School-Buses Showdown: Mayor Nagin Vs. Russert

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is defending his actions in connection with Hurricane Katrina, as he was grilled yesterday about why hundreds of public buses were not used to evacuate the city in advance of the devastating storm.

“I think I did everything possible known to any mayor in the country as it relates to saving lives,” Nagin said.

The mayor, questioned by NBC’s Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” claimed he could not find drivers for the metro and school buses, which were left to flood in the post-hurricane deluge.

“Sure, here was lots of buses out there,” Nagin said. “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. We barely had enough drivers for that. So sure, we had the assets, but the drivers just weren’t available.”

Russert did not let up on the question, continuing into this exchange:

RUSSERT: But, Mr. Mayor, if you read the city of New Orleans’ comprehensive emergency plan- — and I’ve read it and I’ll show it to you and our viewers — it says very clearly, “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.”

It was your responsibility. Where was the planning? Where was the preparation? Where was the execution?

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Russert also quoted previous statements from Nagin about alleged racism delaying response, as Nagin had said, “[t]he more I think about it, definitely race played into this. If it’s race, fine, let’s call a spade a spade, a diamond a diamond. We can never let this happen again. Even if you hate black people and you are in a leadership position, this did not help anybody.”

“Who in the leadership position hates black people?” asked Russert.

“I don’t know who hates black people,” responded Nagin, “but I will just tell you this, that I think the imagery that came out across the nation portrayed that this was primarily poor black people that were affected. And I don’t know if that affected the response or not. But I got really upset when I heard about some of our residents walking to one of the parish lines and were turned back by attack dogs and armed guys with machine guns.”

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