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The 2000 edition of the southeast Louisiana evacuation plan on page 13, paragraph 5 states:

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

The Superdome had been opened shortly before the storm as a shelter of last resort for those who had not evacuated. As FEMA observed at that time: "Most residents have evacuated the city and those left behind do not have transportation or have special needs." Roughly 150,000 people were not evacuated from the city. During the Hurricane Ivan evacuation 600,000 people failed to evacute the city.

According to WWLTV, during a news conference on Sunday before the hurricane struck, Mayor Nagin claimed he "could and would commandeer any property or vehicle it deemed necessary to provide safe shelter or transport for those in need". However widespread photos circulated appear to show unused school and privately owned busses left stranded in flood waters.

It is unclear whether Mayor Nagin knew these particular buses existed, since the Orleans Parish School Board is not under his jurisdiction and his office would not normally know the location of OPSB bus yards or be able to contact the drivers of those buses to place them into service. Normally it is the job of FEMA to coordinate between the various local jurisdictions such as the OPSB and the City of New Orleans in this case. That is, under the rules of prior hurricane responses, FEMA would ask all local jurisdictions for a list of resources under their control. Then FEMA would have taken a request from Nagin for buses, relayed it to the Orleans Parish School Board or other local jurisdictions which had buses, and at that point the OPSB would have provided the buses to Nagin. That coordination did not happen here, but it is unclear whether Nagin ever made such a request prior to the hurricane and after the hurricane they were underwater and useless.

However, if he had known about them, the declaration of a state of emergency on August 26 gave him the right under Louisiana law to commandeer them for the duration of the emergency. What is clear is that by waiting until August 28 to issue the evacuation order, the buses would have been able to make only one trip, since the "contraflow" scheme (which used both the incoming and outgoing lanes on all highways going out of New Orleans as outbound evacuation lanes in order to speed the evacuation) would have prevented them from returning before the hurricane hit. The failure to issue a timely evacuation order in effect made it physically impossible to evacuate the nursing homes, hospitals, and those without automobiles. 146 buses less than a mile from the Superdome Enlarge 146 buses less than a mile from the Superdome

In a radio interview on WWL-AM shortly after the hurricane, Mayor Nagin said, "I need 500 buses, man."

Sources

• "Governor Blanco Announces Executive Order". Governor Blanco, September 1, 2005
  
• "New Orleans Mayor: "CIA Will Wipe Me Out"". All Headline News, September 4, 2005
  
• "Katrina Satellite Imagery". NOAA, September 3, 2005
  
• "Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans' Nagin in which he says, "I need 500 buses, man."". CNN, September 2, 2005
  
• "An aerial view of flooded school buses in a lot, on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005, in New Orleans, LA". Yahoo, September 1, 2005
  
• "Nagin orders mandatory evacuation in face of Katrina". WWLTV, August 28, 2005
  
• "State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Plan". State of Louisiana, 2000
  
• "Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Emergency Operations Plan". State of Louisiana, 2005
  
• "City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan". City of New Orleans, 2005