Hurricane Katrina - Class Action Lawsuit Worries?
New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, in several interviews tonight, has been asked several times why he has not issued a mandatory evacuation of Orleans Parish. (All other SE Louisiana parishes have as of Saturday evening.) His replies have constantly been that he can't because of a legal matter that he has the City Attorney looking into.
Apparantly, if he orders a mandatory evacuation, individuals who can not personally evacuate the city for whatever reason become the legal responsibility of the City Of New Orleans. The closest estimate is that there are 100,000 New Orleanians who have no personal transportation.
The city simply does not have anywhere to put these people - the Superdome as a shelter of last resort has never been studied to see if it would withstand even a Cat 3. The New Orleans area schools are only designed to withstand a Cat 2. Vertical evacuation into the city's hotels and office buildings is also incredibly problematic.
Effectively, he may be worried that if Katrina nails New Orleans as a Cat 4 or 5, and we experience major loss of life - in the multiple of thousands - the city will be hit with a massive class action lawsuit.
By taking this in-action, he may, in effect, be sacrificing his upcoming re-election campaign in order to financially save the city in the aftermath.
In a similar vein - WWL Radio just reported that a couple of tourists just hired a New Orleans cabbie to drive them to Houston for $700.
Anyway... stay tuned, I'll be posting all throughout this weather event.
Apparantly, if he orders a mandatory evacuation, individuals who can not personally evacuate the city for whatever reason become the legal responsibility of the City Of New Orleans. The closest estimate is that there are 100,000 New Orleanians who have no personal transportation.
The city simply does not have anywhere to put these people - the Superdome as a shelter of last resort has never been studied to see if it would withstand even a Cat 3. The New Orleans area schools are only designed to withstand a Cat 2. Vertical evacuation into the city's hotels and office buildings is also incredibly problematic.
Effectively, he may be worried that if Katrina nails New Orleans as a Cat 4 or 5, and we experience major loss of life - in the multiple of thousands - the city will be hit with a massive class action lawsuit.
By taking this in-action, he may, in effect, be sacrificing his upcoming re-election campaign in order to financially save the city in the aftermath.
In a similar vein - WWL Radio just reported that a couple of tourists just hired a New Orleans cabbie to drive them to Houston for $700.
Anyway... stay tuned, I'll be posting all throughout this weather event.
posted by TAG at 2:25 AM
1 Comments:
I have cited your post on Katrina in a Special Edition of my Weekly BlogScan at Blogcritics.org. The special edition, titled "Blogging Katrina" can be read by joining to two lines below to make a complete URL:
http://blogcritics.org/
archives/2005/08/30/123719.php
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