Katrina Coverage

Congress wanted FEMA to create an evacuation plan for New Orleans as early as eight years ago. Instead, the money ended up going to a study of a bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, and that study had very little to do with an evacuation plan. ("Money Earmarked for Evacuation Redirected").
The exact twists and turns of the […]

WASHINGTON — The government should have pre-positioned more sandbags and helicopters in the New Orleans area before Hurricane Katrina struck so that repairs to broken levees could have started sooner, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.
"In retrospect I would say yes, we could have, we should have, in anticipation of this," […]

For all you law nerds, a copy is here.

U.S. Reps. Tom Davis and Henry A. Waxman sent a letter to Chertoff concerning a contract FEMA made with Innovative Emergency Management, Inc. (IEM).
IEM was to conduct a three-stage "Southeastern Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan", and those fine - albeit very "liberal" want the missing two stages of the plan. The first stage is the now-infamous […]

A partial transcript from Sunday's Meet the Press is here. Russert asks Nagin about his ventures into race-baiting and asks why the schoolbuses weren't used.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu said the reason the flooded schoolbuses weren't used is because of… the Bush administration.
"Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a […]

Here's an excerpt from the "National Response Plan" (PDF file):
Pursuant to HSPD-5, the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for coordinating Federal operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. HSPD-5 further designates the Secretary of Homeland Security as the “principal Federal official” […]

The Houston Chronicle mentions the flooded schoolbuses and NO's disaster planning here:
…The mayor's mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out.
City officials had 550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at their disposal […]

Here are some plans, saved for future reference:
Federal Response Plan: Emergency Support Functions (Details who does what)
State Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) - 2005 (Microsoft Word .DOC format - 4.7 MB)
EOP Supplement 1a - Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation & Sheltering Plan (Adobe .PDF format - 478KB
EOP Supplement 1b - Southwest Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation & Sheltering Plan […]