Never Flooded Buses Not Used

Wizbang has an exclusive. We all remember the 600 buses Mayor Nagin failed to use, or even move over to the Super Dome, where he was sending people who did not evacuate New Orleans, before the levees broke and flooded their parking lot. But last night Wizbang found an even more tragic picture in Google Maps.

On the left is the Superdome. On the right is the OTHER Orleans Parish bus barn (the Algiers Bus Barn at 801 Patterson Ave. [Document Link]), less than 5 miles from the Superdome. These buses never flooded and the route from there to the Convention Center and the Superdome was open the whole time. The hurricane blew in Monday morning and this picture was not taken until Wednesday. They did not finish evacuating the Superdome until Saturday.

To put a fine point on it... These were not private buses. They did not belong to a neighboring parish. These buses belonged to Mayor Ray Nagin. He could have used them at any time. He didn't.

Here's a close up:
Your count may vary, but I counted roughly 60 buses in the yard and presumably they filled the bus barns with buses to protect as many as possible. The 2 buildings could have held probably another 50 buses. But for the sake of argument let's say both buildings were empty. 60 buses X 75 people per bus is 4500 people per load. (you could put 100 per bus, but I'll be generous)

From the Superdome to Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge is about an hour with no traffic. They could have moved 4500 people every 3 hours. (time to load and unload) Or in other words, they could have had the Dome empty by sundown the day after the storm.

Once at Tiger Stadium they would have had water and sewerage and food would have been much easier to get to them. Mayor Nagin didn't need to wait for the Feds to "get off their asses." All he needed to do was use the resources available to him.

And Nagin said the reason he did not let the Red Cross bring food and water to the SuperDome is that it would have encouraged people to stay there, and he wanted them to evacuate. Well if he had used these buses they would have been evacuated to Baton Rouge, and the Red Cross could have brought them food and water there.

ZP blogged Nice going Mayor Nagin, blaming the President instead of rescuing people. And he laid off 3000 city workers today. He should have been one of them

tee bee blogged Paul at Wizbang blows the cover off of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's best-kept secret: The man couldn't find a bus if it ran him over on the only highway out of town still left open. Since people are getting psyched about indictments of politicians, Nagin should be indicted for felonious and fraudulant misrepresentation of an elected official.

Bloggledygook blogged Where Have All The Buses Gone? - Uh oh. Mayer Nagin is not going to like this one bit. Paul at Wizbang finds some buses in New Orleans that weren't underwater at all. In fact, they were waiting in Algiers and were under the mayor's control.

Eric blogged Dr. Rusty says this goes beyond incompetence.

The Anchoress says Nagin should have resigned.

If you’re using Google Earth, fly to coordinates:

29 degrees, 57 minutes, 15.09 seconds North
90 degrees, 02 minutes, 51.42 seconds West
Eye altitude around 500 feet