The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  Mitch Landrieu looked twice at the mayor. At least in St. Bernard, there was a fighting spirit. For whatever reasons—exhaustion or fear?—Nagin was in low gear, unable to get jump-started, afraid of the poor people below. “From his hotel, I just walked back into the Superdome,” Landrieu said. “They wanted to see you. They wanted to see somebody. They were always thankful that you were there. We were loading people into the back of trucks leaving the Superdome. The people that we took and put on the foot of the St. Claude Bridge, I actually ran into at that location, because there was a triage unit set up in back of the Superdome. An old man named Uncle Willy, whom I had taken off his Lower Ninth porch in a Wildlife and Fisheries boat, was in that triage unit.” The sight of him alive and smiling brought tears to Landrieu’s eyes.

  “Hey, Uncle Willy,” he said, “you’re going to be just fine.”

  Landrieu helped load Uncle Willy onto an emergency truck headed to a proper hospital, somewhere out of the bowl. “I don’t know where they took him,” Landrieu said. “Or where he ended up. But thank God Almighty he was gone.”53

  VIII

  The Baton Rouge Advocate, which considered itself the state’s newspaper, felt an obligation to cover every stricken community in its pages. One especially harrowing story, written by Sandy Davis, told of the “Wall of Water” that came crashing into the Chalmette home of Dorothy Hingle and her son, Russell Embry. Terrified as Katrina blew into town, Hingle lit a candle, giving their modest brick home on Roselta Street a grotto feeling. She held her handicapped son in bed. Because Embry was a quadriplegic, the Department of Social Services was supposed to evacuate them. But no one came. They were stuck in Chalmette with prayer as their only safeguard. And while we’ll never know Russell and Dorothy’s last thoughts or actions, we do know, through the Advocate, that Katrina swallowed the mother and son without remorse. Five days after Katrina, Acadian Ambulance and Med Air still had not picked up their corpses. But the St. Bernard Parish Fire Department had come around, putting a huge orange X on the house adjacent to the numeral 2, to indicate two dead bodies.

  In Chalmette, as well as the adjoining town of Meraux, regular citizens suffered something even worse than a hurricane and worse than a flood. The entire community was washed away, not only by up to twenty or thirty feet of water, but also by oil. Lots of oil.

  Murphy Oil had evacuated its St. Bernard facility between 3 and 4 P.M. on Sunday, August 28. Unfortunately, the staff didn’t follow procedure. When a hurricane threatened, they were required to fill any empty or half-empty crude-oil tanks with water. If a tank wasn’t full, it could float away, causing spillage. That was exactly what happened to tank 250-2. The dispute was whether Murphy Oil did this intentionally to save money or whether it was an unintentional mistake due to human error. When the floodwaters came, the seven-foot-tall tank sloshed away and headed west into a residential area of Meraux. Big oil companies like Gulf, Shell, Exxon, and Texaco knew to avoid setting up shop in such a dangerously low-lying zone, but Murphy Oil, which had a crude-oil refinery in Meraux, probably couldn’t resist the lower costs and they took the gamble. After Katrina destroyed the Chalmette area in a matter of thirty minutes, the firm’s confused response exacerbated the suffering of thousands.

  Shortly after Chalmette and Meraux were transformed into a watery tableau, a Coast Guard investigator reported that approximately 1,000 houses were poisoned by a crude-oil spill courtesy of Murphy Oil. More than 25,100 barrels of crude oil were dumped on these modest houses—based on a 2005 report from the Environmental Protection Agency. The Coast Guard eventually did a good job trying to clean up the Meraux streets—for example, sand was poured on roads to prevent oil slicks and lessen the possibility of auto accidents—but it was a lost cause. “It’s all oil,” Murphy Oil employee Shepard Brown, who lived only blocks from the refineries, told USA Today. “You’re never going to get that clean.”54

  The health hazard created by Murphy Oil was immense. Not only does the crude oil burn skin but when inhaled in high concentrations, it can cause central nervous system damage, depression, convulsions, and a loss of consciousness. One thing was certain that Tuesday, as the residents of Meraux struggled with both oil and flooding: that Murphy Oil was going to have a class-action suit levied against it. (On January 30, 2006, a federal court did indeed consolidate twenty-seven lawsuits into one class-action suit, which was still pending as of this writing.)

  “For a week after Katrina, all I could see was oil,” Captain Clark recalled. “I’m a hunter, duck and deer. I owned a fishing camp in Delacroix. So it broke my heart to see animals trying to get out of the oil. Birds, nutria, small animals. We had one dog that walked up to us, looking for some kind of help. We should have put him out of his misery. Just covered in oil. It was pretty bad. But at that point it didn’t even faze me because I had more things to worry about than this stinking oil spill.”55

  Within a week, a multiagency unit charged with responding to incidents of maritime oil and hazardous materials pollution in coastal Louisiana would arrive in St. Bernard Parish. It had the unwieldy name of the ESF-10 Maritime Pollution Response Forward Operating Base Baton Rouge. It would grapple with the Murphy Oil spill, staffers wearing anticontamination suits and special boots and gloves. But the citizens trapped without proper ventilation in the aftermath of the storm had no space suits upon which to rely, no oil-spill coordinator to turn to for health tips. All they had were fumes that wouldn’t subside and a false belief that Murphy Oil had properly filled all of their container tanks with water.

  A few days after pulling people out of the oil muck, Captain Clark noticed a rash on his stomach, something resembling a series of spider bites. It turned out that he and about ten other officers had contracted a severe staph infection from the filthy water. They were all treated in a MASH-like medical unit at Chalmette High School. “We knew that water wasn’t healthy,” Clark said. “We knew it probably would affect us healthwise.”

  Just talking about the Murphy Oil spill made Clark upset. Why didn’t the company do right by the people? “I think we’ll get sick,” he said. “I remember going into that oil area one day during one of the missions. It would burn your eyes and burn your face. I said, ‘There is no way this can be healthy.’ It was benzene, they said. We never knew the difference at the time. I didn’t think nothing of jumping off the boat into the water and going to rescue somebody. And I’d probably do it again tomorrow if I had to. People are walking around getting sick and dizzy and throwing up and diarrhea. That’s just not normal. We all get sore throats every couple of days. I’m sure we’re going to get sick.”56

  IX

  On late Tuesday afternoon, the big worry of Governor Blanco, as well as of senators Vitter and Landrieu, was the lack of federal assistance. FEMA had promised 500 buses, but where were they? To the extent possible, without authorization from the Executive branch, the U.S. military started to get directly involved in Katrina relief. The USS Bataan was returning from a training mission in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina swept through. The 844-foot Navy warship weathered the storm in fine shape, and then sent helicopters from its decks to assist in the rescue operations in New Orleans. Captain Nora Tyson elected to set sail for the Louisiana coast, where she could offer aid in the form of her ship’s 600-bed hospital and its full store of food and water. On Tuesday, she sent a 135-foot landing craft on a 90-mile scouting trip up the Mississippi River. The sailors on the landing craft, which also carried some relief supplies, were among the first to see Plaquemines Parish in the aftermath of the hurricane. The sights were unbelievable, Navigator Rodney Blackshear recalled. “We saw a lot of dead animals, dead horses, floating cows, dead alligators. And a lot of dogs that had been pets. But no people.” Dogs on the shore, driven mad by hunger and the traumatic experience of the hurricane, had turned vicious and kept the men from docking for a closer look. Near the town of Boothville, they saw a construction crane that had been left by the storm on top of a house.57 The landing craft was wi
thin a few hours of bringing critically needed supplies to New Orleans and Chalmette when it was called back to the mother ship. Likewise, the Bataan itself was preparing to offer medical care to Katrina victims when it was suddenly, inexplicably, ordered to the Mississippi Coast—a region that had problems, to be sure, but which was easily accessible by truck. The Bataan was not a unique resource there, as it would have been in Louisiana.

  One way or another, some people were being saved on Tuesday. Amantine Verdin, the Pointe-au-Chien woman whose granddaughter had checked in on her on Saturday, was flooded out of her home in St. Bernard Parish. She and her mentally retarded son, Xavier, were finally retrieved from their neighbor’s barn on Tuesday, and taken to a shrimp boat that was sitting empty along the Mississippi. It was thought that in the boat they would be safe from the water. They were, but there was no food or water onboard. The elderly woman and her son had no choice but to accept what shelter the boat could provide. Lee Walker, the Poydras resident who couldn’t afford to evacuate, was still in his attic with his three dogs on Tuesday, clinging to the only dry place that he could reach. With his bad back, he couldn’t extricate himself or even signal for help. Like the Verdins, he was among the tens of thousands of people who were out of immediate danger on the day after the hurricane, but who were going hungry, in danger of dehydration and heat exhaustion.

  North of Lake Pontchartrain, the flooding also continued on Tuesday, with water having filled streets from a few inches to twelve feet or more. Wherever the land poked through, residents were out in the heat to see what was left and, more important, who was left. Springing into action, deputies from Slidell and the rest of St. Tammany Parish rescued hundreds of people during those first days after Katrina hit. In Slidell, as in towns all over southeastern Louisiana, communication with the outside world had ceased. This was troublesome because all the fishing camps along the lake in Slidell—including Senator Mary Landrieu’s family bungalow—were gone.58 The only way to find lost relatives was to wander around, asking questions. “We’re looking for my uncle,” said a man sitting forlornly in the debris that had once been his uncle’s house near the Oak Harbor Marina. “He told my mother the night before the storm that he wanted to stay home and watch over his house. Now we can’t find him. We’ve picked through what used to be his house, but so far, we haven’t found him.”59 After a short rest on a chair salvaged from the mess, he moved on. There was nowhere to turn for help. Gasoline was not to be found in the town, and even emergency vehicles were without fuel. “The hardest part is going to be going back later on and finding the casualties, although I hope there are none,” Slidell Police Captain Rob Callahan said. “Until the water recedes we can’t get to those bodies…. Imagine your worst nightmare and quadruple that 100 times.”60

  One Slidell resident who lost everything in Katrina was the legendary blues guitarist Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Ever since 1947, when Brown replaced an ill T-Bone Walker at a Houston club gig and thrilled the audience with “Gatemouth Boogie,” he was one of the top performing artists in the Gulf South. He soon had hits with “Oakie Dokie Stomp” and “Ain’t That Dandy.” With his distinct blend of juke-joint blues, fast hillbilly, Texas swing, and Cajun boogie, Brown rapidly emerged as one of the three or four powerhouse guitar players America ever produced. He also played violin, harmonica, mandolin, viola, and drums. By the time Katrina arrived, the Stetson-wearing Brown was celebrated as an international music superstar, stubbornly loyal to his distinctive style. He had recorded with Frank Zappa, Bonnie Raitt, and Ry Cooder. In 2004, at the age of eighty, Brown, a chain smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was battling heart disease. For Katrina, his family wisely evacuated Gatemouth to East Texas. He watched on television as the community he loved—Slidell—was partially destroyed. The bayous he particularly loved had become one vast water hole, together with New Orleans. “I’m sure he was brokenhearted, both literally and figuratively,” his booking agent, Rick Cady, said. “He evacuated successfully before the hurricane hit, but I’m sure it weighed heavily on his soul.”61 Just days later, he underwent angioplasty at a Port Arthur hospital. He was released to his grandniece’s home in Orange, Texas, and died.

  X

  During the same Tuesday afternoon news conference described earlier, Governor Blanco addressed another plaguing issue: the myriad problems at the Superdome. One of the only state officials to have seen the facility in person, Blanco had to fight back tears as she said that Louisiana was looking for ways to move the terrified people out of the stadium.62 “They’re putting more and more survivors into the Superdome, and…the conditions there are very difficult,” Blanco said. “But we’re worrying first about the medically needy. So we have to set up shelters and make sure that their medical needs can be taken care of. Then in the next phase, we’ll be looking for places to evacuate the rest of the folks at the Superdome. It’s not a very comfortable situation right now. You can imagine: there’s no power; it’s hot; difficult to get food to them…. There’s water lapping at the foot of the Superdome now…. I saw people walking in about knee-deep [water] as they were trying to get into the Superdome from the ground floor. And so we’re, you know, that is definitely going to be phased in as we go through these next few hours and days.”63

  As Governor Blanco made clear, the Superdome was no longer a safe haven, the shelter of last resort that had been promised. It was a squalid holding tank. What Governor Blanco did not admit at the news conference, however, was that there were no concrete plans to evacuate the facility. Helicopters could transport a few of the most distressed people. The rest would have to wait—wait for the long-promised FEMA buses that had no way to navigate the waist-deep water blocking the exit route.

  The absence of these buses was a continuing outrage. Day after day, as conditions changed radically in New Orleans, only two things remained constant: that people were in critical need of buses and that the buses were not running. Besides FEMA, the mismanagement of the bus transportation also fell in the lap of Mayor Ray Nagin. “We tried to start a few buses,” Terry Ebbert recalled. “They just coughed, dead.”64 Nagin failed to follow his own Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, which stated that city buses be operable and put on alert to evacuate citizens. As for the fleet of school buses owned by the city, they sat in a flooded lot a mere 1.2 miles from City Hall. A picture of the Metropolitan Street parking lot full of school buses, snapped from a helicopter by David J. Phillip of the Associated Press, stunned the nation. With no startable buses the mayor was in the throes of some kind of meltdown on Tuesday, unleashing profanities at anybody within earshot and constantly sobbing. Although he would put on a good public face, deep down he must have known just how delinquent he had been in preparing New Orleans for a major storm.

  At least for a while, Mayor Nagin had one loyal ally: Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson. When she wasn’t sleeping in the Hyatt ballroom, she spent much of her time in strategy sessions with Nagin. At the crack of dawn on Tuesday, Clarkson, with deputy Fitzgerald Hill as her guide, hopped into a police car and drove around Algiers. Refusing to stay holed up with Nagin at the Hyatt any longer, Clarkson then waded over to the real Command Center at City Hall and talked with Joseph Matthews, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. “Tell me what’s needed to be done,” Clarkson asked. She was referred to Chief Compass, who was back at the Hyatt. “Chief,” Clarkson said, “put me in a boat. I’m a swimmer. I’ve been swimming all my life. Let me go out and save people.” Chief Compass broke into a broad grin. “Mrs. Clarkson,” he said, “I know you’re a swimmer, but I’d feel like I’d have to use more police to protect you than to save lives.” To which Clarkson said, “Fine, I won’t bug you anymore.”65

  Clarkson asked herself two questions: Where can I be of the most help? What skill sets do I possess that are unique? Her answer was the telephone. Everybody said there was a “communications breakdown,” but she was a master of getting a cell-phone connection when no one else could.
After all, if she could reach her daughter at the Venice Film Festival, she could reach Washington, D.C., or Baton Rouge. “I found out Entergy had three satellite phones that were working [at the Hyatt],” Clarkson said. “Nothing else was consistently working. So I got on these phones and started calling places to find out flood information and who hadn’t been evacuated. And people started calling my cell and leaving messages like ‘So-and-so is still on the corner of Esplanade and Royal’ or ‘There’s a nursing home on such-and-such street—we don’t know if it’s evacuated.’ I was able to break through the communications breakdown. I found that not only could I get the message but that I could go to the satellite phone, call the Office of Emergency Preparedness and they’d send search and rescue people out to where I said. They got people out before we lost lives.”

  Although she stayed optimistic, Clarkson didn’t like what she saw. Her city had “not done right” by the elderly. “They didn’t realize they’d be trapped with no air, with no water, no food,” Clarkson later said in tears. “I just wish I had known. Next time we’ll know more. Next time I’m going to bring my entire database with me full of information about the elderly.” Her biggest lament, however, was that Army troops weren’t the first responders, in search and rescue as well as in maintaining security. “The Army would have done the job right,” she said. “Give me the Army, Marines, and Navy anytime. If they had come in, everything would have been better.”66

  With the floodwater waist-deep by late Tuesday afternoon, Clarkson could no longer walk back and forth between City Hall and the Hyatt. She realized for the first time the magnitude of the disaster. She kept kicking herself that the elderly had not been sent out of New Orleans on boats, planes, trucks—anything. “Next time we’ve got to get all the sick and elderly out of here,” she said. “A No One Left Behind Policy.”