The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass spent most of the crucial days of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath as the city’s public spokesperson for the deluge. He is seen here touring the Lower Ninth Ward. ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES

  Displaced persons waded through high water toward the Superdome, the supposed refuge of last resort, on Tuesday, August 30. MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

  The Interstate 90 bridge over St. Louis Bay in Pass Christian, Mississippi, photographed on Tuesday, August 30, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Not only was the Mississippi Gulf Coast isolated from the rest of the world due to severed electricity and telephone service, but the roads and bridges leading in and out of these communities were cut off. PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

  A pickup truck rested in the Back Bay of Biloxi, Mississippi, near the collapsed Palace Casino more than a week after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast. EDWARD A. ORNELAS/AP

  Reverend Willie Walker of Noah’s Ark Missionary Baptist Church spent weeks rescuing hundreds of people from neighborhoods throughout Orleans Parish. His close friend Diane Johnson died of post-Katrina stress months after the storm. WILLIE DAVIS/VERAS IMAGES

  New Orleans Deputy Superintendent Warren Riley talked with the press on Sunday, confirming that two New Orleans police officers, Paul Accardo and Lawrence Celestine, had committed suicide. Riley was sworn in to replace Eddie Compass as New Orleans police superintendent on September 28, 2005. DAVE MARTIN/AP

  Captain Chad Clark of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Department was responsible for the survival of untold numbers of residents when the Wall of Water swept away much of Chalmette, Louisiana, in mere minutes. LINDSAY BRICE

  Michael Veglia and four friends used ingenious methods to save a family, including small children, from certain death when the storm surge swept through Waveland, Mississippi. LINDSAY BRICE

  The booking photos of Salvatore Mangano Sr. and Mabel Mangano, owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home, who allegedly refused an offer of buses from St. Bernard Parish authorities to evacuate the residents of their facility. They were charged with multiple counts of negligent homicide. LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/REUTERS/CORBIS

  A female prisoner was processed by Angola State Prison authorities at the makeshift jail at the Greyhound bus terminal in New Orleans, as the local law enforcement facilities were flooded and the New Orleans Police Department struggled with disorder within its ranks. LINDSAY BRICE

  A cyclist navigated floodwaters as the National Guard transported residents to the Superdome on Tuesday, August 30. Although officials called for a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, many residents remained, some by choice, and many because they had no financial means by which to leave town. ERIC GAY/AP

  Houses slid off their foundations and collapsed during and after Hurricane Katrina. This home was on Frenchmen Street in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. LINDSAY BRICE

  The landmark Fire Dog Saloon in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, was destroyed by Katrina’s 127 mph winds and the hellacious Lake Borgne Surge. LINDSAY BRICE

  Fats Domino was unaccounted for and presumed dead. He was found to have been rescued from his flooded home by Harbor Police, taken to the Superdome, and bused to Baton Rouge. He was later housed in Baton Rouge by star LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell. Upon his return home Fats was delighted to find that several of his gold records had survived the deluge. LINDSAY BRICE

  Lt. Col. Bernard H. McLaughlin of the Louisiana National Guard performed heroically throughout the Katrina ordeal. A decorated Iraq War veteran, he spent Monday, August 29, through Friday, September 2, at the Superdome, and then helped to open the food and bus lanes at the Convention Center. COURTESY OF BERNARD H. MCLAUGHLIN

  Lt. Commander Jimmy Duckworth of the U.S. Coast Guard led first responders in boats and helicopters from his command post in Alexandria, Louisiana. Due to the foresight and prudent planning of Duckworth’s commanding officer, Captain Frank Paskewich, the Coast Guard became the heroes of the great deluge. During the two-week period, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued thousands of displaced persons from the Gulf Coast floodwaters. LINDSAY BRICE

  VI

  Commander Tim Bayard, the head of Vice and Narcotics, didn’t give a hoot what Heather Allan or Cormac McCarthy or Anderson Cooper thought about the NOPD; he had a job to do—rescue folks. He tried to find fuel for his departments’ five dime-store boats. It was embarrassing. Luckily, that wasn’t their only “last resort” mode of transportation. They had some vans to ferry Katrina victims to the Superdome, I-10, and I-610. Once again, however, gas was a problem. His modus operandi was that he—Tim Bayard of the Ninth Ward, a true public-spirited cop—must give 110 percent during this crisis. His city needed him, just as it had needed his firefighter dad during Betsy. This was the time to prove that he was a chip off the old block. He would soon learn about the “Cadillac cops,” who stole vehicles from Sewall Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the central business district, and their thievery angered him, but he figured the judicial process would later sort out the “rank thieves” from the honest cops. He didn’t have the time to think about the 200 NOPD officers who fled, even those who had lost their homes in New Orleans East or Lakeview. “They shouldn’t have left,” Bayard said. “I have no idea why they left, but they shouldn’t have left. Not when you’re in the service. You’re here to serve and protect. People expect you to be here. You had Friday and Saturday to take care of your wife and kids, to get your family out of town. And then your behind should have been at work. Bottom line.” As for the NOPD not being properly equipped—for instance, stocked up on MRE emergency food or bottled water—he blamed his higher-ups. “That’s the command staff of the police department or City Hall’s fault,” he said. “That’s the mayor, the Office of Emergency Preparedness, the superintendent of police, the deputy chiefs. All those guys are supposed to give us equipment we need to work in the streets. It’s their job to provide us with gear that we need to go do the job.”49

  Tim Bayard wasn’t the only good leader in the NOPD trying to give his all. When the storm subsided, Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley left headquarters and with a few officers got in one of the NOPD’s five boats and headed down Tulane Avenue. A little progress was being made. He was going to get a high-water military truck. There was about a foot of water covering Tulane, but Riley felt relieved. “We thought we survived,” he said. “We thought everything was fine.” Then they saw the busted-up Superdome and all the high-rises in the central business district with their windows blown out. Filled with fury, he knew immediately, from 911 calls which parts of New Orleans were the worst off. “We decided to go east,” Riley recalled. In their truck, the team reached Chef Menteur Highway, a local road running into New Orleans East that The Guardian later described as “a dilapidated stretch of fast-food joints, strip clubs and hot-sheet motels.”50 They spotted a Hispanic couple in a parked car. A concerned Riley hopped out of his truck and went over to them. All around him were storm-torn buildings and random debris.

  “What are you doing here?” a baffled Riley asked the man. His wife was eight and a half months pregnant.

  “Well,” the man said, “we were trying to leave during the storm and we couldn’t. So we just parked here.”

  Riley couldn’t believe anybody would park under the Chef Menteur overpass, arguably the most flood-prone spot in the entire city.

  “So you’ve been here all night?” an incredulous Riley asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Shaking his head in wonderment, bewildered at how a pregnant woman could put her unborn baby at such unnecessary risk, Riley had them get into his truck. They were the first two Katrina victims he rescued that Monday. Together with his NOPD driver, the four of them ventured farther east to survey New Orleans East, the true Land of No Return. They got as far as Morrison Road and stopped. The water was seven to eight feet high. Everything was underwater—houses, day-care centers, grocery stores, massage parlors. It was beyond the realm of words. Since Riley’s milita
ry truck could handle only five and a half feet of water, they were stopped dead in their tracks. The Medium One had hit—all of New Orleans East had been obliterated. Heading back downtown on I-10, Riley saw storm refugees congregating on the concrete highway, looking lost and forlorn. His first instinct, however, was getting this poor pregnant woman to a shelter. He didn’t want to play midwife in a military truck if she went into labor. Riley had her rushed to a shelter outside of the city. “That was incredible,” he said. “We heard the woman had the baby a couple of days later.”

  Riley’s cursory survey of New Orleans East made him understandably depressed, in no mood to twirl his nightstick. Would reconstruction even be possible, he wondered. His thoughts returned to manpower in his department. Besides the 200 NOPD officers who fled, there were others who were stranded in hotels. A few hundred more were trapped inside the LSU School of Dentistry on the third floor. The entire Second District force in New Orleans East was stuck in a hospital, which was inundated with ten feet of water. And now, adding insult to injury, hundreds of New Orleanians were looting, smashing plate-glass windows and burglarizing homes. Riley had long prided himself as the NOPD’s expert in crowd control. Every year he dealt with barricades and drunkards and neighing horses at Mardi Gras with great success. Even critics of the NOPD had to admit that when it came to major events like Super Bowls or NCAA Final Four championships, they had crowd control down pat. “When LSU won the national championship,” he recalled, “nobody tore down a goal post, nobody flipped a car like they do in New England. We believed that we had it under control.”51

  But a combination of bad luck, poor preparation, and corruption proved that the NOPD was not in control of anything. In the coming days, with his boss Superintendent Compass spinning exaggerations, Riley would try to put on a brave front. But he knew Katrina had gotten the best of the NOPD. He stiffened when he heard reporters lampooning his broken-down force. When a U.S. soldier (or Louisiana National Guardsman) fought in Afghanistan or Iraq, they knew back home in Lake Charles or Covington was safe, their parents were all right, that their spouses were living normal lives back home. Not the case with Katrina and the police. Approximately 900 of the homes of NOPD officers were destroyed. How do you help others when you’re in such distress? Just when you thought you lost everything, you find out hundreds of fellow cops had bailed out on you. Welcome to the Land of Sinking Hearts. “As a commander, as a captain, you prepare for weapons of mass destruction, for a terrorist situation, for hostage situations, SWAT situations, things like that,” Riley later explained. “We prepared for terrorists trying to take over the Superdome. We prepared for terrorists to come down on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. But this storm was the ultimate enemy. It cut off the food, the water, the transportation, the lights. It segregated your units and stranded them where they couldn’t do their assignments…. This storm was absolutely beyond plausibility. How do you prepare for this?”52

  Given the complete collapse of the NOPD, and with some of the Louisiana National Guard—the Jackson Barracks contingent, which was getting flooded due to the Industrial Canal breach—incapacitated, it was clear that New Orleans had a serious Homeland Security crisis on its hands. Because so many NOPD officers had fled their posts, while others were shell-shocked and homeless, unsure how to proceed, the question rose as to whether U.S. special forces (SEALs, Marshals, Rangers, FBI, etc.) would be needed to control New Orleans. Should the 82nd Airborne be brought in? History showed that widespread looting was often the first action in a full-fledged race riot. An executive decision was made to quell the civil unrest and essentially federalize the city. Somehow the stranded people at the Superdome would need to be bused out by FEMA to Houston, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, or elsewhere. But where were the supposed 500 FEMA rescue buses? Nobody seemed to know. As for the looters, they would be arrested and brought to the Greyhound Bus Terminal, the makeshift jail. If they resisted arrest, however, or tried to escape, they would be shot. New Orleans was inching toward a state of martial law. It didn’t need to be declared. Silly lawyers could debate that later. Any fan of Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey knew that in a lawless town, everything was simply understood.

  VII

  At around 8 A.M. on Monday, just as the electricity went out in Baton Rouge and the winds were still ripping apart the Gulf South, Jimmy Duckworth placed a call on his government-issued push-to-talk Nextel phone to the Coast Guard’s temporary headquarters in Alexandria. To his surprise he got right through to Captain Bob Mueller, the deputy sector commander. “Get your butt up here,” Mueller barked over the receiver. “Now.” Duckworth replied, “Yes, sir.” That was the extent of the conversation. He knew the Medium One had hit and his expertise was needed in Alexandria. Lives were at stake. Tens of thousands of Louisianans and Mississippians were stranded. As Duckworth and Shelley Ford climbed into their Chevy truck, it was still windy out, blustery as hell, but they weren’t in danger. Katrina had sheered off to the east and Alexandria was to the west. The work of the Coast Guard, however, was just beginning.53

  Duckworth and Ford made it to Alexandria that day without incident. At 6 P.M. Duckworth stood watch at the incident command post (ICP) that he had helped create. The ICP was a large partitioned area with tables and metal folding chairs set up. The tables were divided into different groups with the search and rescue desk being the vortex. A few Coast Guard officers were sent to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Baton Rouge, but Alexandria was the beehive. He was in charge of the Boat Deck, while Shelly Decker manned the Air Desk. Together they worked in close tandem. “We kept CNN on all the time in our command post,” Duckworth recalled. “We had plenty of food and water. And willpower to save lives pronto. No waiting, no hesitation.”54

  The New Orleans Sector Coast Guard did not sleep that night. Fueled on adrenaline, they rolled. Having positioned forty aircraft and thirty boats and cutters in areas just off of Katrina’s course, the Coast Guard was “making preparations to conduct immediate post-hurricane search, rescue, and humanitarian aid operations.”55 The Coast Guard was officially a component of the Department of Homeland Security, making it a sister organization to FEMA. Although the Coast Guard answered to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, it had its own objective to save lives in the water—so it did not have to wait for either permission or an invitation to prepare for Katrina. Unlike out-of-towners, first responders from the Coast Guard—rescuers like Jimmy Duckworth—knew the waterways of southern Louisiana like the backs of their hands.

  Duckworth, a World War II buff, immediately dubbed the New Orleans Area rescues “Dunkirk Two.” But it was the New Orleans flood of 1927—he had also read John Barry’s Rising Tide—that was at the forefront of his mind. “I felt that history was almost repeating itself with this,” he said. “This is what the city fathers were worried about during the flood of ’27. To save the city at all costs. And I felt like in all these years we’d done a good job of saving New Orleans from the flood, and now we’ve lost it. So I looked at the storm like the perfect enemy because the storm denied us logistics; it denied us communications, it denied us everything. If you look at Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and if you look at the enemy called Katrina, it did us in perfectly.”

  Not so fast. Captain Frank Paskewich’s prescient decision to set up headquarters in Alexandria, with plenty of food, dry accommodations, and proper equipment, gave the U.S. Coast Guard—unlike the National Guard, the Navy, the Army, or FEMA—at least a fighting chance to save the stranded.* Duckworth was convinced that his enlisted ranks would perform with vigor. Unlike the NOPD, they had plenty of fuel to keep both aircraft and boats going around the clock. Besides overall coordination, Duckworth’s job in the Alexandria command post was to take care of the Coast Guard troops in the field. Duckworth was constantly on the telephone with the state EOC in Baton Rouge, which he believed carried out its mandates to the “best of their abilities.”

  The various communication breakdowns were another important part of the
news from New Orleans. Duckworth was quick to point out one high-tech item that didn’t fail him: satellite imagery. The standard search and rescue grid was approximately fifteen nautical miles square. “That’s too damn big,” he said. “You’re talking about urban S and R.” What Duckworth needed was something about a half mile long, images covering one-thirtieth the territory. He needed to see exact Lakeview addresses and Lower Ninth Ward homes. By zooming in on the worst flooded streets, Duckworth could “put our helicopters right in the game.” Duckworth wanted to be able to see an SOS sign on a tenement or a family waving for help from a rooftop. With the assistance of a Coast Guard map expert, Duckworth took a big satellite image of the greater New Orleans area and then overlaid it onto a marine grid, thereby achieving finer granularity. “So we were carefully looking at the color of the snapshots from the satellite,” he said. “We were using these pictures to determine the worst impacted area.”

  In this way, Duckworth determined which flooded neighborhoods should be given top priority for search and rescue missions. Nobody knew that Monday exactly where Jefferson Parish was flooded after the 17th Street Canal and London Avenue Canal breaches. Duckworth looked at the satellite map of the parish, which looked beaten up. Yet the close-up maps showed something different. Certainly the area between Airline Highway and Metairie Road was flooded due to the 17th Street Canal breach. But there were two tones apparent in the more detailed images: brown, which meant dry, and dark, which meant wet. “So for miles away, when you looked at the city from the air, you saw lighter colors or darker colors, and anything that was lighter was good to go and anything that was darker was flooded. Most of Jefferson Parish was the lighter color. It didn’t go underwater. That meant our helicopters and boats would head first to the darker areas.”