The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  Clearly Chertoff didn’t just make a mistake during the first days of Katrina—he did virtually nothing at all, which was by far the greater sin. With the hurricane approaching Louisiana and Mississippi, Chertoff never even went to his office, staying at home for the crucial forty-eight hours before landfall. Most astonishing of all, as Katrina ravaged nearly 29,000 square miles of America on Monday, Chertoff didn’t even speak to Brown until 8 P.M. When CNN, Fox News, ABC News, and the rest started reporting the horrific flooding in New Orleans due to the levee breaks, Chertoff scoffed, dismissing media reports of human suffering as melodrama. With a cavalier wave of the hand, according to the Washington Post, Chertoff downplayed the bleak reports as “rumored or exaggerated.” Worse yet, Chertoff insisted that Brown and FEMA as a whole were doing an “excellent” job.69 Evan Thomas of Newsweek was closer to the mark when in his seminal article “How Bush Blew It,” he declared that FEMA was “not up to the job.”70

  Chertoff’s inaction cost lives. FEMA had been brought into the gargantuan Department of Homeland Security after 9/11; now it was clear somebody needed to pull it out again. It was a huge black eye for Homeland Security. The Harvard prosecutor performed just as poorly as the Oklahoman—even worse. Brown, to his credit, kept trying to get the Bush administration’s full attention. Chertoff had assumed his important cabinet position with big talk about keeping Americans safe from man-made and natural disasters. He was a principal engineer of the USA Patriot Act and wrote an article in the neoconservative publication The Weekly Standard full of bravado about fighting the war on terror “beyond case-by-case.” He fancied himself an intellectual, but one who understood trench warfare. President Bush, in selecting Chertoff to replace Tom Ridge, said that “Mike has shown a deep commitment to the cause of justice and unwavering determination to protect the American people.” His determination to protect the American people did not seem to extend to those who lived in Gulf towns like Grand Isle, Louisiana; Ocean Springs, Mississippi; or Dauphin Island, Alabama. The one quality, in fact, not evident in Chertoff’s handling of Katrina was caring about what the storm inflicted. While fellow citizens were dying, screaming for help, clutching chunks of floating wood and palm fronds trying to stay alive, Chertoff, the one American who could have helped the most, turned a casual, cold, indifferent eye to their plight.

  When Brown put through his 8 P.M. telephone calls on that Monday, Chertoff was at his home resting. Chertoff’s spokesman later claimed that the Homeland Security secretary “was hobbled by a lack of specific information” regarding Katrina on Monday night.71 That clumsy contrivance presumed that Chertoff was discounting or ignoring the reports from Brown, who was then in the EOC in Baton Rouge, or those reports streaming in from the affected area that were all over various FEMA offices. Air Force aerial images of the swamped Gulf Coast were arriving with increasing frequency at EOC, each showing an obliterated landscape, with water towers and refineries among the only recognizable landmarks in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. As Homeland Security chief, Chertoff had the most effective communications network of any cabinet office at his disposal, including the resources of the top brass in the Pentagon. He didn’t use it. If nothing else, there were a growing number of images on television. But he seemed oblivious to Barbour’s “nuclear devastation” metaphor, and allowed the Great Deluge to run its course willy-nilly. “What happened was Homeland Security was geared toward terrorism,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said. “They knew that FEMA could cope with a hurricane. Okay. Maybe. But the Bush administration refused to come to grips with the flood. Wind damage was not water. They just didn’t get that. In New Orleans, house after house, block after block, mile after mile was disappearing.”72

  On Monday evening, Bill O’Reilly opened his Fox News program with a stunning revelation: “At least forty thousand homes just east of New Orleans—forty thousand—have been destroyed.”73 He was referring to the flooding of St. Bernard Parish. On CNN, Paula Zahn spoke live to a woman who reported that on the Mississippi coast, “there are like eighteen wheelers on top of cars and homes in the middle of the streets. And there’s people wandering down the streets with nowhere to go, homeless. They’ve got maybe a bag over their shoulder, and they’re all in the middle of the streets, with nowhere to go. And the homes, houses and boats and cars are just…debris is just everywhere. It’s just…it’s very catastrophic down here.”74 Although many media reports on Monday morning had been tinged with relief that “it could’ve been worse,” by nighttime the real situation was becoming apparent. People like Tony Zumbado of NBC News were on hand, supplying videotape evidence that the flooding in metropolitan New Orleans was of unprecedented proportions. It was inconceivable that with all the warnings raised before Katrina struck and the reports that filtered in (even through the general media) within hours afterward, Michael Chertoff could be unaware that “an incident of national significance” had indeed occurred that morning along the Gulf Coast. He instead waited for thirty-six hours.75

  Regardless of the telephone call between Brown and Chertoff, the only productive action taken by FEMA that Monday was in the form of a straightforward memo from Brown. It formally requested Chertoff to make 1,000 Department of Homeland Security employees available, allowing them two days to report. Two thousand more were requested within seven days. In any other business, that might seem reasonable, but in response to what even Brown was calling in the memo a “near catastrophic event”76 employees should have been at the ready within hours, not days. Wal-Mart and American Airlines were there in twenty-four hours. For those who needed them, every minute counted.

  Meanwhile, Brown continued to send goofy e-mails all week long, exposing his vanity and embarrassing FEMA while the trapped were dying. On his “rescue and relief ” watch, Brown found time to muse about life’s frivolities:

  August 29 to FEMA Deputy Director of Public Affairs Cindy Taylor: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god.”

  August 29 to Taylor: “Can I quit now? Can I come home?”

  August 30 to assistant Tillie James: “Do you know of anyone who dog-sits? If you know of any responsible kids, let me know.”

  August 31 to Marty Bahamonde, still FEMA’s only staffer in New Orleans: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

  September 2 to a friend: “I’m trapped now, please rescue me.”

  September 6 to [Sharon] Worthy (after her e-mail about fast-food choices during a trip to Florida): “Order a #2, tater tots, large diet cherry limeade.”77

  XII

  FEMA wasn’t the only outfit missing from New Orleans. Katrina had cut a path of destruction almost as long as the distance from Chicago to New York. Yet oddly missing from the zone was the American Red Cross. Certainly it opened shelters in Houston and Baton Rouge, cities away from the damage, and these shelters were well run. In Louisiana alone, it started 76 shelters to house 18,000 displaced people. But when word of the levee breaches hit, the sympathetic American Red Cross President Marsha Evans, who was in San Diego preparing to fly to China, claimed she would have let volunteers into New Orleans if Homeland Security hadn’t stopped her. “Once the levees broke,” she said, “they didn’t want us in the bowl, they didn’t want us to set up Red Cross stands at the Superdome or later, the Convention Center. They were trying to get people out of New Orleans.” Throughout the week Evans grew frustrated by the bureaucratic way the state of Louisiana and Homeland Security were dealing with the biggest natural disaster in recent American history. But on Monday, the Red Cross was already hosting approximately 45,000 Katrina victims in shelters, 250 of which were in devastated areas. Throughout America 700 Red Cross shelters were eventually established. “This is our largest mobilization in the history of the organization,” a spokesperson said. “We are focused on providing the most elemental essentials…food, shelter and water.”78 An astonishing 63,000 Red Cross volunteers and staff were mobilized to help the decommi
ssioned Gulf South, a virtual army of Clara Bartons serving 7 million meals in two weeks. The Red Cross used mobile kitchens like The Spirit of America, a fifty-three-foot trailer with the capacity to serve 30,000 hot meals daily, and it collaborated well with faith-based groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of Scientology, and Catholic Charities. With FEMA getting hammered in the media, the Red Cross, sensing it might also be vulnerable to criticism, quickly launched a PR blitz, posting photographs by Gene Dailey on the Web showing Slidell children smiling after receiving a box lunch and smiling Baton Rouge girls handing out cheese sandwiches.79

  While FEMA was certainly a flop, and the Red Cross was neutered by its questionable policy of not offering any direct assistance to New Orleans, ordinary Americans filled the void. For instance, seven-year-old Dan Noonan Day of Cedar Falls, Iowa, opened a lemonade stand and gave his profits to the Red Cross disaster relief fund. Californian David Perez, disgusted by FEMA’s lackadaisical response, chartered his own Boeing 737 and airlifted in supplies to the Gulf South. A magazine called The Razor’s Edge had women shave their heads like Sinead O’Connor and raffled off their tresses, fetching up to five hundred dollars per scalp.80 The Aerolite Meteorites Society, a group of meteorite hunters and collectors, auctioned off some of their specimens, raising $12,437 for the American Red Cross.81 Even celebrities like cyclist Lance Armstrong got in on the action. He donated $500,000 for cancer patients whose treatment might be dangerously delayed by Katrina’s aftereffects. “It just seems like help was too late to come there,” he said. “If you’ve started treatment and you miss a week or two weeks, it’s potentially fatal.”82 Meanwhile, Marsha Evans defended the Red Cross’s decision not to go into New Orleans. “The last thing we should have done was send out Red Cross volunteers into New Orleans to be victims,” Evans said. “With that said, I wish we could have helped the people of New Orleans better.” (Under extreme pressure from her board of governors, she would resign from the Red Cross on December 13, 2005.)

  XIII

  Many of those who were rescued from the flooded Ninth Ward were dropped off at the rusty St. Claude Avenue Bridge, which spans the Industrial Canal between the Upper Ninth Ward and the Lower Ninth Ward. The Red Cross was, of course, nowhere to be found. Part of the bridge was submerged in floodwater, making it an excellent dock for flat-bottom boats. Peering up at rescue workers and evacuees was a large white statue of the Virgin Mary, the water level just below her carved eyes. Jim Sohr was waiting on the bridge, looking for a friend in the boatloads of people who were dropped off, frail and shaking and clutching a few belongings. “When you watch the people get off the boats,” Sohr said, “their faces have an unforgettable expression—they’ve been saved, but now what?”83 The only thing to do was walk to the Superdome, as best they could, in a mad scramble. They had heard that the city was offering refuge there. As noted, all the RTA buses and yellow school buses were submerged in water.

  Those who did make it to the Superdome were in for a rude discovery. The power had failed in the midst of the hurricane, and the sports arena had only dim light provided by auxiliary generators. Temperatures in the Dome heated up to more than ninety degrees, and the structure didn’t cool with the setting sun. The air inside was moist, hot, and fetid. People did their best to maintain their composure. Water supplies were running out, as was food. You could smell revenge. The National Guard was getting edgy, as were the desperate evacuees, gesticulating wildly and pointing at those to blame. New Orleans’s Homeland Security representative, Terry Ebbert, startled by the sheer mass of looting, dictated that the “cockroaches” needed to be dealt with.84

  Between the many people who somehow walked to the Superdome, and those who were dropped off there from boats, the population in the arena grew from about 10,000 during the hurricane to 25,000 on Monday night. Managers had no choice but to lock the doors and stop admitting newcomers. Without having heard from Mayor Nagin—even though he was just next door in the Hyatt—or from anyone at FEMA, the managers couldn’t offer any advice or support for those who continued to arrive from the Ninth Ward, Central City, and other neighborhoods. The new arrivals were desperate for shelter and water and medical attention. But they were greeted by National Guardsmen, rifles in hand, enforcing the lockout. “The first wave of folks that came to the Superdome were more docile,” Gordon Russell of the Times-Picayune recalled. “The second wave that had arrived after the storm were more angry. While they were waiting for buses, some of them had looted liquor stores. There was a good deal of drunkenness. I knew it was going south.”85

  Turned away, survivors who were suddenly homeless looked for that most basic of requirements: dry shelters and scanty rations. Someone announced that the Morial Convention Center, about nine blocks away, was open as a refuge. It wasn’t. Still, the bogus rumor spread like wildfire. A skeleton crew of about forty managers and maintenance people were inside the complex—it was almost a mile long, consisting of rooms and main halls that had grown along with New Orleans’s robust convention business. The workmen were only on hand to see the facility through the storm. They had no way to provide for the hurricane victims who were streaming toward the building. With the doors locked, they tried to turn people away, but there was no controlling those who were frightened—or perhaps unleashed—by what the hurricane had done to their city. Someone found a chair and used it to break through the glass door at the front entrance. With that, the mob took over the convention center. There were no weapons searches or National Guardsmen, as at the Superdome, and so it was a cauldron from the first. For the time being, though, with the media trucks staged at the Superdome, the volatile Convention Center was hidden from the rest of the world. Looters and the Coast Guard rescuers were the stories of the moment.

  Unknown to the media that week, there was a scatological phenomenon among some looters called the “big dump,” defecating on property as a mark of empowerment. With the Convention Center quickly devolving into a squatters’ chaos zone, many looters decided to commandeer businesses. Besides stealing, groups of angry looters would defecate in cash registers, on bartops, and around aisles. In Mulate’s, a world-famous Cajun restaurant across from the Convention Center, looters “big dumped” in the deep fryers. At a Coast Guard station that was broken into, hanging uniforms were used as toilet paper. Lamar Montgomery, owner of a Shell station at Lee Circle for thirty years, had evacuated, going to northern Mississippi. When he came back to New Orleans, not only were his mini-market and auto-supply shelves looted, but the intruders had “big dumped” in his refrigerator numerous times. “They behaved like animals,” he said. “They were making a statement, shit on you.”86

  The rest of the city was not much better. Shots rang out, which was not in itself a surprise. Gun ownership was high in Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular was a place where gun violence was common. On the first night after the hurricane, rumors spread that some looters were taking shots at Coast Guard rescuers, whether in boats or helicopters. According to the Coast Guard’s Jimmy Duckworth, “Safety of our crews was the overriding imperative. I don’t want to call somebody’s mom or dad and say, ‘He was killed while saving people off of the rooftops and he was killed by a sniper.’ There was one point where we needed to know about the St. Claude Bridge and I called the St. Claude Industrial Canal lock master, Michael O’Dowd—I’ve known him for years. O’Dowd stayed in the lock house during the storm and I had one of my lieutenants call him because the captain wanted to know if the St. Claude Bridge would work. The bridge is at the Industrial Canal—it’s a major choke point—and we needed to know whether or not we could get the interharbor navigation canal or Industrial Canal open. So we asked O’Dowd to open up the bridge. He called us right back and said, ‘I shut the bridge. As soon as I started opening the bridge, they started shooting at me.’ I know Breaux Brothers, contractors on my watch, were working on the Florida Avenue Bridge and they were getting sniped at. They’re contractors trying to fix the bridge and they’re
getting shot at and their private security that they had contracted with to take care of them wound up shooting at least two of the perpetrators. So with this in mind, I’ve got crews in the field and I’ve got air crews in the field and just at any minute you were waiting for the phone call that said, ‘Someone went down’ or ‘Our boat crews got shot.’ It never happened. Nobody got shot, but there was shooting going on all over.”87

  Officials couldn’t be sure whether the shots they heard were the work of snipers or stranded residents trying to attract the attention of rescuers. That night, officials couldn’t be sure of anything in southeastern Louisiana. No one could. Storm victims were sobbing for breath. Whatever was certain on Sunday was all just an ugly blur on Monday. They were reduced to human luggage looking for a cargo bay somewhere outside of the bowl. And Chertoff sat idly in Washington, D.C. At least the Navy was sending four ships to the Gulf South carrying water and food and medical aid to the stricken region.

  For a public official who liked to boast of candor, Secretary Chertoff didn’t inform the American public until January 24, 2006, that on August 28—the day before Katrina hit—the Department of Homeland Security had compiled a forty-page “fast analysis report.” The report, which was e-mailed to the White House at 1:47 A.M. on August 29, essentially predicted the Hurricane Pam doomsday scenario. The report even predicted 60,000 deaths. “The potential for severe storm surge to overwhelm Lake Ponchartrain levees is the greatest concern for New Orleans,” the report said. “Any storm rated Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson (hurricane) scale will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months.” Yet, as Bill Walsh of the Times-Picayune pointed out when he broke the story of the “fast analysis report,” President Bush on ABC’s Good Morning America just a few days after Katrina hit, said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of levees.”88