Katrina Coverage

From this Nov. 10, 1996 Baton Rouge Advocate article (pay link):
it was [Marc] Morial's get-out-the-vote teams that won the day for Landrieu, President Clinton and Orleans Parish Leader Harry Connick…
For instance, when the management team got word at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday that a GOP tracking poll showed Jenkins ahead, it was time for an instant […]

This thread will contain examples of "liberals" trying to explain why the school and NORTA buses weren't used to evacuate the city.
Can't Keep Quiet:
All together, maybe 30,000 people could have been evacuated using school buses. Maybe. Trust me, that’s being really, really generous. It’s also leaving at least 70,000 people stranded in New Orleans. At […]

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.

The Newsweek article How Bush Blew It accuses our leader of having surrounded himself with sycophantic slags, among other sins:
…When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up […]

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 […]

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 […]

This one was posted on Sep. 2 and has been updated with information, counts, etc. As requested here, I'd really like to find a USA Today-style summary of how many there were, where they were, and what went wrong.
UPDATE: Here's yet another long schoolbus thread. It also discusses the priority Hyatt evacuation.
9/19/05 UPDATE: Here's another […]

NewsMax reminds us of this bit from mayor Ray Nagin's impassioned 9/1 interview on WWL radio:
"I need 500 buses, man," he told WWL. "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here."
Nagin described his response:
"I'm like - […]

Apparently, they weren't used because… all the New Orleans Public Schools drivers had evacuated the city. At least, that's what this completely unconfirmed report says:
I sent an email to Alvarez and Marsal (business managers of New Orleans Public Schools) and asked them why they did not make the school buses available to evacuate the citizens […]

The following Executive Order (PDF file) is dated Sep 1:
…WHEREAS, there is an immediate need for mass transportation to move citizens to shelters and other safe locations from disaster areas; and
WHEREAS, given the current exigent circumstances, buses are the most reasonable and practical mode of mass transportation to move our citizens to safety;
NOW THEREFORE I, […]