Ad-kaan Katrina-palooza
Some of my dearly demented readers are still unable to understand why that picture of a few dozen flooded busses is not an air-tight argument that Mayor Nagin missed an opportunity to evacuate his city.
So here are some hard numbers, taken without permission from countercolumn
Let n be the number of buses needed to to shift people from one place to the other.
Let y be the number of people you can shift per bus.
Let p be the total population you’ve got to move.
The simple calculation is:
n=p/y
How many people on a bus? 40 people.
How many people have we got to move? 100,000.
100,000 people:
2500 busses.
40 per bus, 300 miles each way. 60 miles per hour. That’s 40 people per bus in per 10 hours. Or 4 people per hour per bus.
You’ve got 100,000 people to evacuate, which means (basically) 25000 bus hours, so 10 buses finishes the job in 2500 hours, 100 finishes in 250 hours. To get 100,000 people shifted in 48 hours you’re going to need 520 buses. Which means at least 520 drivers, and perhaps 100 people to administer the departure site.
And of course,that the people assemble at the departure points on time, and that there is somewhere within 300 miles willing to accept all of those people. It also presumes plenty of gas, money for tolls, and drivers who are willing and able to work around the clock.
Hardly a lay-up.