That just sounds like a sensational headline lacking in context and details. For example, with Hurricane Harvey in Houston they had to weigh calling mass evacuation against the ability of the road system to handle that much traffic. It doesn't matter how many buses you have in a parking lot if they can't leave the city. I'm not saying that was the case in New Orleans, but I'm certainly not going to assume the worst from "parking lots full of empty school buses".
Honestly, is there even a known good example of how the response to Katrina should have been? Most people's complaints about it seem so shallow in their analysis as to appear a projection of their distaste for the Bush administration or the local politicians; nearly 15 years later.
Edit: Could you imagine an NTSB report on an airplane crash: "Air traffic control had three empty runways but said they had no way to land the plane! If they hadn't just whined and wrung their hands, perhaps everybody would have survived that flight.."
The federal response should have been just that, a response afterwards. The efforts before Katrina hit should have been mostly the responsibility of the local and state governments with the feds helping out with the logistics of the evacuees once they were out of the path of the storm.
It was well documented by multiple investigations after the fact.
You unwittingly demonstrate the cruelty of bearaucratic thinking that is inconsequential in the face of real human disaster, ultimately leading to tragedy.
That they had an obvious resource which with proper planning (which would, of course, include lining up drivers) could have been used to evacuate large numbers of people, but which was not used at all, and was not even considered in what little prior planning the city and the state did do.
> most of them are usually part time employees with second or third jobs and probably also had their own families and problems to solve.
Um, put the drivers' families on the bus they're driving?
Again, this is the sort of thing proper advance planning will obviously take into account.
Houston is way bigger than New Orleans, but either way you obviously can't evacuate a major city in one day. Their first obvious mistake was waiting way too long to call it (of course a very easy thing to say after the fact). As I recall, Bush was calling on the mayor and governor to evacuate for a couple days before they finally did. Then there was confusion about which govt was in charge with the gov finally taking over the city then Bush taking over the state. In the mayor's defense, he never really had much power to being with, and cops were abandoning their posts so I don't know who he could have called on to get things done. And as you say, once it become national politics, it's impossible to get much objective analysis.
As for examples, the comparison was made to Cuba. A small city in a small country with an absolute dictator calling the shots. I get the impression that the previous poster wanted to criticize Bush as being dictatorial, which is ironic, since it's ultimately a lack of federal domination that everyone complains about in Katrina.
Add "And some overarching flexible framework for regular coordination-practice and preparation-funding" and this seems quite clear.
Having been through three major hurricanes and 9/11, I'm not as skeptical as you. Everything is local. If the local authorities are prepared, things will go better. The feds are backup for when things get too big to handle.
Looking back, after the initial shock wore off, the on-the-street response in the hours after 9/11 was very interesting. It was clear that NYC and its neighbors have many layers of plans for major emergencies. Do they have everything covered? Probably not, which is only logical since you can't plan for the unknown. But a good deal of faith was earned that day.
It's funny because the very idea that 'the government will save us from a big disaster' is a fairly new concept.
Some governments are 'kind of' prepared for some kinds of problems - i.e. the Swiss are prepared for some kinds of invasions, surely the Dutch have preparations for floods.
But for unforeseen disasters (the levy breach in New Orleans), it's harder and we're mostly on our own.
New Orleans is also very poor and is socially dysfunctional along a whole other set of vectors, I'll bet $100 it's pretty correlated with dealing with disaster. If it were some well run mid-sized city in New England it would have been another story. (Plus the possibility of racism which is to vague to consider in a paragraph).
Credible sources, including FEMA, predicted that one years in advance.
Check out the October 2004 issue of National Geographic:
> The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
> Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
> When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.
On the other hand, I'm not really willing to give Bush much credit here. The middle of a disaster is not the right time for pedantry.
Rich cities in california were also a dysfunctional mess dealing with fires. It was only when the same problem happened in the same places in subsequent years that they had a reasonably solid plan together and working.
They were not, and the fact was well-known in advance. Their limit was a category 3 hurricane and there had been years of passing the buck about upgrading the levees to give the city a shot.
Then Katrina happened and everyone who had passed the buck claimed that it wasn't their fault.
There isn't much centralized support can do when it is overwhelmed and the citizens at a local level are helpless/useless.
Learn first aid skills. Learn amateur radio for communication. Have backup water, food and fuel.