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.