Hurricane Cleanup Continues

Two major hospitals in New Orleans will likely need to be replaced. The two hospitals were heavily damaged by the flooding and cannot be salvaged; they were apparently in pretty bad shape even before the storm hit.

Meanwhile, in the one story that keeps on giving, yet more undamaged buses have been revealed by satellite analysis by Paul at Wizbang and others to have been available for Mayor Nagin's use to evacuate passengers and yet sat idle.

In this case, it's 150 RTA buses:

Some 150 buses that were moved to the Poland Avenue Wharf in the Lower Ninth Ward appear to have fared well, but about 70 of those vehicles were commandeered by the police and fire departments, the National Guard, and in a few cases by individual citizens who used them to evacuate family members, friends and neighbors.

So, 80 buses remained at the facility but were never put into service in order to evacuate passengers from NOLA.

So, when Mayor Nagin was busy blasting the feds for not providing buses, did he bother to check that he had all the buses he could possibly need at his own disposal or was he too busy trying to score political points.

I think the final analysis will show that Mayor Nagin fouled up in the most foolish and foolhearty manner - open, obviously, and with so much evidence piled up that the man should never hold another public office ever again.

Paul further notes that:

This -perhaps better than any other example- shows why local officials are in charge of first response and not the feds. Local officials (ahem, the Mayor) should have known who to call. Once they knew there were busses on the wharf, they should have known they were just minutes from the Dome and the areas around the river never floods. (The convention center is also on the river and everyone knew it was fine) Locals know their area (or should) and -in any other city- can manage the response better then some bureaucrat flown in from Washington. Instead of trying to find a solution, Nagin whined that he was a victim.

If Nagin had used the resources available to him properly, he could have had the Dome evacuated by Tuesday at noon and much of the chaos that broke out in the city would have been avoided. But he didn't.

You can't get any more damning than that.

UPDATE:
Families are finally getting temporary housing in the first of many trailer parks set up by FEMA. That's great for temporary housing, but with 2 months left in this hurricane season, and the penchant for trailer parks to be hurricane/torando magnets, permanent housing needs to be arranged ASAP.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; kanye west; impeach bush; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.