the Saturday, and not the Sunday, before the hurricane arrived as predicted on Monday morning. He also made a mistake by not following the city's emergency plan and not using some 200 or more school buses to evacuate the elderly, infirm, and infants who had no other way out of the city.
A fair and balanced assessment of Nagin's performance presented by Padgett (2005) suggests that part of Nagin's failure can be attributed to the extremely difficult effort needed to maintain communications between his office and those of the police and fire departments as well as managers at important shelters and community hospitals. It is equally true that Mayor Nagin, said Padgett (2005), tends to rely almost exclusively on a small circle of confidantes placed in strategic positions in his administration. Padgett (2005, p. 35) says that "state and federal officials say privately that Nagin's insular and politically inexperienced staff has hurt him when it comes to the kind of public relations and coalition building he'll need from here on out." During the storm, the
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