Logistics of evacuation take two

This is a screed, so you don't have to read it...

Now, let's see where we were on the logistics thread earlier...

IF the mayor actually got the buses to take people out, where do they go?

Do you just dump them in Baton Rouge (which is already full of those evacuating N.O., and also was hit by the hurricane)?
Or do you go furthur?

Does Baton Rouge have enough Petrol to turn the buses around? And when you go to do your second trip, is there enough petrol to refill your tank before going downtown?

Now, remember: The evacuation occured at the end of the month. Pension and Medicare/medicaid checks come out the first of the month, and so a lot of people have no money, and lots are out of food...and medicine (Medicaid, in their wisdom, will only let you get one month's medicine at a time...luckily, it doesn't have to be on the first, but lots of people go shopping and get their medicines after their pension checks come).

So do you supply food/water for the 8 hour trip? and who feeds/shelters/treats the people?

In the heat, remember, lots of elderly will have strokes or heart attacks or collapse and die on you. Diabetics will have sugar levels going up, and minor infections will flare into major infections.
So you need doctors and medicines...

But most pharmacies don't have a lot of stock on hand...and doctors/nurses are often busy ferrying out the sick. Or caring for people injured.

The main thing to remember is NOT that N.O. didn't do anything at the local level: The main fact is that in numerous other hurricanes and Mississsippi floods, the levees held...

AND ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH EVACUATIONS KNOW THAT PEOPLE DIE DURING MASS EVACUATIONS

And the people stayed at the superdome and convention center for 36 hours and then went home.

How about why they didn't evacuate patients before the flood?
Well, again, the hospitals made it thru the previous floods and hurricanes...

So it is possible that by making that decision, instead of a much more risky evacuation, that fewer people died than would have if the government would have mandated evacuations.

And mandated evacuations mean you shoot those refusing to leave...imagine how that would play on CNNI

Now how about hospitals....
They DID transport out a lot of critical cases, as I've noted...but remember: Planes crash. I once lost a pregnant patient and her baby, and the pilot and doctor on board with her were critically injured...and remember: Gusts of wind make such things difficult...the ground level heliport was under water...and people die during transport, where it is difficult to monitor people (I lost one patient from hemoptysis during an emergency evacuation by fixed wing)...

Now, how about FEMA...

Well, I have never worked for FEMA...but you need to gather data and then figure out where to send stuff, and then figure out where is the stuff you need. Then you need to do the paperwork to order them in to there...and then THEY need to do it (remember the blocked roads, the lack of petrol, the distances involved, and that every helper left a family behind who needs that payroll check)...

And every step of the way means that there is paperwork, that needs to be filled out properly, or else in six months the press will be screaming fraud.

OK, CNNI...now, how about showing how things are really done?

The Christian Science monitor has better coverage, if you really want to see things in perspective.

And this is not a dictatorship: In America, people help their neighbor without waiting for paperwork. Such stories are not hard to find: Every small town paper has reports of this...and YOU have ignored the thousands that have done just that, and so given the US a black eye in the eyes of the international press...shame on you...