On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall and flooded New Orleans. The levees broke. Tens of thousands of people who had no cars, no money, and nowhere to go were left stranded as the water rose around them.
The city had a plan for exactly this scenario. The Southeast Louisiana Evacuation Plan specifically designated school and municipal buses as emergency transportation for residents without vehicles. Hundreds of buses sat in lots across New Orleans, some less than a mile from the Superdome where thousands were sheltering in increasingly desperate conditions.
They sat there unused.
Mayor Ray Nagin, under enormous criticism in the days that followed, cited a lack of drivers and insurance liability concerns when asked why the buses weren’t deployed. The images of flooded bus lots became one of the most damning symbols of the government’s failure during Katrina.
Jabbar Gibson was 20 years old, a small-time drug dealer from the Fischer housing project in the Algiers neighborhood, with a criminal record and no driver’s license. When floodwaters surrounded his community and no help came, he and some friends went looking for a way out. They found a lot full of abandoned school buses with keys sitting in an unlocked office.
Gibson had never driven a bus before. He learned on the spot.
He drove back to Fischer and started loading people. When police arrived and ordered everyone off the bus, his mother Bernice talked them into letting him go. Gibson pulled out of New Orleans with around 70 people on board, including children, elderly residents, and families who had nothing left. He stopped three times for fuel, passing a hat around to collect enough money to keep going.
Thirteen hours later, Gibson pulled up to the Houston Astrodome. When officials came out to meet the bus, they assumed it was part of the organized government evacuation.
It wasn’t. It was a 20-year-old with a criminal record who figured if nobody else was going to do it, he would.
His was the first bus carrying Katrina evacuees to reach Houston. The official evacuation buses came later.
