"Steve Simpson, sheriff of Loudoun County, Virginia, sent 22 deputies equipped with food and water to last seven days. Their 14-car caravan, including four all-terrain vehicles, was on the road just three hours when they were told to turn back. ... A Louisiana state police official told them not to come. " I said, "What if we just show up?' He says, 'You probably won't get in.' " Simpson said he later learned a dispute over whether state or federal authorities would command the law enforcement effort was being ironed out that night. But no one ever got back to him with the all-clear." - CNN

"Amtrak said they offered to remove people from the city of New Orleans on Saturday night and that the city of New Orleans declined. ... They said they were moving equipment out of New Orleans in order to protect it and offered to take evacuees with them." - Tim Russert, NBC's "Meet The Press"

"[Mayor Nagin'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 but made no plans to use them to get people out of New Orleans before the storm, said Chester Wilmot, a civil engineering professor at Louisiana State University and an expert in transportation planning, who helped the city put together its evacuation plan." - Houston Chronicle

"Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the mayor of New Orleans. The city of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed. Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation." - New Orleans' comprehensive emergency plan

"In Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, attention has focused on the inability of local and federal officials to evacuate or prepare for the large number of poor people who had no access to transportation and remained behind. That possibility was one of the concerns that led Congress in 1997 to set aside $500,000 for FEMA to create 'a comprehensive analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for the New Orleans metropolitan area.'
"Frustrated by inaction two years later, Congress strengthened its directive. It ordered "an evacuation plan for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster for the New Orleans area. The $500,000 that Congress appropriated for the evacuation plan went to a commission that studied future options for the 24-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. ... The report produced by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission "primarily was not about evacuation. ... In general, it was an overview of all the things we need to do" for the causeway through 2016. [Officials and engineers said they] could not trace how or whether FEMA money came to the commission. 'We didn’t do anything for FEMA.' " - Daily Tribune, Columbia, MO

"A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project designed to prevent a Category 5-hurricane-storm surge from filling Lake Pontchartrain and flooding New Orleans was blocked by environmentalists intent on preserving 'natural water flow' in 1977. Save Our Wetlands used a lawsuit against the Corps based on the National Environmental Protection Act to halt the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection Project." - Multiple sources

¶ Monday, September 26, 2005