I guess cars were a bad option

[Daniel270]

Not to jump the gun on this, but inevitably, someone's gonna start pointing fingers soon at who to blame.  Whether it's the mayor, governor, president or Arnold Swartzeneggar.....

It'll be New Orleans all over again.....

Nice society we're living in....

[Dartful Dodger]

This is Texas were talking about.  The only finger they'll be pointing will be straight up, directed at the hurricane.

[Zakk]

I saw an interview with a guy still stuck in the region. He didn't have a car or money for a TV (that sounded like a lie cause they are practicaly free, but whatever) so he listened to the radio for instructions. Apparently the instructions he got was to go to the .com website to look for instructions. Ehm ...

Why didn't the camera crew offer him a ride??   

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Not to jump the gun on this, but inevitably, someone's gonna start pointing fingers soon at who to blame.

Well...maybe it's not such a bad idea trying to figure out what went wrong, what can be improved, who, if anyone was negligent, and how they should be held responsible. But that's just me. As for all the whining about "blame", hey...if I f*ck up at work, I'm responsible. If I neglect to plan ahead for an emergency in our lab, I can be held responsible. However, in my job, noone will likely DIE as a result. I don't think it's such a radical idea to propose that our ELECTED LEADERS share AT LEAST the same level of responsibility as the rest of us do at our jobs.

Do I think there are boundries to the "blame game?" Yes. Do I think that means we shouldn't explore responsibility? No.

If people can't bare the thought that our public figures need to be held accountable for their lack of ability to organize and protect a civil society, then maybe those people should move to North Korea where everything will be taken care of for them, and they will NEVER have to criticize or "blame" a public official. At least if they want to remain alive.





mrC

[ChadTower]

The problem with the finger pointers is that they won't try to fix anything.  They want to damage political opponents but few of them will ever offer ways to improve the procedures.  Few will ever take it upon themselves to prevent a reoccurrance.  All they will do is use it to their own political advantage and then move on to the next opportunity for finger pointing.  This is why nothing ever gets fixed, and it is why useful people hate whiners and finger pointers so much.  All they do is get in the way when there is work to be done.

The tankers isn't a bad idea, but it's not something that could actually be implemented.  No one is going to spout off with thousands of gallons of free fuel.  Not in this situation.  Refueling cars so they can idle for another 8 hours doesn't really solve the problem, anyway.  all it does is enable the problem to linger a few days more.  The problem is traffic flow.  shmokes' suggestion, which is supposedly part of the plan for today, to open the southbound lanes to northbound traffic is about as effective as a solution as there is.

Mass transit doesn't really work either.  How many busses could they possibly have?  If you fit 80 people on a bus, and have 200 busses, that's 1600 people per trip.  But if a round trip to a safe zone takes 6 hours, you can only move 6400 people in a day.  Practically speaking, you're not going to make 4 trips, because it takes time to load and unload peopld and to control the crowd crush, etc.  So you'll make two trips.  Now you're down to evacuating 3200 people a day.  You've got about three days.  9600 people just doesn't get the job done.

[Stingray]

shmokes' suggestion, which is supposedly part of the plan for today, to open the southbound lanes to northbound traffic is about as effective as a solution as there is.

I was flipping around between the weather channel, CNN, & a couple other news channels until about midnight last night. By the time I went to bed they had gotten the southbound lanes open. I heard on the radio on the way in this morning that traffic seems to be moving a little better today.

-S

[ChadTower]

In a situation like this, where there is no conceivable effective insitutional solution, the intelligent move is to enable as many people as possible to move themselves.  It's really all you can do.  Anything else ends up a giant reacharound.