The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  The most stunning examples of surreal New Orleans were the sights that greeted survivors looking for respite from the storm and its aftermath: the hospitals, the bridges out of New Orleans, the Superdome, and the Convention Center. In normal times, each was nothing if not reliable and strong. Much of Interstate 10, which ran east-west across the heart of the city, was an elevated expressway. In Center City, the highway was flooded in places, but for people on the northern and western sides of town, the roadway was dry land. Once they climbed up an access ramp, they joined the throng walking along the empty lanes. The highway led west through Jefferson Parish and eventually to Baton Rouge. The march started Tuesday and was still strong on Thursday, yet few buses arrived to help; few trucks brought water or food. On the other side of New Orleans, to the east, I-10 was now a dead end: the road had crumbled away at a bridge crossing the Industrial Canal.

  Before the storm, New Orleanians who chose to remain in hurricane-proof, high-rise buildings, like the Hyatt, Sheraton, or Hilton, called their strategy “vertical evacuation.” The same might be said of those newly homeless who found themselves on the elevated roadway that was all that was left of I-10 in central New Orleans. They climbed up because they would be dry there and because they would no longer be suffering alone; they would be part of a community. In the absence of any sense of protection from the government, there was some small security offered by association. Rickey Brock managed to get his family out of their flooded home on Dorgenois Street in the eastern part of the city, with the use of a rowboat. They headed for the Superdome but found it closed to new evacuees. For two nights, the Brocks slept nearby, under the interstate. Driven away by the corpses lying all around them, they climbed a ramp to a section of I-10. The bodies, Rickey Brock said, “smelled so horrible we came up here.”28

  Ten-year-old Ernest Smith tried to comfort his elderly grandparents as they sat in the trash and dust of the shoulder of the road. Eventually, the three of them hoped to reach Atlanta, where Ernest’s mother was living. The boy was mature for his age, and reflective about the circumstances, but he doubted that they would ever see his mother again. “I would tell her,” he told a Times-Picayune reporter, looking around the road that had been his home for days, “I love you. Please come get me, and I don’t want to be out here no more.”29

  Kache Grinds, an eleven-year-old, had been on the interstate for two days with her grandmother, who was nearly blind. They had been evacuated from a housing project and deposited there. On Thursday, she was standing at the end of the water, where the highway descended into the flood, trying to gain the attention of the emergency rescue boats that occasionally passed by. She was going to offer them her life savings of six dollars to take her grandmother to safety, but none of the boats paid her any attention.30 Babies were getting sick on the interstate; elderly people were dying of heart attacks or strokes, but very little help arrived.

  The heat of Thursday was so brutal that Ceci Connolly of the Washing-ton Post reported seeing “one group of more than a dozen stretched out in single file across I-10 to squeeze under the narrow band of shade from highway signs.”31 The people huddled together, making a home of the barren roadway, holding their belongings in a pillowcase or on a cart, looked like refugees from some war-torn area overseas. The term “refugees” offended some Americans, though. Because the crowds awaiting rescue were overwhelmingly black, the term seemed to imply that they were strangers in their own land. Indeed, they were refugees, in that they sorely needed refuge of some sort, but in the American perception, shaped by centuries of good fortune, refugees were necessarily foreigners. Americans gave refuge; they didn’t have to seek it. Katrina changed that. A whole population fit the description, if a refugee was someone who had nowhere to go—but went anyway—and no one to care about them. And so, although Reverend Jesse Jackson said, “It is racist to call American citizens refugees,” it was only the truth.32 Oprah Winfrey led the anti-“refugee” crusade. “I think we all in this country owe these people an apology,” Winfrey said. “We still don’t know how many of our fellow Americans lost their lives in the Katrina catastrophe…. They are not refugees…. They are survivors and we, the people, will not let them stand alone.”33

  Truth be told, they were evacuees and refugees and survivors. All three. And racism was in play, to some degree. If thousands of storm-ravaged citizens were stranded in Boston’s Back Bay, caught on some portion of the Massachusetts Turnpike during a flood and if they were white, you can be sure it wouldn’t have taken days for them to be evacuated. Whatever the conditions, it wouldn’t have taken officials four days to rescue them. With that assumption—that there were certain populations in America that would not have been left in primitive conditions for so many days—the question is whether the I-10 gathering was ignored because it was predominantly African-American or largely poor. A third possibility was that the treatment stemmed from the fact that the hurricane occurred in the state of Louisiana: rescue was complicated enough in isolation, but apparently impossible when it was at the mercy of an unresponsive White House.

  One can conjecture whether a poor white crowd would have fared better in New Orleans or whether the black population of another state would have been treated so shabbily. For those on the I-10, there was no question about why they were being left to fend for themselves. Watching one another weaken in the heat, many of them came to believe that, when push came to shove, they were regarded as second-class because they were black. The truth was not in the comforting supportive words of the government but in its deeds. Thousands of African Americans were cast back to primitive conditions, and in the scheme of the response to Katrina, the attitude seemed to be that it was all right that way. Four days later, the President’s parents, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, visited Reliant Park in Houston. They found conditions that were clean and orderly, but hardly homelike. It was a goodwill tour that was much appreciated until Barbara Bush expressed her opinion that “so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.”34 No one would blame the President’s mother if she misspoke in the fray of an interview, but many people leapt to her defense. And that indicated hers was a broadly held opinion and therefore worth pondering, in view of the racial questions raised by the slow response to Katrina.

  “Anyone who has visited the most deprived parts of America’s cities,” wrote Gerard Baker in The Times of London, “rather than merely empathized with them from afar, would have no difficulty whatsoever with the proposition that the inhabitants would prefer an air-conditioned sports stadium with all the food they can eat, the country’s best medical attention and the benign security of National Guard protection to the hunger, sickness and lawlessness in which many of them live.”35

  No one would deny that in the poorest neighborhoods of New Orleans—and other American cities—conditions were poor. Nonetheless, the underlying implication went too far, holding that since Katrina’s displaced people were “underprivileged anyway,” they looked upon life in the shelter as a step up—that they were grateful for the orderliness of their new life. That line of thinking turned them into something far worse than displaced. They were perceived as beggars. Jack Shafer, a first-rate columnist at Slate.com, came to Mrs. Bush’s defense, saying, “She probably got it right. The destruction wrought by Katrina may turn out to be ‘creative destruction,’ to crib [economist] Joseph Schumpeter, for many of New Orleans’ displaced and dispossessed.”36 Gaining something more than they “deserved,” they were supposed to be elevated to a higher way of life, and to be grateful for it. That attitude stripped the refugees of their dignity, first by presuming that all of them were the same, and then by implying that being “underprivileged,” they lived in squalor and were used to it. Standing around on an interstate for four days was just more of the same. When they got more, it would be in the form of largesse on the part of the government, providing clean beds, hot meals, and safe conditions.

  As
he had the last few days, Brian G. Lukas, the chief cameraman of WWL-TV, set out early Thursday to film the grim conditions on I-10. Everything now was making him angry, disgusted, and almost physically ill. In his diary he described the displaced persons crisis he encountered that week.

  Causeway and I-10 has become a massive staging area for the evacuees for New Orleans. There are thousands of people here…. In this heat, they are just trying to survive. Many are looking for displaced family members…all are suffering terribly. They seek the camera out crying for help. Many are old…many of the evacuees are sick. This is a makeshift refugee camp…the sanitary conditions are deplorable. I cannot believe that I am in the United States of America…the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Government—local, state, and federal—have failed these people. Helicopters are landing and scatter the debris…. The helicopter wash [also] provides a momentary relief from the heat. A lady is crying to me…telling me that they are not being treated as human beings and asked why doesn’t anybody help us…. This was supposed to be an area of rescue…they were going to be bused out of the area, but there are too few buses. Instead of the hundreds of buses promised, they came in groups of five or six. There are just too many people so they have to wait in the hot sun…. Helicopters shuttle some of the sick out…many of the elderly are rolled from their wheelchairs into the transport door of troop-carrying helicopters. However, other helicopters are [bringing] additional evacuees into the area. This is…tough to witness.37

  There was no doubt that the urban poor and the African-American population of New Orleans had social problems. But what outsiders forgot all too easily was that those forms on the overpass weren’t abstractions, they were families. Jerome Wise, standing in despair on the I-10, had saved only one possession from his house near Hayne Boulevard, a few blocks from the lake. He didn’t take food or money, but a photograph of his family, who had evacuated in advance. Jerome stayed behind to be with his son, who had to work a shift at McDonald’s over the weekend. After four days, Wise and his son were still separated from their family and without them, he felt he had nothing at all. In that, he was no different from the vast majority of other refugees—and other Americans of all races and incomes. “I can’t go home no more,” Wise said. “Nobody wants us. Nobody wants to help New Orleans.”38

  Oprah Winfrey wanted to help these people. More than any other television personality, her appeals were full of deep emotion; she communicated an almost tangible pain to tens of millions of viewers. “Just as the storm moved off the coastline, pretty soon these stories will no longer be a part of the headlines of our lives,” Winfrey said. “I feel deeply that we owe it to every single family who has suffered to not forget and to not let them stand alone.”39

  V

  The other principal highway west out of New Orleans was U.S. Route 90, which sprang out of I-10 just north of the Superdome and then wended its way south out of the city. Crossing the Mississippi River at the 3,000-foot twin bridges known as the Crescent City Connection, it led to the West Bank city of Gretna. First settled in 1836 by German immigrants, it was originally named “Mechnikhan.” Gretna’s historic district included numerous nineteenth-century traditional Louisiana state structures, like the Kettie Strehle House and the German-American Cultural Center on Huey P. Long Avenue. On Thursday, a group of two hundred dehydrated refugees walked along Route 90 to the bridge, on the way to Gretna, where hurricane damage was minimal. Electricity was out and water was unreliable at best in the suburb, but the streets were dry and the buildings largely intact. For people from New Orleans, it may as well have been the promised land. If they made it to Gretna, food and water would be plenty. According to Gretna Mayor Ronnie Harris, more than six thousand evacuees tried to flood across the Crescent City Connection begging for help.

  The group included many residents, as well as displaced persons from New Orleans hotels, most of which closed abruptly on Wednesday. One could hardly blame the managers: without sanitation and plumbing, a hotel can maintain living conditions for only a day, at best. A San Francisco couple named Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky were in town for a paramedics conference when the storm hit. On Wednesday, they were told to leave their hotel. They were a resourceful group. With the other guests, they collected $10,000 for transportation and called an out-of-town bus company, which sent ten buses. On the way in, however, the fleet was commandeered by the National Guard. The guests were disappointed, of course, but accepted the fact that severely ill people at the Superdome needed the transportation even more than they did. “The thing that gets me,” Bradshaw said, “is that if we could get on the phone and get ten buses, why couldn’t FEMA make that call?”40

  On Thursday afternoon, the group of hotel guests had been turned away from both the Superdome and the Convention Center. A few of the hotel guests took the advice of an official who suggested they walk across the Crescent City Connection to Gretna. Bradshaw and Slonsky were in the group, which was described, according to an estimate by one member, as being 95 percent black. As they walked onto the bridge, two police officers from Gretna blocked their path, brandishing guns. As a few members of the throng approached to inquire about the problem, the officers discharged the weapons, firing over the heads of the people before them. Bradshaw put his hands up, holding his paramedic badge where the police officers could see it. By way of explanation, he was told only that “there would be no Superdomes in their city.”41 That was shorthand for the fact that there would be no disorder in Gretna. But the people on the bridge were quite obviously harmless: frightened tourists with their luggage and garment bags, parents with babes in arms, and elderly people, some in wheelchairs. No one was allowed to come into Gretna—not from New Orleans. That was the direct order from Mayor Harris. Physically exhausted, and with nowhere to go, the group of refugees set up an encampment on the edge of the bridge, surrounded by liver-brown sludge. They thought they would spend the night there and try to cross again the next day. The Gretna police came back at the group in force. “Get the fuck off the bridge,” the police shouted. When the people didn’t respond immediately, the officers pointed their weapons at individuals.42 Ultimately the Gretna police called in a helicopter, which hovered low over the encampment, its rotor blades blowing the makeshift shelters away and pelting the people with dust and debris kicked up by the downdraft. The group retreated to New Orleans.

  Sheperd Smith, anchor of The Fox Report, was ideally situated to witness the Gretna Bridge Incident. He had arrived in New Orleans on Sunday, and he and Jeff Goldblatt had broadcast live from the French Quarter once the Katrina winds died down. Deemed by a TV Guide poll as America’s “second most trusted news anchor,” Smith had logged a lot of miles as a reporter, covering Operation Iraqi Freedom, 9/11, the Columbine school shooting, and President Clinton’s impeachment trial. Nothing about him was squeamish; in fact, he served as a witness to the execution of Timothy McVeigh in June 2001. But nothing he ever witnessed affected him like the Gretna Bridge Incident. As a Southerner, Smith knew instinctively that the remnants of Jim Crow still flourished in the Gulf South. While other TV commentators were describing the Superdome in racist terminology, Smith balked; it was more about urban poverty and bad planning than anything else. “I was based in the Royal Sonesta Hotel,” Smith recalled. “When the 17th Street levee breached we were doing our reports from the balcony. I couldn’t get through to New York except by text message.”43

  When the hotels were evacuated, Fox News decided to move their satellite trucks to the Crescent City Connection. Not only could they see the Superdome and the New Orleans skyline from there, but the vantage point afforded them a bird’s-eye view of the Morial Convention Center, which had suddenly, due to NBC’s heart-wrenching footage, become another focal point of the disaster. The Gretna Bridge Incident happened on Fox’s doorstep. “Suddenly these cops came driving over on the bridge,” Smith recalled. “We saw them blocking the road. Rumors were flying that there were armed gunmen roaming about, a
nd we did hear gunfire. So I assumed these police officers were tracking down some criminals. There were helicopters flying overhead.”

  Smith, in his good-natured way, walked up to the Gretna police. “What are you guys doing?” he asked. To which the Gretna officer said, pointing to a group of largely African-American refugees trying to cross the bridge, “We just want to keep them fucks out of there.” The Gretna cops were furious that much of the Oakwood Center Mall, located on the Gretna-Terrytown border, approximately a mile from the bridge, had burned Thursday afternoon. An unidentified group of thieves had scaled onto the roof using a ladder. Like cat burglars, they entered through a blown-out vent. They piled up store merchandise and lit a bonfire. Using the blazing fire as their light, they ransacked Lady Foot Locker, Underground Station, and Adler’s among other stores. The fire soon spread out of control. It raged for hours. Jefferson Parish firefighters, with inadequate water pressure, futilely fought the inferno. Crowds gathered to watch the mall smolder, among them a group whom Parish Councilman Chris Roberts called a “massive congregation” of refugees from the Superdome and Convention Center. They had walked across the Crescent City Connection earlier in the day.44 The Gretna cops may not have known who had broken into the mall and started the fires, but these New Orleans outsiders—nearly all African-American—had raised the cops’ suspicions. It was under these tense circumstances that a perplexed Smith asked, “Are you telling me that these Convention Center people can’t go over the bridge? That you’re forcing people to not evacuate?” He got an affirmative nod. “That’s absolutely crazy,” Smith said.45