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Sep. 13th, 2005 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidiI'm having issues with my DailyKos account and can't post what I had hoped to have as my first diary there today, so I am posting it here instead. Please feel free to tear down my sourcing, because I really hope that the right-wing-wind-tunnel isn't so vile as to spread a rumor without a shred of basis, and give it so much traction that Tim Russert ended up posing it as a question to Mayor Nagin.
There's been a lot of discussion on winger-blogs and "news" sites like NewsMax about how Amtrak purportedly offered trains to Mayor Nagin before the hurricane, or possibly after, and OMG he refused them and didn't take advantage of that wonderful opportunity to get people out of town. Nagin was asked about this on Tim Russert last Sunday and he said that he was never made aware of such an offer. I assumed for a few days that, well, possibly FEMA didn't transmit the offer, or if it was made ahead of time, again, perhaps some underling didn't pass it on, and it's even possible, I guess, that Nagin was lying on Russert's show.
But when an anonymouse came at me regarding a reply I made on someone else's LJ today and posted, "amtrak
offered to run special trains to get people out of New Orleans and was turned down", I wanted to see if it was possible to get to the bottom of it, and find out whether Amtrak had made such an offer, and if so, when.
So here's what I found:
The Associated Press reported the night before Katrina hit that "Sasha Gayer tried to catch one of the packed Amtrak trains out but couldn’t. So she walked back to the French Quarter, buying a few supplies on the way and then stopping at one of the few bars open on Bourbon Street." This implies to me that the Amtrak trains in New Orleans on Saturday and possibly on Sunday were full of people evacuating the city for points north, west and possibly east, and that there was no additional capacity on the trains to be offered, whether gratis or for a cost, to the residents of New Orleans.
As the article predates the hurricane and any arguments of responsibility to any individuals or agencies, I think we can all be convinced of its truth that the Amtrak trains were "packed".
Now, the second article is harder to find corroboration for, but I'll throw it out here anyway.
2theadvocate, the website of channel two of Baton Rouge, quoted Mayor Nagin on September 1 as saying that the train tracks resembled "pixie sticks" after the hurricane and flood. This implies to me that the trains would not have been useful or viable as a means of evacuating those left in the city, and for that matter, anyone trying to evacuate that way would have had to travel to the train station, but luckily, as I understand it, there is a train station within a quarter mile of the Superdome, which does imply that at least a portion of the train tracks at the station near the Superdome were both nearby, and underwater.
Oh, and that article in the 2theadvocate? It's got a nifty little contemporaneous summary of Nagin's post-flood evacuation plan:
So those of you who say the mayor refused offers of school busses? I guess it's *possible* that he was *lying*, but let's use Occam's Razor on that little query, and see what we get.
So what do you think now? Do you think that Amtrak made an offer of trains galore, to evacuate the throes in the superdome and at the convention center, and said offer was refused for some trite and silly reason, or because the mayor was just such a huge fuckup?
Or do you think the offer may not have ever been actually made at all?
If anyone knows of any place where Amtrak officials are quoted as making that offer, and where said articles/posts are dated before, say, September 8 or 9, please let me know, because it's possible my conjecture is entirely wrong.
It is *possible*...
There's been a lot of discussion on winger-blogs and "news" sites like NewsMax about how Amtrak purportedly offered trains to Mayor Nagin before the hurricane, or possibly after, and OMG he refused them and didn't take advantage of that wonderful opportunity to get people out of town. Nagin was asked about this on Tim Russert last Sunday and he said that he was never made aware of such an offer. I assumed for a few days that, well, possibly FEMA didn't transmit the offer, or if it was made ahead of time, again, perhaps some underling didn't pass it on, and it's even possible, I guess, that Nagin was lying on Russert's show.
But when an anonymouse came at me regarding a reply I made on someone else's LJ today and posted, "amtrak
offered to run special trains to get people out of New Orleans and was turned down", I wanted to see if it was possible to get to the bottom of it, and find out whether Amtrak had made such an offer, and if so, when.
So here's what I found:
The Associated Press reported the night before Katrina hit that "Sasha Gayer tried to catch one of the packed Amtrak trains out but couldn’t. So she walked back to the French Quarter, buying a few supplies on the way and then stopping at one of the few bars open on Bourbon Street." This implies to me that the Amtrak trains in New Orleans on Saturday and possibly on Sunday were full of people evacuating the city for points north, west and possibly east, and that there was no additional capacity on the trains to be offered, whether gratis or for a cost, to the residents of New Orleans.
As the article predates the hurricane and any arguments of responsibility to any individuals or agencies, I think we can all be convinced of its truth that the Amtrak trains were "packed".
Now, the second article is harder to find corroboration for, but I'll throw it out here anyway.
2theadvocate, the website of channel two of Baton Rouge, quoted Mayor Nagin on September 1 as saying that the train tracks resembled "pixie sticks" after the hurricane and flood. This implies to me that the trains would not have been useful or viable as a means of evacuating those left in the city, and for that matter, anyone trying to evacuate that way would have had to travel to the train station, but luckily, as I understand it, there is a train station within a quarter mile of the Superdome, which does imply that at least a portion of the train tracks at the station near the Superdome were both nearby, and underwater.
Oh, and that article in the 2theadvocate? It's got a nifty little contemporaneous summary of Nagin's post-flood evacuation plan:
n Some 2,000 critically ill in hospitals and at the New Orleans Arena and the Convention Center will be bused or taken by helicopter to local airports and flown to hospitals throughout the state.
n The Superdome, which the mayor described as "an absolute mess," with refugees living in unsanitary conditions and with gang members "doing their thing," will be evacuated using 300 coach buses.
The mayor also has requested a combined 500 school buses from Baton Rouge and Lafayette. He is expecting 200 of those to arrive by this morning and the remainder by the afternoon.
He hopes to bus 14,000 to 15,000 evacuees daily to arenas in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Alexandria, Shreveport and Houston. Nagin said he hopes to have the Superdome empty today.
n Evacuate those in hotels and residents walking along interstate overpasses.
"My prediction is we may likely be overwhelmed," he said, adding that an additional 150 buses will be needed.
Nagin said a lieutenant general had offered military transport planes that could fly 300 to 400 evacuees per trip from the Naval Air Station in Belle Chasse. Four Navy ships also are on their way from Virginia with supplies and upward of 1,000 hospital beds.
Nagin estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 people still need to be moved out.
So those of you who say the mayor refused offers of school busses? I guess it's *possible* that he was *lying*, but let's use Occam's Razor on that little query, and see what we get.
So what do you think now? Do you think that Amtrak made an offer of trains galore, to evacuate the throes in the superdome and at the convention center, and said offer was refused for some trite and silly reason, or because the mayor was just such a huge fuckup?
Or do you think the offer may not have ever been actually made at all?
If anyone knows of any place where Amtrak officials are quoted as making that offer, and where said articles/posts are dated before, say, September 8 or 9, please let me know, because it's possible my conjecture is entirely wrong.
It is *possible*...
