New Orleans had contracts with bus companies to do evacuations?
Tags: fema, ray nagin, school buses, universitiesThe Loyola University Hurricane Emergency Plan (effective August 1, 2003) is available here or in this cached page, and it contains this:
Limited bus transportation is available to evacuate those resident students who are unable to evacuate on their own. Loyola can only evacuate approximately 150 remaining residents. The City of New Orleans and other agencies contract commercial bus carriers to evacuate hospitals, nursing homes, retirement communities, etc., and those providers will not normally reserve busses for the university to transport college students.
In the comments, please post additional information on this. What happened to the contracted buses? Are these the buses that were used to transport people to the Superdome, the shelter of last resort? What type of evac was done of Loyola?
See the last comment here, reporting on the on-the-scene reports from "ColdChef":
While it is true that there was no clear plan of evacuation (at least to the everyday citizens of New Orleans), on-the-fly plans involving buses and the Superdome fell into place quickly. Saturday and Sunday were beautiful, clear days and even though police drove around with bullhorns, begging people to at least head for higher ground, many people never even attempted to evacuate or seek shelter…. I know people involved in the evacuation effort and NO ONE was denied help if they asked for it. So, yes, while the plans were lacking and they relied heavily on self-preservation, there were alternatives. Alternatives that were, for whatever reason, ignored.
And:
The local nursing home was taking elderly refugees from New Orleans and they needed help unloading them when they got there…. Five large tourbuses from New Orleans showed up with at least fifty patients on each. For the next four hours we carried these old folks off the buses, put them into wheelchairs and brought them inside.
And, see this.
And, refering to a different university:
Edwards was one of about 400 Xavier students who weathered the storm on campus while waiting to be rescued. "I did not evacuate. I originally thought that the school had an evacuation plan for us, so I stuck around until the last minute," Edwards said. "That's when I learned there was no plan."
He was in a seven-story dormitory that lost parts of its roof in the fierce storm. The students, staying on the third and fourth floors of the building, waited for help for nearly a week.
On Thursday morning, the New Orleans Police Department arrived on boats to rescue the students.
(Originally via this)
