Board the bus please..or else

This is dated material but I just had the time to download these pics and put this post together.

There was a recent discussion here about forced relocation. I'm not dredging up an old argument here. Forget the what would or could precipitate it argument. The logistical possibility has been proven.

I was leaving South Texas several weeks ago, a couple of days before hurricane Dean IIRC, was due to hit. The forecasts kept moving it farther and farther south. It eventually made landfall in central Mexico. But at one time they thought it might come directly at Brownsville, Texas.

The Texas Governer had issued a voluntary evacuation order and President Bush had made a "pre-emptive" disaster declaration.

When I left, the FEMA presence was well established and the radio was reporting that if it looked like the hurricane was going to hit Texas that the evacuation order would be made mandatory.

From Zapata to Brownsville, the news stated that there were an estimated 1.5 million people that would be forced to leave.

I wondered how they could evacuate so many people. I soon learned the answer.

As I started heading North I saw in the South bound lanes convoy after convoy of busses. Each convoy contained between 20 to 100 buses each. Mostly school buses but quite a few tour buses also. Each convoy was followed by a convoy of National Guard troops. With 20-30 vehicles. Mostly duece and a half trucks. Every other one was empty, I assumed to haul luggage, and every other one was full of troops.

I watched line after line of these convoys pass by for over a hundred miles. All the way to San Antonio. The San Antonio news station had a story about 3000 buses being stationed there awaiting orders to move south. The report stated that any voluntary evacuees should go to a "closed" military base on the outskirts that would be utilized to house evacuees.

I heard similar reports when I went through Austin later that day.I stopped just outside of San Antonio to have lunch. I purposely selected a place where I could watch the interstate. I got a hamburger and parked in the parking lot where I could watch the traffic going South. In 15 minutes I counted over 300 buses that came by.

I gave up counting. At my best guess I estimated that I personaly saw, in just a few hours of one morning, two days before the storm, at least 5000 - 7000 busses pass me by.

When I returned to the valley I was told that every school, convention center, and fair ground parking lots were full of buses.

A little calculation and to my best estimate. With what I saw and what the news was reporting, the government had in place the resources to evacuate at least 3/4 of a million people. And that is a conservative estimate I'm sure. But considering that a large number would have left before the order went mandatory then that number would have probably been sufficient. And they were reporting that if the order went mandatory that they would be stopping all civilian traffic to prevent gridlock.

So the idea that a population could not be forcibly relocated on orders (for whatever reason) from the government is not viable. It is entirely possible.

If they could, in just a few days, mobilize the resources to evacuate 1.5 million people then they could certainly evacuate nearly any city in the country if given enough time to mobilize.

Now I am not saying that there was anything sinister going on. With the aftermath of Katrina still fresh in memory, I am sure that they were ready to err on the side of caution. But it still gave me an eerie feeling watching all the resources mobilize and the news stating that the order could be made mandatory, and NG troops being deployed to enforce it.

What if there were folks who didn't want to go? Would they have been manhandled into the busses? Would they have been tasered into submission?

Scary stuff folks.

 

I truly do not mind the concept of moving large numbers of people out of the way of something like Katrina or other messy situation. My problem is with "mandatory." Therein lays the rub, to resist to the point of armed confrontation, or be a sheep, or something in between. If I think I should leave, I will. If I'm willing to take the chance, I should be allowed to do so. Key word to me is "choice" and it is mine to make based on my evaluation of my situation, including the preps I have made. And, in my mind, there is no reason for any dot gov organization, large or small, to know or be allowed to evaluate my state of readiness.

(If they think we here are a threat, they already know who and where we are.)

Sorry about the hijack back to reality, bad tempered this morning (more so than usual.) MM is in a good position to see things, and I'm not too sure that the TFHL is the right place for the thread. Never saw the busses on the news, nor the troops mentioned.

 

Ghrit is absolutely right. There is nothing wrong with relocating people out of harms way. And even the mandatory order could be justified. If you stay behind your on your own, but it doesn't work that way. If things get too bad and now your trapped then somebody has to come rescue you.

We wouldn't just sit back and say "Hey, it was your choice, deal with it." We would be forced to send in resources and risk lives to rescue those who thought they were prepared.

But therin lies the problem. If they can do it for humane reasons now, they can do it for more sinister reasons later. But it would be for our own good, of course.
Any deprivation of our liberties will come as a helping hand.

And my tin foil hat side couldn't help but wonder, watching all of this unfold, if it wasn't a dry run for something coming in the future. A lot of firsts. First time a president ever "pre-emptively" declared a state of emergency. First time a massive mobilization was undertaken in advance of a remote possibility that it would be needed.

It could have been nothing more than erring on the side of caution. Or it could have been the precursor of things to come.
And the lack of reporting on the news seemed odd too.

 

The missing news stories are the most obscure part of it. Or, more likely, something went way wrong on the exercise, and TPTB are embarrassed. Like, for example, the buses couldn't get out of town for lack of fuel for a day or two. We may never know.

 

I was playing devils advocate. The rationale was supposed to be the governments reasoning.

They wouldn't sit by with people sitting on top of their houses on CNN and say "Hey it was their choice to stay". They would be forced by PC politics to send rescuers in.

That would be their justification for the mandatory order.

If it was me I would be like Monkeyman. No one would be home when they came to my house. Then after the door was "marked" I would return and barricade in.

And what bothered me was what would happen if they evacuated the population from the border? The illegals would have a wide open door and plenty of places to plunder when they came over. The people wouldn't have anything to return to, even if the storm never hit!

 

• A single diagonal slash indicates that a search in the building is in progress. This is used to indicate searcher locations and to avoid duplication of the search effort.
• An X inside a square means "Dangerous - Do Not Enter!"
• An X with writing around it means "Search Completed", with the time (and the date if appropriate) written above the X, the team conducting the search written to the left side of the X, the results of the search (number of victims removed, number of dead, type of search such as primary or secondary) written below the X, and any additional info about the structure to the right of the X.

INSARAG - the United Nations International Search & Rescue Advisory Group marking system:

• A 1 meter by 1 meter square with G or N (for go or no-go), the team conducting the search, the date and time of the start of the search, and the date and time of the completion of the search written inside.
• The number of live victims removed is written to the left of the square. The number of dead victims found is written to the right of the square. Persons unaccounted for and/or location of other victims is written below the square.
• Additional information on hazards pertaining to the structure is written above the square.
• Any reference to building floor numbers use ground as G, 1 as the first floor above G, B1 as the first floor below G, and so forth. This is contrasted with US floor numbering, that starts with 1 as the ground level.
• INSARAG marking squares are usually written in day-glo orange.