Time for the Mayor to face tough questions

While many are singling out Bush for 100% of the blame, there is an interesting picture circling the blogosphere. I took the time to attempt to count the buses in this picture that could have been used hours before Katrina hit to evacuate alot of people. While it is hard to get an exact count without going cross-eyed, there are over 200 buses in this picture. I distinctly remember as a kid riding these buses and seeing the "Capacity 66" at the front. Seeing as it was an emergency, we could round it to 70 per bus. Just using the buses in the picture would have evacuated 14,000 people! Judging by the angle there is at least 100 more buses in that lot. That would bring it to 21,000 that could have been moved. Of course a 1-2 hour drive would be all that was needed to get people to safety, so they could have made at least 2 trips. That would bring the total to 42,000 people that could have been evacuated using these buses. In addition, the buses would not be sitting in water being damaged at the expense of the tax payers. Of course since the mentality seems to be that only the federal government can help people and the buses are state owned so that would not work. Yeah, that mayor has been shooting off his mouth quite a bit. It will be interesting to see if they ask him about the buses. I can just see the "Homina Homina" from Ralph on the Honeymooners.

Update: Ok, I just saw that junkyardblog was already on top of this and gets similar numbers plus some interesting commentary on the mayor crying "we need 500 buses". oops!