The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  If Brown saw Blanco as doddering, by Wednesday he was beginning to see other local leaders in an even darker light. According to the testimony Brown gave before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on February 10, 2006, he continued informing his boss, Chertoff, of the breached levees in New Orleans, starting with their conversation on Monday evening. In addition to the telephone call to Chertoff, Brown delivered his message in video-teleconferences (VTCs) with Chertoff aides on at least two occasions over the course of that time span. In his testimony, he called the Department of Homeland Security’s later claims that it was not informed of the levee breaches, “bologna.” E-mail messages supported his version of events.8

  When Chertoff seemed unresponsive, Brown also contacted presidential aides to clarify the extent of the flooding and the dire state of those left in greater New Orleans. For twenty-four hours, he saw little or no concern in either camp regarding the message that he and by that time others were attempting to deliver in either camp. According to Brown in his congressional testimony, the problem was that Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, rather than a terrorist attack. As he explained it:

  It’s my belief that had there been a report come out from Marty Bahamonde that said, yes, we’ve confirmed that a terrorist has blown up the 17th Street Canal Levee, then everybody would have jumped all over that and been trying to do everything they could; but because this was a natural disaster, that has become the stepchild within the Department of Homeland Security, and so you now have these two systems operating—one which cares about terrorism, and FEMA and our state and local partners, who are trying to approach everything from all hazards. And so there’s this disconnect that exists within the system that we’ve created because of DHS. All they had to do was to listen to those VTCs and pay attention to these VTCs, and they would have known what was going on. And, in fact, I e-mailed a White House official that evening about how bad it was, identifying that we were going to have environmental problems and housing problems and all those kinds of problems. So it doesn’t surprise me that DHS would say, well, we weren’t aware. You know, they’re off doing things, it’s a natural disaster, so we’re just going to allow FEMA to do all that. That had become the mentality within the department.

  That was, at least, one explanation. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, concurred that the delay in Chertoff’s response was critical, and it even went further. In a preliminary report submitted by Comptroller General David M. Walker issued in February 2006, the GAO noted that “the DHS secretary designated Hurricane Katrina as an incident of national significance on August 30—the day after final landfall. However, he did not designate the storm as a catastrophic event, which would have triggered additional provisions of the National Response Plan (NRP) calling for a more proactive response.” The report concluded, “In the absence of a timely and decisive action and clear leadership responsibility and accountability, there were multiple chains of command, a myriad of approaches and processes for requesting and providing assistance, and confusion.”9 When the White House finally stepped in to take an active role in disaster response, it only added to that confusion.

  Just after noon on Wednesday, Louisiana Senator David Vitter acted as go-between for fellow Republican Karl Rove, bringing a message to Governor Blanco. According to notes taken by Terry Ryder, the governor’s executive counsel, Rove took it as a given that Blanco wanted President Bush to assume control of the evacuation. In the meantime, Rove directed the governor to put New Orleans under martial law, “or as close as we can get.”10 The response to the White House overture was icy on Blanco’s part. “We had our two senators, who decided to camp out in the EOC, which was probably a big mistake,” Blanco said. “They were both emotionally involved because their homes and their home territories were directly impacted. [Vitter and Landrieu] were trying to be helpful. I would definitely say that. Vitter would try and pass a message to me from the White House. They came on their own just because they were upset. After I told the President that I felt like I needed 40,000 troops—now, I didn’t mean all federal troops, but a combination of National Guard and federal troops in any kind of assortment. When I looked at the magnitude and saw how many parishes were involved and saw how much work there was to do, I knew I needed bodies. I needed manpower to help us stay alive, in many, many kinds of ways.”11

  At 2:20 P.M., Blanco telephoned the White House again. This time, President Bush took the call. Blanco described the desperate state of affairs in the New Orleans region—which he had seen for himself a few hours before—and she requested the 40,000 troops. Blanco later admitted she “just pulled a number out of the sky,” though it ultimately proved an accurate assessment of the troop strength needed. In any case, if federal troops were to be in her state, then Blanco expected that they would officially be under her control. She was not ceding the sovereignty of Louisiana or the foothold she had as its governor. Significantly, she told the President, as she later testified to Congress, that she wanted “to continue to be his partner in a unity of effort as is called for under the National Response Plan.”12 Whether the White House was looking for the same type of partnership with her remained to be seen. “Karl Rove asked David Vitter, what did I actually mean by asking for federal troops,” Blanco recalled. “Did I mean to federalize the situation? And when David Vitter brought that message to me, I picked up the phone and I called the President and I clearly stated [my position] on Wednesday. ‘Mr. President, I definitely need more troops, but I do not want to federalize the troops. What I want is some soldiers with equipment that can help us. We have a lot of work in the aftermath of our lifesaving operations.’” She also asked for medical assistance. “The hospital ship would have been nice to have early on. I don’t know if it ever came. At least the Iwo Jima came.”13

  Blanco’s communications director, Bob Mann, was one of those giving the governor media advice. A decision was made to leave the media to fend for itself. No embedded reporters. No preening for the media; this was a tragedy. There was a thin line between grandstanding and mourning, and the governor wasn’t going to cross it by staging too many press conferences or photo ops. By Wednesday, however, Mann realized that the White House had launched a public relations onslaught against his boss, blaming Blanco for everything. “It was pretty obvious on Wednesday what was happening,” Mann recalled. “We were getting telephone calls from reporters who were citing the White House as their source. It was just coming at us in waves. Every reporter that Wednesday said, ‘The White House is saying…White House officials say…’ They were sticking it to us. But then at the exact same time they were publicly saying, ‘This is not the time for a blame game.’”14

  While the White House was blaming Governor Blanco, the media lit into President Bush. Some journalists recalled a prescient point Bush the candidate had made at one of the 2000 presidential debates. When the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, observed that perhaps 90 percent of a president’s job was dealing with unexpected emergencies, an eager Bush jumped in: “That’s the time when you’re tested not only—it’s a time to test your mettle,” he said. “It’s the time to test your heart, when you see people whose lives have been turned upside down. It broke my heart to go to the flood scene in Del Rio [Texas] where a fellow and his family just got completely uprooted. The only thing I knew was to get aid as quickly as possible, which we did with state and federal help, and to put my arms around the man and his family and cry with them. But that’s what governors do. Governors are often on the front line of catastrophic situations.”15 So are presidents, of course.

  II

  With the declaration that the hurricane had been an “incident of national significance,” the Department of Defense organized Joint Task Force Katrina, which could draw on all of the branches in response to the hurricane. According to the National Response Plan, requests for military assistance were to come directly from FEMA. The first requests on Wednesda
y were for about fifty helicopters. The Navy sent the hospital ship Comfort, with its one thousand beds and extensive medical facilities.16 It was due to leave its berth in Baltimore in two days and arrive in New Orleans in twelve. This was so late as to be useless.

  That Wednesday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into the fray. He mobilized eight Swift Water Rescue teams—the Sacramento City Fire Department, Oakland Fire Department, Menlo Park Fire Department, Los Angeles City Fire Department, Los Angeles County Fire Department, Orange County Fire Authority, Riverside City Fire Department, and the San Diego City Fire Department. Task Force 5, for example, from Orange County, was deployed to New Orleans. This seventy-six-member team of firefighters was among America’s best units for water and boat rescue operations. Usually, this crew team worked regular hours at firehouses in Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Orange City. “But during a crisis, they get the signal to mobilize as one specialized subgroup of the seventy-member task force,” reporter Lynn Armitage explained in OC Metro: Business Lifestyle Magazine. “They were one of the eight swift water rescue teams in California deployed to New Orleans—the first responders.”17

  Task Force 5 flew out of March Air Force Base in Riverside, California, on a National Guard military transport plane that Wednesday. It would turn out to be an eighteen-day deployment. The task force brought along utility trucks, a tractor-trailer loaded with rescue boats, an SUV, and plenty of food, radios, water, batteries, helmets, and other rescue equipment. From their rubber rafts, which held up to ten people each, these firemen saved over two hundred New Orleanians, but it wasn’t easy. Two of the firemen, Dave Baker and Dave Thomas, were knocked out when a Chinook helicopter accidentally blew a wood crate in their direction. Baker received thirty-seven stitches from the mishap. “Without the helmet,” Baker said, “I’d be dead now.”18 But injuries aside, pulling seniors out of hospitals, saving a couple out of a church loft, and extracting children from a collapsed shotgun all made their efforts meaningful. “If I hadn’t been able to go,” Chris Boyd said, “it would have killed me.”19

  Governor Schwarzenegger also sent more than 500 members of the California National Guard and hundreds of medical workers. Speaking in front of a banner reading “Donate Money, Time, Blood 1-800-HELP-NOW,” Schwarzenegger gave the kind of emotional appeal that President Bush didn’t. “The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina has challenged the limits of despair,” Schwarzenegger said. “Entire communities destroyed, people driven out of their homes, maybe thousands of people dead. I know that the people of California have shown tremendous compassion and generosity because of this disaster…please continue to be generous…. We know that the recovery is going to take months or maybe even years. But this disaster is no match for the resolve for us to stand side-by-side with our fellow Americans that are struggling right now, that are hurting, that need our help.”20

  National Guard troops, called up from the affected states, numbered about 6,000 when the storm hit the coast on Monday morning. With up to 40 percent of their respective forces already on duty in war zones overseas, however, those states had limited troops left to call as the disaster expanded in scope. On Tuesday, the number had increased to only 8,000.21 Before more could come from other states, authorization had to come from the National Guard bureau at the Pentagon. That formality had become another roadblock. And then there were the federal troops, the active-duty soldiers. Before they could be deployed, federal approval had to be granted. Initial approval came with the designation of the hurricane as an “incident of national significance,” but ultimately the President would have to give them their final orders. The plan put in place on Wednesday called for 20,000 troops, both National Guard and active-duty, to be on the ground by the next morning in the damaged areas. Then they had to actually be deployed. Oddly, Task Force Katrina bypassed the 8,000 regular soldiers available at Fort Polk, which was located in Leesville, only 270 miles from New Orleans. Instead, it called on personnel from Texas and California, in addition to the 82nd Airborne Division from North Carolina, legendary for its ability to reach any destination in the world within eighteen hours.22 That was fine—but the U.S. soldiers from Fort Polk could have been in New Orleans in half that time. Anyway, until the President signed off on it, none of them were going anywhere.

  Lieutenant Colonel Bernard McLaughlin, who was in New Orleans on military duty for the first twelve days of the Great Deluge, kept a detailed diary of his shifts at both the Superdome and the Convention Center during the critical periods. A Louisiana State University alum, McLaughlin was a professional litigation mediator from Lake Charles. He took his obligation in the National Guard just as seriously as Jimmy Duckworth did the Coast Guard Reserve. Stocky, with a Marine-like crew cut, he was a real fitness fanatic. Although mediating legal disputes before they went to court was his forte, he had also graduated from the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General School in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as the U.S. Army Combined Arms and Services School and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, both at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. “Whatever I could do to better myself,” McLaughlin said. “My interest was in being of service to my country.”23

  McLaughlin had been assigned to Task Force 134/Multinational Force Iraq, their operations headquartered in the Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris River in southwest Baghdad in the Green Zone. Their court building was located in the Red Zone of Baghdad in a landmark building known as the Clark Tower, formerly Saddam Hussein’s personal museum in which the dictator displayed lavish gifts and antiquities that he received from other countries. “We converted it into a court building,” McLaughlin recalled, “complete with chambers for the Iraqi judges, offices for prosecutors’ courtrooms and holding cells. We tried several hundred insurgents and terrorists for various crimes including murder, terrorism, illegal weapons possession, etc.”24

  When McLaughlin went to Iraq, he carried the “royal purple” and “old gold” LSU flag with him, along with a copy of The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling. Down the streets of Fallujah and the alleyways of Balad and the roundabouts of Baghdad, there was McLaughlin waving his collegiate banner. He would fly it down to Checkpoint Two, the most dangerous road in the world. “Everywhere I went,” he recalled, “the flag went with me.” It was a humorous prank, aimed at goading Longhorns and Aggies and Razorbacks and Crimson Tide. Nobody knew what the Iraqis thought of the strange flag. Did it belong to some inconsequential Coalition of the Willing ally like Eritrea or Albania or Uzbekistan? Was it the pennant of some secret CIA covert division?

  McLaughlin was awarded the Bronze Star in addition to the Iraq Campaign Medal for his sterling service. “When I returned from Iraq, I never dreamed that I would serve on military duty in New Orleans six months,” McLaughlin recalled. “As it happened, I was an invited speaker on mediation of employment law cases at a Louisiana State Bar Association conference seminar at the Loew’s on Friday, August 26, and stayed over in NOLA, as I had a mediation in a personal injury case scheduled in the city for the next morning. I did the mediation and drove home to Lake Charles, which took me about nine hours.” The next morning he was called to active duty and told to report to Jackson Barracks in the Lower Ninth Ward.25

  When Katrina hit, McLaughlin was stuck at the barracks as it flooded. To watch the flood grow from one inch of rainwater to a five-foot wall of water in about twenty minutes, was startling; it was particularly wrenching for him to watch his car succumb to the storm. It wasn’t until Tuesday morning that the Jackson-based Guard contingent realized how badly flooded the rest of New Orleans was. The stranded troops moved by boat from their headquarters to the Mississippi River levee a couple long blocks away. They were soon airlifted by Blackhawk helicopters to the Superdome for the start of what McLaughlin called “our real mission.”26 They joined more than 300 Guardsmen already on duty.

  The Jackson Barracks Guardsmen, there with both Old Glory and the Louisiana State “Pelican” flags sewn on their shoulders, began their dut
y by securing the various food and water stations. Discarded piles of clothes, MRE wrappers, and water bottles were scattered all about. Each MRE contained a 1,200- to 1,400-calorie meal usually with the following items:

  Soda crackers and a spread, like cheese or peanut butter.

  A main course, like beefsteak, chicken and noodles, turkey breast.

  A side dish, like fruit, rice, soup, or potatoes.

  Some type of dessert, snack, or candy.

  An accessory packet: matches, spoon, wet wipe, salt, pepper, coffee, and sweetener (some may include an alternative beverage powdered drink too).

  Military versions also include a mini roll of toilet tissue.27

  The Guard wanted everything to be “orderly”—that was the main word with them. With just enough MREs and water left, as well as concession food left over from the recent Saints game, they fed the crowd as best they could. Provisions were rationed instead of being handed out at will. At one juncture a few disgruntled Domers got in McLaughlin’s face. “We want a hot meal,” they carped. “We don’t want MREs.” McLaughlin’s mind was racing. “You ungrateful SOBs,” he thought. But he kept his composure. “Well, I’d like a hot meal too. But this here MRE is good enough for me and the troops around me—it ought to be good enough for you.”