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Home Front: Economy
Amtrak, Nagin Argue Over Rescue Train
2005-09-13
Officials at Amtrak say they offered to run a special train out of New Orleans that could have evacuated hundreds of residents hours before Hurricane Katrina struck - but city officials turned the offer down.
"We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm's way," Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black told the Washington Post on Sunday. "The city declined." The train had room for "several hundred passengers," the Post said. But it left loaded only with railroad equipment - destined for higher and drier ground.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Sunday he had no idea what Black was talking about. I don't know where that's coming from," he told NBC's "Meet the Press." "Amtrak never contacted me to make that offer. As a matter of fact, we checked the Amtrak lines for availability, and every available train was booked, as far as the report that I got, through September. So I'd like to see that report."

Nagin also offered a new explanation as to why he didn't press hundreds of city buses into service to aid in evacuation efforts. "Sure, here was lots of buses out there," he told "Meet the Press." "But guess what? You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome."

The New Orleans Democrat had a different excuse tens days ago, when asked about using his city's bus fleet. "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," he told WWL Radio. "I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans." Asked about the buses two days before his "Meet the Press" interview, Nagin told NBC's "Dateline": "I dont know. That is question for somebody else."
Posted by:Steve

#43  I really do wish you the best and would be happy to help you, personally, if possible.

.com, that's classy.
Posted by: Mike   2005-09-13 23:18  

#42  Lol, Thx, Matt. I just won a bottle of Bailey's with that response, lol. It'll last me a year or two, but that's beside the point, heh. Offer stands - let us know if we can help.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 21:32  

#41  .com, I didn't even begin to take offense at your comments -- maybe I didn't read 'em carefully enough :-)

Em, trust me, my seething skills are professional grade.
Posted by: Matt   2005-09-13 21:22  

#40  Heh, the Mayor would prolly be this tough biatch cookie whacking me on the shoulder as I type, heh.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 19:44  

#39  And the cops wouldn't wear bowling shirts...except on League Night, of course!
Posted by: Seafarious   2005-09-13 19:29  

#38  Why not?
With .com in charge the ladies of NO would never be mistaken for anything else...
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 19:19  

#37  Com - be careful, your self characterization might qualify you for the upcoming position of democratic New Orleans mayor.
Posted by: Captain America   2005-09-13 19:03  

#36  TGA-- There's always more to the story, isn't there? ;)

Matt-- Look on this time as a chance to work on your seething skillz...
Posted by: Seafarious   2005-09-13 18:32  

#35  Matt - An observer (read: back-seat driver looking over my shoulder) read what I posted a few minutes ago and we've just completed a discussion (read: I was orally bashed against the wall). I sounded callous - I'm sorry. I really do wish you the best and would be happy to help you, personally, if possible. I've been "mobile" for the last, 18 yrs - no permanent location and much of it contracting with no guarantees, including having to relocate to different countries on 2 weeks notice. I was informed by my better that my situation is voluntary - and has made me a "callous prick". Prolly right. My apologies. The offer of help was personal - the lousy verbiage was not. Sorry, bro.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 18:21  

#34  New Orleans seems to be a special nutcase

The only major city a French colony.

The only sunbelt city to lose population over the last several decades.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2005-09-13 18:12  

#33  Being in the minority in a looney place like NO must be trying, indeed. I wish you and yours the best in getting your life back - wherever you decide to make a go of it. If there's anything you would have RBers do, other than donate to the AmRedCross and the SalvArmy, please let Fred know. I'm absolutely sure there are many of us who'd be willing to help. Please take care and keep us updated, if you can, on the other side of the equation - we're just voyeurs regards the trials you're facing.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 18:04  

#32  .com, oddly enough, for the first time in my whitebread life I have Official Victim Status as a Katrina refugee. I walk in to a restaurant and get a 20% discount as soon as the waiter finds out where I'm from. While I really appreciate the thought and the help, I hate the status.
Posted by: Matt   2005-09-13 17:41  

#31  I think there's more to that Seafarious' story...
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 17:32  

#30  "New Orleans seems to be a special nutcase."

You're being charitable, TGA. The difference between NO and other Big Blue Cities is merely the degree of penetration of the accepted corruption / nanny-state / entitlement / victim mentalities. For example, the comparison between the NO cleanup / reconstruction and the Boston Big Dig. Systemic Graft - same same. Merely the percentage of crooks / taxpayers and what've-you-done-for-me-lately / do-it-yourself people varies. In the Blue areas, there is machine politics, commonplace graft, professional govt crooks, career parasites, and it's all accepted as the norm by the majority. Reaction to news stories exposing it? Shrugs & cynicism. Sure, throw the dummy who got caught in jail - cuz he's so stupid he'll get others caught, too. Clean it up? Heh, you gotta be kidding. The racist charges being thrown about are a slice of the victim mentality that is both particularly a facet of Big Blue Cities and particularly offensive to rational people.

Bottom Line, in Nagin vernacular speech: Dey ain't gots no gumption, but dey gots rights. Beaucoup rights. Dey be growin on de trees in dat nanny-state. Life be sweet.

My take.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 17:22  

#29  I was enjoying the concept of being lectured on the state of my Ladyhood a block away from Bourbon Street by a man wearing a "Dick's Male Escort Service" bowling shirt, yes indeedy I was.

Posted by: Seafarious   2005-09-13 17:00  

#28  Seafarious - that means I need to run some facial matching programs on my Mardi-Gras photo collection... (heh)
Posted by: 3dc   2005-09-13 16:57  

#27  I'm a New Orleanian, and evacuated a couple of days before Katrina struck, along with about 80% of the City, and this is the way I see it based on limited information.

(1) The storm would not have done nearly as much damage as it did if the floodwall that was supposed to contain the 17th Street Canal (a key drainage canal) had not failed massively. The floodwall was new contruction under the auspices of the Corps of Engineers. What went wrong?

(2) Blanco and Nagin are both coalition builders, which is a good skill to have when you're running for office but is absolutely counterproductive in a crisis. The evacuation crisis would not have occurred if either Nagin or Blanco had asserted decisive leadership. America is not short of vehicles, and the distance between disaster and safety was just a few miles. Having said that, though, the leadership issue is fixable. If there is a design defect in the key floodwalls protecting the City, then we've got a much more difficult problem.

(3) As severe as the damage is, we've got a lot of City left to work with: the Central Business District, the French Quarter, the suburban parishes to the north and west, and some residential areas within the City proper. We are also, if I may say, a damn sight more resilient than Anderson Cooper and Paula Zahn seem to think we are. So don't scratch New Orleans off your maps just yet.
Posted by: Matt   2005-09-13 16:57  

#26  You not a lady?!?!? Someone was deaf, dumb, blind and stupid, I see.
Posted by: trailing wife   2005-09-13 16:47  

#25  Remind me sometime to tell you all the story of the time I got a lecture on whether or not I was a Lady and almost got sent to the New Orleans pokey by an undercover cop who was wearing a bowling shirt marked "Dick's Male Escort Service."
Posted by: Seafarious   2005-09-13 16:41  

#24  I'm in shock. On NPR this afternoon the reporter and the host were talking about how badly the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana jumped the shark (!!!!). Apparently there were masses of people nicely lined up for the evacuation busses that were supposed (according to the announced plan) to pick up evacuees in front of the football stadium before Katrina hit. Of course, the busses were never sent, and that's why so many people were stuck there. Also, the plan envisioned people sheltering in the stadium only for the few hours of the duration of the storm, then filing nicely back home to their flush toilets and pantries afterward. When even National Public Radio castigates the Party in power during this catastrophe, what are the odds the voters won't notice?
Posted by: trailing wife   2005-09-13 16:36  

#23  Heh
I've been in New Orleans
First thing they told me:

You got three types of lowlife here: muggers, cops and politicians.
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 16:14  

#22  I think the biggest mistake was that nobody told FEMA: "This is New Orleans. They do things differently down there."

I've suspeckted all along that TGA wasn't German. That's too close an insight.
Posted by: Shipman   2005-09-13 15:59  

#21  It's like some horribly twisted version of the moitey system some American Indian cities had.
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-09-13 15:42  

#20  For Chrissakes!
Get those people to the bus depot.
(You could get them to the Superdome, right?)
Get 60 people in one bus.
Then ask: Ok guys, who wants to drive?

Is this America or what?

It's not America. It's the New Orleans political machine. You just have to screw up and then talk about how horrible Bush and the Republicans are.

Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-09-13 15:41  

#19  Mayor Nagin still has one functioning schoolbus, but it is in Houston after one enterprising 20yr old stole the keys and high-tailed out of town, picking up 70 people of the street on his way out.

And they made it to the Astrodome before the official Exodus.
Posted by: john   2005-09-13 15:34  

#18  Darrel, a mayor should know how to deal with emergencies. But if he can't, he should have a guy in place who can.

Especially in a town like New Orleans.

Trains were "booked". Not even a German bureaucrat would have dreamt this up.

And you know how a "booked" train in Germany looks like on Friday evening?

Amtrak could have evacuated thousands, not hundreds. The infirm get the seats, the rest will stand. Millions of Germans do that every weekend. And you couldn't do that for a few hours when your life depended on it?

Bizarre
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 15:26  

#17  I wouldn't be so harsh... New York or Los Angeles are "blue", too.
New Orleans seems to be a special nutcase. Next thing I hear from Nagin will be: "Yes, but we didn't know where the keys were."
And of course nobody of all these law abiding folks would know how to start a car, let alone an old bus, without keys.
I think the biggest mistake was that nobody told FEMA: "This is New Orleans. They do things differently down there."
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 15:19  

#16  "...every available train was booked..."
What kind of a "leader" checks bookings when he ought to be commandeering the trains?

Nagin seems to be clueless. I'm guessing that the hacks who work for him are even worse. No planning, no coordination, no leadership, no thinking outside the box. No coordination with state or fed or even Red Cross. The man has an M.B.A. from Tulane University, yet he seems to be totally incompetent. Does anybody here have any insight into his record at Cox Communications?
Posted by: Darrell   2005-09-13 15:18  

#15  TGA asked: "Is this America or what?"

You've just identified the nub / hub / crux regards the difference between Red & Blue.
Posted by: .com   2005-09-13 15:11  

#14  For Chrissakes!
Get those people to the bus depot.
(You could get them to the Superdome, right?)
Get 60 people in one bus.
Then ask: Ok guys, who wants to drive?

Is this America or what?
Posted by: True German Ally   2005-09-13 15:00  

#13  Like me, for instance. I can drive a manual transmission, and a school bus has four wheels, a brake pedal, a gas pedal, and a steering column. You wouldn't want me driving your kids to school without some training, but in a 'bug out' situation, I'm betting I could drive the bus. If I crinkle a fender, so what? Given the speed traffic was moving the weekend before the hurricane, crinkle would be all I could do.

Second the motion, I've driven big and little, Busses drive like cars, most these days also have automatic transmissions.

I note as well that most of the school busses i see these days have women drivers (No woman driver joke here)

Anyone who drives could handle one in an emergency, they're not hard to drive. Just allow for the length when turning, and keep a bit farther back from whatever's in front of you.

Busses have 60 seats or so, what are the odds that out of 60 folks one knows how to drive.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2005-09-13 14:46  

#12  You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans. We barely got enough drivers to move people on Sunday, or Saturday and Sunday, to move them to the Superdome."

I had a debate on this with the moonbats at Washington Monthly. They were of the opinion that there was no way to get drivers for the buses on short notice. My point was simple: in the 25,000 or so people who could be evacuated, I bet you could find 500 who could, on short notice and in an emergency, drive a school bus for 100 miles.

Like me, for instance. I can drive a manual transmission, and a school bus has four wheels, a brake pedal, a gas pedal, and a steering column. You wouldn't want me driving your kids to school without some training, but in a 'bug out' situation, I'm betting I could drive the bus. If I crinkle a fender, so what? Given the speed traffic was moving the weekend before the hurricane, crinkle would be all I could do.

Cheez. You think creatively on the spot to solve problems. I don't think Mr. Nagin knows squat about that.
Posted by: Steve White   2005-09-13 14:25  

#11  Mebbe he couldn't afford to pay the bus drivers time-and-a-half to stick around and drive?

RC - three ways to fail a levee: Overtopping, which erodes the support on the dry side (the current favorite); bad materials or design (not likely - the Corps usually watches that stuff verrry closely); or leakage under the levee, which causes softening of the support and collapse, generally attributed to poor maintenance (which the Corps also pays attention to)or could also be poor design/construction. My money's on overtopping.

Not that the Corps is perfect. I worked on a project adjacent to a levee and told the Corps, "You were aware that somebody did some work over there and damaged your floodwall?"

Well, they were not, but it wasn't a very big hole....
Posted by: Bobby   2005-09-13 13:40  

#10  New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says the hurricane-devastated city is bankrupt and is scrambling for loans

Better not count on any "Loans" I wouldn't lend the City a cent.
The way it usualy goes, you get promises, then the debt gets delayed untill either forgotten or a "Resolution" is passed by the city absolving the debt.

Better hope for Federal help. (Oh wait, you pissed in that pot already)

"Bad Boys, Bad Boys, whatcha gonna do"
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2005-09-13 12:42  

#9  
However, Nagin was emphatic state and federal officials would not railroad through city reconstruction until it had passed city muster. "I don't want anybody outside of New Orleans planning nothing as it relates to how we're going to rebuild this city without us signing off on it," Nagin said.

Steve:

Just wants his piece of the action

Certainly. It's a time-honored tradition.

There was an interesting post over at ProteinWisdom on some speculation that the levee breaks were not due to overlapping, but failure of the materials. Maybe someone was skimming on the concrete contract?
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2005-09-13 12:36  

#8  You can't find drivers that would stay behind with a Category 5 hurricane, you know, pending down on New Orleans.

See, Mayor, here's the thing -- those bus drivers? They'd have been in the FRONT of the bus. They'd have been the FIRST ONES out. They really wouldn't have had to "stay behind", unlike the people you abandoned in their stead.

But, hey, I guess the bus drivers have a tougher union.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2005-09-13 12:33  

#7  This will make the Big Dig look like Sunday School...
Posted by: tu3031   2005-09-13 12:28  

#6  Here's his latest moment in the sun:
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says the hurricane-devastated city is bankrupt and is scrambling for loans to pay its employees through the end of the year. "Technically today we're out of cash," Nagin told reporters in Baton Rouge. "The city is bankrupt ... We have no money."
He said the city spent its last available cash last week on city employee payroll and was seeking bank loans, federal assistance and other means of financing to continue paying its bills and staff, the New Orleans Times Picayune reported Tuesday.

However, Nagin was emphatic state and federal officials would not railroad through city reconstruction until it had passed city muster. "I don't want anybody outside of New Orleans planning nothing as it relates to how we're going to rebuild this city without us signing off on it," Nagin said.

Just wants his piece of the action
Posted by: Steve   2005-09-13 12:26  

#5  Glad to see the Railroad has a plan, Now that you mention it i've noticed a huge multi-axle Heavy Hauler railcar parked on a siding in Pensacola is missing. (Too big and heavy to wash away)

Makes sense that they'd haul it out of danger for later use, bet it's getting used right now.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2005-09-13 12:25  

#4  How can someone be mayor when he and his family now lives in Dallas?

Oh, never mind, we are talking about New Orleans.
Posted by: Captain America   2005-09-13 12:02  

#3  Amtrak, definitely.

Two trains originate in New Orleans every day: the Crescent which goes to NYC and the City of New Orleans (the one the song's about) to Chicago. The Miami-Los Angeles Sunset also goes through NO. On any given day, there will be enough equipment (diesels, passenger cars, mail cars) sitting in NO to make up the consists for that day's City and Crescent plus a few spare cars and maybe a diesel or two as "protection" in case something on one of the three trains breaks down.

The last train out was run to get this equipment out of the flood zone. It probably had a capacity of more than a thousand people, particularly if people were put in what is normally "nonrevenue" space (lounge seats, dining tables) and baggage cars. Amtrak's "booking" wouldn't apply to this train because it's not a regular revenue run. There's no legitimate reason why it couldn't have carried people.

Also, IIRC, New Orleans Union Terminal is within walking distance of the Superdome.
Posted by: Mike   2005-09-13 11:50  

#2  Antrak vs. Nagin?
Tough call here, folks...
Posted by: tu3031   2005-09-13 10:46  

#1  Nagin needs to crawl back into a hole.Every time he opens his mouth STUPIDITY EXOUDS!!!!!
I still can't beleive he is actually a mayor!! Good ol' PASS THE BUCK!!
Posted by: ARMYGUY   2005-09-13 10:44  

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