In some parts of New Orleans that afternoon, the hurricane was remarkably enough not regarded as a hardship. Looting just kept on increasing. It was a once-in-a-lifetime “shopping” opportunity. A couple of thousand people were wandering around, like sinister Santa Clauses, with bags of stolen merchandise over their shoulders. In areas without flooding, looters were having a rare field day, smashing windows on Canal Place, Riverwalk, and other shopping areas in order to carry away goods. The Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street opened its doors for local emergency personnel and police to collect materials needed in their work, but this generosity backfired when word raced through the city that the store was open—with everything for the taking. At first, people took only food and drinks and toiletries for themselves and their neighbors. Then other long-held desires took over and the electronics and jewelry departments were stormed. “It’s a f——hurricane,” said a fireman, watching the scene in disgust. “What are you going to do with a basketball goal?”67 Nonetheless, some of those participating in the free-for-all were policemen. One was seen pushing a cart containing a Compaq computer and a 27-inch flat-screen television set. “The police got all the best stuff,” said one looter. “They’re crookeder than us.”68
At the Walgreens store in the French Quarter on Canal Street, the thieves were on a rampage, grabbing whatever they could, when the police arrived to save what was left. A boy, stationed at the door as a lookout, cried out, “Eighty-six, eighty-six!” when he saw the cops (“eighty-six” was radio-speak for “police”). The store emptied instantly.69 “It’s like this everywhere in the city,” said a longtime New Orleans policeman, as frustrated by the many absentees on the force as by the lawlessness in the midst of so much human misery. “This tiny number of cops can’t do anything about this,” he continued. “It’s wide open.”70
To their credit, some NOPD officers did help a group of doctors “commandeer” medical supplies from the Walgreens. Among the conventioneers who hadn’t gotten out of the city in time were more than a hundred infectious-disease specialists. Rather than sit idly by inside the Ritz-Carlton, the doctors sprang into action, helping everybody they could. “Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort,” Dr. Greg Henderson reported in an e-mail to his extended family. “The pharmacy was dark and full of water. We basically scooped the entire drug sets into garbage bags and removed them. All under police escort. The looters had to be held back at gunpoint.”71
All sense of law was expunged from New Orleans within hours of the hurricane’s passing. Some people sensed it, some seemed to have waited for it. With gangs and crime a way of life in the best of times in New Orleans, renegades continued coming out in large numbers. In fact, the proportion of criminals to the general population rose dramatically with so many of the more grounded residents having left. A great many of the looters were average citizens, overwhelmed by the temptation to grab what they wanted from neighborhood stores. The more serious criminals moved on the opportunities for major larceny. At Sewell Cadillac-Chevrolet, for instance, 250 cars were stolen from the lot. The biggest surprise was just who was in on the haul.
NOPD’s Third District was probably the most heavily criticized police unit during Katrina. Because the Moss Street Station, located along Bayou St. John, flooded, a large contingent of the officers had to take refuge at the LSU Dental School. Everything went haywire for them. The rooftop generator was blown down, a sergeant tumbled down the stairs and fractured his ankle, and rescue boats passed by, refusing to evacuate them. When they eventually were rescued by Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries boats, they were in need of vehicles. So they simply stole dozens of Cadillacs, some with “2004” stickers still on them, an estimated $3.7 million worth, from Sewell Cadillac-Chevrolet on Baronne Street in the Central Business District.72 Warren Riley later insisted that most of the police stole the Cadillacs to help Katrina victims; perhaps most of them did. Of course, if all they wanted was transportation, they could have taken the Chevrolets. And there were NOPD officers like Willie Earl Bickham who was arrested in Houston driving a stolen Sewell vehicle. He had quit the NOPD a week after Katrina and drove his stolen car to Texas. “Bickham was booked in Houston with impersonating an officer and unauthorized use of a vehicle,” the Times-Picayune reported in early 2006. “In the federal indictment…he is charged with interstate transport of a stolen vehicle, punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.”73
Perhaps more than any of the other indiscretions, the looting of the Cadillacs hurt the NOPD’s image most. All Riley kept saying for months afterward was that it was “under review.”
A major political split occurred between Louisiana Republicans and Democrats over looting. Governor Blanco, for example, feeling sorry for the poor who needed supplies, suggested that hotels and stores put an IOU pad at the checkout. Simply by signing their names and listing their goods, honest looters would be transformed into borrowers. It was a well-intentioned but impossible notion. When Senator Vitter heard this idea, he surmised that Blanco was out of touch with reality. “I knew we were in big trouble if the pad was our security plan,” Vitter recalled. “At the same time, Governor Barbour of Mississippi made it clear that looters would be shot.”74
There were those, however, who did leave IOU notes for using provisions during the deluge, like Blanco suggested. Sixty-two-year-old Skip O’Connor was part owner of six hotels in Greater New Orleans. As Katrina was approaching, O’Connor decided to leave his Marriott Courtyard on St. Charles Avenue open as a shelter. It was a civic gesture. A large church group noticed the door was unlocked and used the inn as their micro-Superdome. They slept in beds and consumed food from the kitchen. When evacuation buses finally arrived in New Orleans on Friday, Al Thomas, one of the Marriott Courtyard dwellers, left an IOU note which read, in part: “I’m writing to say thanks for the use of your hotel. Under these conditions, we had no other choice. We did not destroy anything, but we did find food to eat and water…. When leaving we took nothing but some food and some essentials because we did not come here to steal any that did not belong to us…. I will send something back finance-wise to compensate the use of your facilities…. There’s nothing phony about what I’m saying because this is coming straight from my HEART. About sending money for the use of the building.” In signing off, Thomas identified himself as “One of Katrina’s Victims.”75
The most dangerous criminals didn’t bother with commercial looting for mere financial gain. The pathological criminal also sought domination and the chance for violence. To that end, a kind of “wilding” occurred in the wake of Katrina. Just waving a gun at helpless survivors somehow empowered miscreants. They barged into private residences, with the occupants home, weary and frightened from the storm. The crooks took what they wanted at gunpoint, and the residents were fortunate if they were still alive when the robbery was over. Nothing kept the crooks from murder, just for the heck of it. Patrick Wooten, a roofer, was still in his house in the Algiers section, trying to keep his wife and two teenage sons fed in the days that followed Katrina. The water had receded, but that didn’t mean that there was anywhere to go, or any way to get there. One night, a group of thugs started trying to open the kitchen window. Wooten picked up a tire iron, the only weapon he had in the house, and shouted for his boys to take their mother into the bedroom and stay out of the way of gunfire. Alone against the intruders, Wooten hit the window frame with the iron. “Bam; get back!” he said, recalling what he did and said during his ordeal. “‘Bam; get back!’ I said, ‘Man, would you all please get back, man?’ I said, ‘We don’t have nothing.’ Then they hear me crying, you know…. [Mysons] just stayed around their mom. They protected her. God must have been on my side, you know, to [have the robbers] not shoot in the house.”76
Later in the week, Wooten’s sons were outside when they spotted three corpses in the backyard of an adjoining house and heard a thug bragging that he had killed them in the course of robbing thei
r house. Wooten had absolutely nowhere to turn. For days on end, his only choice was whether to be killed by the bears at the window or the lions in the street. The few police officers he and his family saw made it clear that they had orders to shoot to kill and that nothing would stop them from doing just that. Wooten stayed indoors night and day.
Many of the thugs were specifically looking for guns, hoping to trade whatever firearms they had for ever bigger ones. Gunfire was so rampant in the streets that the rumor quickly spread that rescue helicopters were under attack. That was not the case, but each time the story spread, rescue helicopters throughout the city were grounded for at least an hour.77 “The rumors were way over the top,” District Attorney Eddie Jordan recalled. “As a public official you couldn’t believe what you heard. You had to be careful not to mislead people.”78
Unfortunately, not everybody on the NOPD was as wise as the DA. By afternoon, the police had more serious problems than televisions and makeup kits disappearing from store shelves. “To my amazement and astonishment, armed crowds started shooting at rescue personnel,” said Police Superintendent Eddie Compass. Instead of rescuing people, Compass’s thin ranks had to try to protect rescuers.79 Well…not really. It didn’t happen. Caught up in the hysteria of the moment, Compass had exaggerated. He was in part responsible for floating rumors to the national reporters as hard news. Well-intentioned, Compass couldn’t stop chatting up the press. He even held interviews with media from Brazil, Japan, and Italy, presenting himself as “Steady Eddie,” the good cop on the beat. He seemed to bask in the limelight.
Warren Riley’s girlfriend was in Houston when she heard the news that snipers were firing at rescue helicopters and that officers were being killed. “Warren, you’ve got to get out of the city,” she cried. “Get out of there.” Trying to comfort her, lambasting the grapevine, Riley explained that his duty was to stay in New Orleans. He couldn’t leave. She was insistent, saying, “You’re gonna get killed. They’re killing everyone in New Orleans. They’re shooting at helicopters, they’re shooting at police, they’re killing people. They killed Chief Compass.” A rattled Riley knew this was bull, only the wildest of rumors being promulgated by irresponsible journalists. “What are you talking about?” he said. “They didn’t kill Chief Compass. He is sitting right here. Do you want to talk to him?”80
Riley looked into all sorts of rumors. All the television stations were running stories about NOPD officers being killed by looters. He later explained, “All those stories about people shooting at helicopters weren’t true. There was one guy [who] shot a helicopter in Algiers—a SWAT team went in and got him. [New Orleanians] were in their attics for days, seeing the [rescue] boats and they were shooting, though their shots were to say, ‘We’re here.’ Our SWAT team would ax a hole in the roof and get them out. Imagine being in your attic for days with ten feet of water below you. The shooting was about people saying, ‘Hey, somebody, help me.’ [As for] people shooting at helicopters, that was bull.”81 Other prominent rumors were that DA Jordan had been murdered by prisoners and that Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee had died of a heart attack. All the rumors added to the turmoil—and frightened FEMA away from helping out the beleaguered.
With FEMA and the Red Cross staying out of New Orleans, and the Coast Guard and National Guard shorthanded for a disaster of such magnitude, journalists also found themselves in the role of emergency relief workers. Whether it was handing out pallets of water, rescuing people out of floodwaters, or finding rides out of New Orleans for the sick, reporters joined the effort to help. Not only did they bring international attention to the Great Deluge via newspaper dispatches and television reports, but they goaded city, state, and federal first responders to do more—much more.
At times, New Orleans police roughed up journalists in an attempt to prevent them from filming fellow officers who were mistreating citizens. Two New York Times photographers, Tyler Hicks and Marko Georgie, were taken from the front porch of the house at which they were staying, shoved to the ground, and handcuffed—all for getting fresh air during curfew. Jessica Willey of Houston’s KTRK-TV was barred by the NOPD for filming looters (perhaps the police were worried that fellow officers would be captured in the act of committing a felony). Recognizing the police were using overt force, Michael Christie of Reuters compared certain New Orleans blocks to a war zone. “If I ever felt threatened, it was by the realization that there were an awful lot of back country sheriffs there itching to pull their triggers,” Christie explained. “Having seen U.S. troops in action in Afghanistan and Haiti, where they went to shoot anything that moved, I felt rather nervous.”82
XI
Along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, the surging waters had been gone for more than a day as of Tuesday. However, many people were still in trouble. In addition, tons of debris remained, and the cleanup had not yet begun. Fleets of boats were found in scrub woods, and rooftops were separated from their houses. Holbrook Mohr of the Associated Press was in Gulfport on Tuesday. He heard of two people who had been carried out to the Gulf with the receding storm surge. They were rescued after clinging to floating wreckage for twelve hours. Mohr heard of other rescues, but was haunted by the endings that were neither happy nor tragic, only terribly confusing. “I met a man on the street,” Mohr said. “He came up to me and asked me if I could help him. He pointed to a Shell gas station along the beach that was totally demolished and he just broke into tears asking, ‘Where’s Debbie? Where’s Debbie? She’s the love of my life.’ People are pretty distraught here.”83
Many historic Gulf Coast landmarks were simply gone when people came out on Tuesday to take a look. “The devastation down there,” Governor Barbour told Today on Tuesday, “is just enormous.”84 Green Lawn Hall, which dated to the 1830s, was obliterated, only its foundation left. The ground floor of Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s home, was gutted. Pelicans perched on the structural remains of the 800-foot Coliseum Pier in Biloxi. Pass Christian’s harbor, full of shrimp boats, was deemed a total loss. That afternoon, police and other officials still couldn’t even reach the once busy town of Moss Point, just north of Pascagoula—it was submerged under twenty feet of water.85
Governor Barbour had already reported that at least eighty citizens of Harrison County, which included Biloxi and Gulfport, had been confirmed dead.86 Two hundred forty National Guardsmen rushed into the county Tuesday afternoon. Approximately the same number went to the other two coastal counties.
Although it was nothing like New Orleans, pillagers had come out in the broken communities of the Mississippi Gulf. Some were relatively innocent—for example, the castaways poaching the casino slot machines that were washed up all through the Biloxi waterfront, hoping to find some coins; or teenagers breaking into an amusement park that had been spared and riding the bumper cars for free. In other places, the criminal activity was serious—but not as serious as the opposition that arose to fend it off. Nanette Clark had invited her friend Jayne Davis to stay at her Pascagoula house during the hurricane—a fortunate idea, since Davis’s home in Biloxi ended up being washed away. Clark’s home, a dainty pink house with gingerbread trim, suffered only minor damage. On Tuesday, the two women sat on the balcony of that cheerful home with loaded guns, watching for looters or highwaymen. When they saw a suspicious-looking group of potential freebooters approach, they fired rounds into the air to scare them off.87 The police could do little about looting, not only because they had rescue work to perform, but because there were no local jails left. All over the churned-up coast, homeowners took up arms and stood ready to defend their possessions with firearms. Some, like Clark and Davis, seemed almost eager to blast a pirate back to sea. It was a singularly American response—more specifically, a Southern one. Among the Confederate flags hung outside some homes and the American flags that were displayed everywhere, signs sprang up warning, almost excitedly, that trespassers would be shot. Fortunately, humor was also a reassuringly American response. Next to a pile of debris and win
d-strewn lumber in Diamondhead, a high-end, golf-retirement community near Bay St. Louis, was a hand-lettered sign reading “House for Sale (Some Assembly Required).”88
The whole Gulf Coast region was, in the words of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, “on its knees.” Lott became a real critic of the slow relief and recovery response; ignoring the GOP talking points, political caution had been removed from his speech. On Tuesday, his home gone, Lott was just another Mississippian—an individual in trouble, in search of White House leadership, in hope of help. “The people of Mississippi are flat on their backs,” Lott said in a public appeal to the President. There was something in his tone that was angry and smoldering. “They’re going to need your help.”89 (A few days later, furious at FEMA’s ineptitude, Lott charged that Director Michael Brown was “acting like a private instead of a general.”90)
XII
At the end of the day, Michael Chertoff returned from Atlanta to Washington, where he finally turned his attention to the relief effort along the Gulf Coast. In his capacity as Homeland Security Secretary, he issued a memo declaring the hurricane damage an “incident of national importance.”91 With that, Michael Brown, as the designated “principal federal official,” could override local and state officials as he saw fit, and coordinate aid from nearly every federal department that could be of some use, including the military. Even so, Chertoff still failed to attach any real sense of urgency to the declaration, even delaying a public announcement about it until the following day. Judging by his actions, Chertoff seems to have been reluctant to rush the White House response. He consistently deferred to the President’s initiative to form a special task force. At best, he was feeling his way through unfamiliar territory. At worst, his priorities were those of a political animal. The first instinct of a true emergency-response professional would have been to waste as little time as possible and use any and all powers available (according to the National Response Plan).
The Great Deluge Page 45