You're either on the bus or off the bus

The photo in this article by Mark Kleiman is a nice visual summary of the absolute failure of planning in New Orleans.

These are city-owned buses that could have been part of an evacuation plan. Obviously, that didn't happen.

The question is going on about who deserves the blame. The linked article cites Lousiana's legendarily corrupt local political culture. But obviously FEMA bears a share of the load. Incompetence up and down the line, in fact so widely shared that there is unlikely to be much in the way of retribution -- where would you start?