curl, the assumption that the Superdome can withstand hurricane force winds is just that: an assumption. He says more analysis is needed to determine what the Dome can actually withstand because previous wind studies have become somewhat irrelevant since they did not factor in the new high-rise buildings around the Dome.

But the Superdome didn't have any food.

This misconception may be due to the Mayor instructing citizens to bring 2-3 days worth of food. However, there is ample evidence that the city/state did have provisions for those in the Superdome.  For example, here is a CNN interview with Lieutenant Cowan of the Lousiana National Guard from during the hurricane:

COSTELLO: OK. I want to talk about the Superdome and the people inside. Can you tell us what it looks like inside there with that many people?

COWAN: Well, I haven't actually been inside the Superdome to see, being in Baton Rouge.  But from what I hear, there's -- it's a little crowded, but there's ample room for everyone. It seems to be going all right with the 30,000 or so people that are there.

COSTELLO: What kinds of things have you prepared for these 25,000 people?

COWAN: Well, you want to make sure that you have adequate needs as far as food and water go, make sure that they have facilities for the restroom, and somewhere for them to sleep. It's not going to be the Hilton, but at least it's a safe place that they can stay and not have to worry about the storm.

COSTELLO: Do they have enough water? Could -- were you able to bring in enough for them?

COWAN: Oh, yes. There's plenty of water, and we actually have more water staged and ready to go once the storm does pass through. We have the capabilities with our coordination with the state police, local law enforcement agencies, to where we can get out on the roads with our National Guard vehicles loaded down with the supplies, and get them down to wherever they need to go relatively easy.

COSTELLO: What kind of food have you provided for these people?

COWAN: Typically, we have the military meals ready to eat, the prepackaged food that the Army guys eat. It's healthy and tasty, and it's easy to package and easy to transport.

Why didn't they move the school buses to higher ground?

What higher ground? In the worst case Category 4-5 scenario, both the Pontchartrain and Mississippi river levees fail or are overtopped, leading to flooding in the entire city. In order to get buses to high ground, one would need to get them out of the city.

And getting buses out of the city would involve a long trek in evacuation conditions. It’s not simply a matter of moving buses over the border. Buses can’t be evacuated south, since those areas are also prone to flooding. Evacuating buses to the north or northeast involve going over long causeways which would take hours to traverse. Travelling west on I-10 involves passing miles of marsh before even hitting dry land. Simply moving the buses to dry ground would take hours and use bus drivers, which were a limited and valued resource. And this doesn’t take into account other issues (such as where to put the buses, how to secure the buses, etc).

Mayor Nagin and the Buses, Part IV

Just watched Mayor Nagin on Larry King Live.  Here's the relevant part of the interview where he talks about the school bus meme (and Amtrak):

     KING:  A couple other things, mayor.  Why weren't buses utilized?

NAGIN: Well, you know, we had the buses, you know, high and dry as we thought they would be. There was our normal procedure. It had ever flooded in those areas but Katrina was an awesome storm, so when the storm hit, it started to flood and when 17th Street Canal burst, there was no way to get to the buses and that's why they were flooded but even if we had gotten to the buses, Larry, drivers were an issue. We didn't have enough drivers.

We barely had enough drivers to get people to evacuate to from the homes to the superdome as a shelter of last resort. For the people that probably would have need buses, we would have needed about 1200 buses and drivers. And we don't have those kind of resources.

KING: And people forget the first day of the storm, you thought you beat it, right? Before the levees broke. New Orleans was safe was the headline in the paper.

     NAGIN:  That was probably the biggest mistake that we set that signal out to the world that we were okay.

     KING:  Yeah.

NAGIN: And then the levee broke and then, you know, the rest is history. And so I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that were made.

     KING:  Did Amtrak offer to send trains?  There was a report somewhere.

NAGIN: You know what? I heard the other day and that was the first time that it ever had come to my attention. We were looking around for ways to evacuate people as we were bringing them to the Superdome. And I had one of my staff members that call Amtrak and they basically told us every train booked and the earliest to get somebody out was late September so that was not an option for us.

With the buses, it looks like they simply didn't have enough drivers to take use the extra buses.  There was a limited number of drivers, barely enough to evacuate people to the Superdome.  I'm guessing that the Mayor had a choice...use these drivers to get people out of the city (one trip) or use them to get people to shelter (multiple trips).  Considering the resources he had available (i.e. a limited number of bus drivers), it's pretty clear that the smart decision was to scrap the bus evacuation plan and move as many people to safety as possible.  People can throw up those pictures of flooded buses as much as they want, but the Mayor's decision saved lives.

Mayor Nagin and the Buses, Part III

In all of my searching through the archives of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, I completely missed an article entitled RTA buses would be used for evacuation.  Here are some relevant passages:

New Orleans has plans to deploy scores of buses from the Regional Transit Authority to evacuate people without transportation if Hurricane Dennis threatens the city, City Hall said on Thursday.

Such an effort would be both unprecedented and, apparently, far short of the city's needs.

At the same time, it appears emergency planners' efforts to establish church-led private transportation networks have fallen flat.

...

If events warrant evacuation, the Regional Transit Authority will contribute part of its 364-bus fleet to an effort that will end at undisclosed shelters north of Lake Pontchartrain, RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said.

Not all the buses will be available, she cautioned. "We might be talking about as many as 100," she said.

The agency would hold much of its fleet back to continue operating on city streets until forced to shut down by a city curfew. The number of evacuation buses is further limited by the number of volunteer drivers who sign up to drive them away, she said.

Even if the entire fleet was used, the buses would carry only about 22,000 people out of the city -- far short of the 134,000 people estimated to be without cars in a recent University of New Orleans study.

First note that these are RTA buses, not school buses.  As mentioned before, the school buses were under the jurisdiction of the county and were not a part of any city evacuation plans.  Secondly, notice where they were planning to evacuate citizens: north of Lake Pontchartrain.  Areas north of the lake, such as Slidell, were some of the hardest hit regions of Louisiana.  It seems likely that evacuation planners would scuttle such a plan due to the risks entailed in evacuating people to another risky area.

Evidence that hospital plans WERE followed in New Orleans

Captain Ed is claiming that "the city did nothing to evacuate the hospitals, which (again) comprise part of the New Orleans EOP."  But looking at the SE Louisiana EOP and various accounts, there is evidence that the city/state did follow their plans with regards to hospitals.  First, let's look at what the SE Louisiana EOP says about hospital evacuation.  The key grafs are here:

Part I: General
D. Organization and Assignment of Responsibilities
6. Dept. of Health and Hospitals (DHH): Coordinate the evacuation and sheltering of people who have special medical and health needs.

p 14
Part II. Situations and Assumptions
B. Assumptions
14. Hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, etc. will have pre-determined
evacuation and/or refuge plans if evacuation becomes necessary. All
facilities will have approved Multi-Hazard Emergency Operations Plans
as mandated by the State of Louisiana, Dept. of Health and Hospitals
(DHH). Before operating permits are given to homes/hospitals,
emergency precautions are to be taken, such as the placement of
emergency supplies and equipment (i.e., generators and potable water)
on upper floors.

PART III: Evacuation
B. Concept of Operations:
3. Mandatory Evacuation
c. State of Louisiana
4. Direct the evacuation and shelter of persons having
mobility limitations, including persons in nursing homes,
hospitals, group homes and non-institutionalized persons.

Note the mention of evacuation AND shelter.  Also note that all hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, etc. MUST have pre-determined evacuation and/or refuge plans.  Places that be used for refuge MUST have emergency precautions taken, "such as the placement of emergency supplies and equipment (i.e., generators and potable water) on upper floors." 

It is impossible to evacuate an entire hospital before a hurricane.  One can't just throw a bunch of intensive care patients in a bus and send them off to a shelter.  There is little time to get people out, and a high risk in transporting people that are in a critical condition.  So the EOC mandates that hospitals be able to operate under emergency conditions (hence why generators can't be on the ground floor in New Orleans).

This then brings up two questions.  First, were there any patients that were evacuated before the hurricane?  Here is an excerpt from an interview on Thursday, September 1st with Sharon Howard, assistant secretary of Louisiana's Office of Public Health:

What kinds of patients are still in the hospitals at this point?
The people still in there are your critical patients. When we were doing the evacuation we had to make decisions about who to evacuate, and so the people who were in the hospital were the people who couldn't move. That makes the situation extremely dire. They've gotten them up as high in the buildings as they can get.  These people are decompensating [deteriorating] so the staff is just trying to keep them alive. They were already critically ill, now they're getting worse.

From this it seems like they previously evacuated the people that could move out of the hospital.  Since this interview is on Thursday and there was major flooding on Tuesday and Wednesday, it's likely that the evacuation she's referring to was before the hurricane.  As noted, the people still in the hospital were people that couldn't move.

Also note this report on a hospital evacuation before the hurricane came ashore:

The three hospitals operated in New Orleans are hospitals within hospitals that are leased from two other acute care providers. The 37 licensed bed hospital located in Chalmette was evacuated on August 27th in anticipation of the hurricane and likely suffered substantial damage from the hurricane.

Note that this one story hospital in Chalmette was completely evacuated before the hurricane.  It also looks like people that could move were evacuated from the larger hospitals.   The people that are left are people that can't leave.  With the limited notice from a hurricane, it's nearly impossible to evacuate people in intensive care.  Knowing that, hospitals have plans to ride out storms with portable generators, etc. based on the multi-hazard emergency operations plan.  Note these comments from Louisiana health officials:

The hospitals are currently running on minimal power and that is complicating their treatment, Guidry said.

He said patients were better off staying where they were before the hurricane rather than trying to evacuate, but now the rising water from a canal embankment breach is forcing them to move.

'I don't think you had a choice. I don't think you could take the chance' of evacuating them before Katrina came ashore yesterday. 'They had a better chance of staying where they were than getting on the road," Guidry said.

...

Guidry said there are probably 2,500 patients stranded in the 40-plus hospitals in the New Orleans area that are still open. All are running on generators.

Richard Zuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, said his firm has scaled back operations around the state to help move what he said may be 2,000 patients in the New Orleans area. The process could take four to five days, he said.

Most of the hospitals in New Orleans have a four- to five-day emergency operation plan in place for the aftermath of hurricanes, Zuschlag said.

But with rising water in the city, officials are starting to look for ways to empty the city's hospitals of critical patients, Zuschlag said.

In conclusion, there's no evidence that the plan wasn't followed here.  Smaller hospitals with limited emergency capabilities were evacuated, and larger hospitals situated with second floor generators were equipped to ride out the storm because of the risks in evacuating patients before the storm.  Once it looked like the flooding was going to be long-term and/or generators broke, hospitals then evacuated.

FEMA's response was timely?

In defense of FEMA, many have noted that FEMA is only responsible 72 to 96 hours after the tragedy hits.  I'm not sure that this is the case.  For example, Walter Maestri, chief of the Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Center has repeatedly said that they "were told we would be on our own for 48 hours and then the calvary would arrive, but it didn't".  Regardless of whether this 72-hour window is part of FEMA policy, it should be noted that FEMA's poor response extended well outside of this time frame.  This is especially true parishes such as St. Bernard and Plaquemines, where the damage was even worse than in New Orleans.  Here are a few examples noting the poor federal response, taken from the WWL-TV blog and/or the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

3:14 P.M., Friday, 9/2 - St. Bernard Parish officials say that FEMA has not called them yet...five days after the storm.

From Sunday (5:52pm), 9/4, in St. Tammany Parish:

Meanwhile, public officials and private citizens alike throughout the parish continued to rail at the slowness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get disaster relief teams into the area.

Parish President Kevin Davis, who sent 500 gallons of gasoline to keep the Slidell emergency operations center generator operating, was clearly frustrated. “They keep saying they’re coming, but they’re not here,” he said on a radio show.

Slidell Mayor Ben Morris was the most blunt. “FEMA has been seizing private fuel trucks and a Cleco helicopter, but you know, I haven’t seen a single person I can talk to,” he almost spat in a profanity-laced tirade.
“If they don’t open the fuel supply chain soon, we’re going to lose everything we’ve gained” since the storm.

The following sources are more recent, referring to the slow federal response.

From the Tuesday (9/6) WWL-TV blog:

3:26 P.M. - Gretna Mayor Ronnie Harris: I think FEMA must’ve disconnected their phone lines. It took them five days to get into Gretna with food and water. FEMA did great things when they were by themselves, but (combining them with) Homeland Security seems to have gummed them up.

5:30 P.M. - CHALMETTE (AP): In St. Bernard Parish, fatigued and frustrated authorities say they'll match their Hurricane Katrina devastation with anyone else's.

"If you dropped a bomb on this place, it couldn't be any worse than this," said Ron Silva, a district fire chief.

They said while federal help came slowly to New Orleans, it's even been slower to their outlying area of some 66,000 people on Louisiana's southeastern edge.

"It's Day 8, guys. Everything was diverted first to New Orleans, we understand that. But do you realize we got 18 to 20 feet of water from the storm, and we've still got 7 to 8 feet of water?" Silva said.

In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the storm to help, St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.

"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams s hould be here faster than that," Stone said.

And a few more notes on St. Bernard's and Plaquemines Parishes.  First from the WWL-TV blog:

10:50 A.M. - St. Bernard Parish President Jr. Rodriguez -  obviously the federal government was overwhelmed by this, but they shouldn't have been.

.....

10:47 A.M. - Rodriguez: We had Canadian mounties here by the second day, and the government wasn't here. We had no communications, and I think if you don't hear from an entire parish in two days, you go see what's going on.

10:46 A.M. - Rodriguez: We all knew this (a catastrophic hurricane) was coming at some point, but we didn't know it was coming now. The magnitued of this overwhelmed the local, state and federal government, but the federal government shouldn't have been. They'd been told it was coming for a long time and it happened just like they said it was.

Melancon invites President Bush to tour devastation

"People in Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard Parish and other affected area in the Southeast Louisiana's 3rd District need to see that the federal government has not forgotten them."

"Today, I invited President Bush to join me on the ground in these parishes as soon as possible - ideally tomorrow - as we work to rescue survivors and get supplies where they are desperately needed."

"The fact is that 124 hours after Katrina hit, Plaquemines Parish still had received little or no contact from FEMA. Other parishes in southeast Louisiana went days without hearing from federal officials - that's unacceptable."

"Thankfully, Louisiana State Senator Walter Boasso and local officials, along with the Louisiana National Guard, Louisiana State Police, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and other entities were able to reach folks on the ground. Together, we worked to put support efforts in motion and coordinate efforts to convey specific needs in the area to those who could take action."

The federal response in New Orleans was less than adequate.  But what was even worse was the federal response to the lower profile parishes of Southeast Louisiana.

Is Mayor Nagin a leftist/liberal/etc.?

Well, he endorsed Bobby Jindal (R) in the last gubernatorial campaign against Blanco (D).  Who did he donate money to? 

Billy Tauzin (R) - $2000
George W. Bush (R) - $1000
John Breaux (D) - $1000
Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D) - $1000
Landrieu (D) - $1000

(Data below from the FEC individual contributor database.)

NAGIN, C RAY
NEW ORLEANS, 
COX CABLE

TUBBS-JONES, STEPHANIE     VIA STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES FOR US CONGRESS
	04/16/1998	1000.00	98033561579

NAGIN, C RAY
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70112
COX COMMUNICATIONS CABLE SYSTEM

BREAUX, JOHN B     VIA JOHN BREAUX COMMITTEE
	06/30/1997	1000.00	97020092946

NAGIN, C RAY
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70122
COX COMMUNICATIONS

BUSH, GEORGE W     VIA BUSH FOR PRESIDENT INC.
	03/30/1999	1000.00	99034441530

NAGIN, RAY
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70122
COX COMMUNICATIONS

TAUZIN, WILBERT J II     VIA BILLY TAUZIN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE, THE
	06/23/1999	1000.00	99034684807

NAGIN, RAY
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70122
COX COMMUNICATIONS INC

TAUZIN, WILBERT J II     VIA BILLY TAUZIN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE, THE
	09/27/2000	1000.00	20036254872

NAGIN, RAY
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70122
COX COMMUNICATIONS

LOUISIANA SENATE 2002
	12/31/2001	1000.00	22020050919

Can anyone find....

Does anyone out there know of archives that have transcripts or saved audio/video streams of WWL-TV broadcasts, starting around August 27th/28th?  If so, let me know in the comments.

A reply to Captain Ed

Over at Captain's Quarters, I responded to a post where I believe he unfairly characterized the local government's response to support the general idea that Nagin didn't follow his own plan.  His response (in the post) is in the blockquotes below, along with my response (also found in the comments section of the original post):

*******

Ed, Thanks for the reply.  Let me respond to what you wrote:

Llamaschool, in the comments, thinks that I left out two points in which the locals responded to avoid being disproven in my thesis. However, if all that the state and local authorities did was to fulfill two points of their EOP, that definitively shows that they didn't accomplish hardly any of the rest of it.

First, I pointed these out because they are specific omissions.  You said that the city/state didn't direct the evacuation of people in nursing homes, when there is evidence of this happening.  Second, your omission of the "last resort refuge" passage is key.  It demonstrates that the focus of the evacuation plans change from getting people out of the city to getting people to shelter.  The Mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation on Sunday morning (9am) and he opened the Superdome for evacuees Sunday morning (8am).  He definitely followed the plan. Also, it's clear that the state/local authorities didn't just fulfill two points on the EOP.  Some examples of things fulfilled (and all of these are in the EOP, Part III B.) include declaring a state of emergency (1.a.1) alerting FEMA that they need assistance (1.c.5), putting National Guard on standby (1.c.3), mobilizing police for traffic control (see contraflow initiatives, 3.a.3, 3.c.3), instructing people to leeave (3.a.2), etc.  There are more...but I don't have the time or desire to go through the entire EOP.  What wasn't done was using buses to evacuate people from the city on Saturday (before and during the recommended evacuation stage)...and it's not clear that this part of the plan was even implemented for New Orleans (see the article entitled Preparing for the Worst in the May 31st, 2005 Times-Picayune). 

As far as police exhorting people to go to the Superdome, that isn't what the response plan called for. First, that relied on people to self-evacuate, when the response plan clearly indicated that the evacuations should have buses ready for that kind of movement for those who could not self-evacuate -- the poor people that Kanye West and others accused Bush of "murdering" last week. The Superdome was meant as a last-resource refuge, after the buses got the people out of the city. And that evacuation was to take place before a hurricane hit the city, not three or four days afterwards.

Police exhorted people to go to the Superdome, not only by directing them to the Dome, but also by directing them to buses that took them to the Dome (see the linked article in the Salt Lake Tribune).  It wasn't "self-evacuation"...the city used RTS buses to get people to Superdome.  And this may have been part of the actual, current plan.  The Mayor said, "Our plan was always to use the buses to evacuate to the Dome as a shelter of last resort, and from there, rely on state and federal resources” and the May 31st, 2005 Times-Picayune article is consistent with this possibility.

Go back and read the plans, Llamaschool. It is not a restaurant menu where one selects one from Column A and two Column B and declares their responsibilities at an end. The state and local authorities are responsible for implementing their entire plan, and they faild miserably at doing so.

It's obvious that my point wasn't that the state fulfilled a few things on the plan, therefore they're absolved of all responsibility.  It's clear from looking at the plan that they enacted a lot of it from what we know.  The burden of proof is on you to show that they didn't follow it, not to assume that they only implemented the two things I listed in my earlier comment.   Your only point in this post showing that they didn't follow the plan is in the use of buses in the precautionary/recommended evacuation stage (Saturday). But there is evidence from the May 2005 Times-Picayune article that this part of the plan wasn't currently implemented.  (Also note that the supplemental plan on the web is dated 2000, so we don't even know if that's the most updated version of the plan.) Again, it's important to critically analyze the role of the local, state, and federal government in this disaster.  But it needs to be based on the evidence at hand, and it absolutely cannot be biased against ANY entity; local, state, or federal.