The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  In the meantime, the Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors were trying a new strategy in the effort to plug the breached levee on the 17th Street Canal, so that the city could start the long process of pumping itself dry. While helicopters were still dropping sandbags into the 700-foot-long hole, Boh Brothers Construction began driving pilings across the width of the canal, so that a sort of dam could be constructed. That way, the water could be pumped out of the canal, at least up to the point at which the sandbags reached. That would facilitate the repair to the levee wall.65

  The damming of the breached New Orleans levees became known as the “Super Sack.” The company that worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was the Golden, Colorado, company Kaiser-Hill that had cleaned up the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Denver, one of the largest cleanups ever completed in the world. Kaiser-Hill was a joint venture by two preeminent firms, Kaiser Engineering and CH2M Hill. To dispose of nuclear waste, the company had designed special polypropylene sacks that could hold contaminated materials and soils. Coordinating with Lift-Liner vendors, MHF Logistical Solutions, and other companies, Kaiser-Hill sent 2,400 of these “super sacks” to the Corps of Engineers to be filled with sand and dropped in the breaches. The Corps loaded each bag with up to 16,000 pounds of Gulf South sand. They then had helicopters carefully lower them into the breached sections of the levees.66 “I grew up around New Orleans,” recalled Jerry Long, a vice president at Kaiser-Hill. “We recognized that robust bags used to ship radioactive soil were needed. You didn’t want the wrong plastic bags that had chemicals in them. You didn’t want fabrics that would disintegrate over time either. We had the product they needed. And we didn’t hesitate, we shipped it to them in record time.”67

  VIII

  While the breaches were being filled with Kaiser-Hill sandbags, City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson was talking with Mayor Ray Nagin on Thursday on the fourth floor of the Hyatt. When would the breaches be repaired and the flooding subside was the million-dollar question. Also in the room were Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert, Director of Homeland Security Terry Ebbert, and a few police officers. “Mr. Mayor,” Clarkson said. “I’ve called as many people as I know to call, left every message, gotten in touch with everyone, gotten as many people out of town as I can. I’m out of a job. What can I do?”

  Before Mayor Nagin could give Clarkson an assignment, another police officer burst into the room. “Let’s go, Mr. Mayor,” the officer said. “Gotta get you outta here.” Nagin got up, grabbed Clarkson by the elbow, and headed for the stairwell, ready to climb up to his quarters on the twenty-seventh floor. After conferring privately with the officer for ten or twenty seconds, Nagin turned to Clarkson, filled with terror. “There’s a couple of rabble-rousers leading the mob from the Superdome and they’re trying to get through the Hyatt doors,” Nagin told Clarkson. “They’re coming after me.”68

  By this point in the Katrina saga, Nagin was paranoid about his security. He was cracking at the seams. Worried that the Superdome folks were going to get him, he had become all jitters. Perhaps he was consumed with guilt for not making an appearance at either the Superdome or the Convention Center. Or maybe he couldn’t function properly without sleep. “Mr. Mayor,” Clarkson said. “They’re after you, not me. You’re important and you’re young. You get up those stairs. They’re not after me. You go on. I’ll think about it.”69

  Nagin didn’t want no as an answer from Clarkson. He insisted that Clarkson come with him to the top bunker. “I thought, ‘Do I want to die of a gunshot or a heart attack?’” Clarkson said. “I stayed right behind him up those steps. I decided at age seventy, I’d rather take my chances with a heart attack than a gun. The National Guard and the police held them off. There were only three or four rabble-rousers. The rest of them were very nice people. They just thought that we had resources in the Hyatt that they didn’t have.”70

  Mayor Nagin spent the rest of Thursday in a paranoid state of mind. No rescue boat or Superdome speech or direct action for him. Unable to communicate with the outside world, terrified, he munched on peanuts and tried to listen to Garland Robinette. “The mayor had a wind-up radio and we would take turns winding it up,” Clarkson recalled. “It was a present his wife had given him for Christmas. An old kind of battery radio to listen to WWL. He didn’t even have a transistor. We kept looking out the window at all the people on the bridge between the Hyatt and the Superdome. They were getting water dropped for them. The police were out there. They were interacting with the National Guard. It was very calm. We were getting so hopeful. At that point we were listening on the radio. That was the first time we heard all the criticism that was on the radio.”71

  With Nagin and Clarkson was Sally Forman, the mayor’s tireless communications director. During Katrina, she, in her own words, “acted more like the mayor’s secretary.”72 A staunch defender of Nagin’s erratic behavior during Katrina, Forman booked her boss on CNN, 60 Minutes, and Oprah. She insisted he wasn’t hiding in the Hyatt from August 29 to September 1. “We had no transistor radio,” Forman recalled of City Hall’s lack of communication. “Twice I stopped a woman sitting on the Hyatt floor with a transistor to glean information. We had no other way to know what was going on.”73

  Because they hadn’t really heard the criticism being levied at the New Orleans city government by the major networks and the rest, Nagin, Forman, and Clarkson were all taken aback by what they heard on WWL. For days, these two strong-willed women had been urging Nagin to be proactive, to show his leadership stripes, to abandon the Hyatt hideout stance. Nagin had taken a boat trip to various flooded New Orleans neighborhoods, but he always made sure his clothes didn’t get dirty. He had peeked into the Superdome a couple of times but always in a covert, spontaneous, glimpse-me-if-you-can fashion. Now, on Thursday, General Honore announced that federal troops were coming. They were arriving en masse. If Nagin did nothing to dispel the notion that he was AWOL from the first-responder drama, then his political career was probably finished. He would go down in history as one of worst U.S. mayors ever. “You have to get on the radio and tell them what happened,” Clarkson urged Nagin, “that your city troops performed their jobs and are still doing the jobs and you’ve had no backup from the state or federal government and that’s the problem and they need to get in here and you need to tell that story.”

  Since Nagin was incapable of taking the plunge of actually informing the public of what was happening, Forman and Clarkson took matters into their own hands. They took a satellite phone to a Hyatt room and convinced the mayor to dial up Garland Robinette. “That’s when he did his famous irate speech and blasted the government and blasted the president,” Clarkson recalled. “Sally and I were standing right at his side. We were going ‘Go, go, go!’”74

  All week long policemen, firemen, and medical personnel wanted the mayor to do something—anything. Forman later admitted that the mayor’s problem was proper communication with the Superdome, which was connected to the Hyatt. So why didn’t Nagin wade in the water, stand under a Superdome goalpost, and have a bullhorn moment or engage in boat rescues? Why stay sequestered in a hotel? Why abandon City Hall to Terry Ebbert? Why hide from the disaster? “Symbolically the mayor felt that they didn’t need another political person in a rescue boat,” Forman explained in his defense. “The best thing the mayor could do was run the operation on the ground. Politically it was perhaps a mistake. And he didn’t have a bullhorn, so we made flyers to hand out at the Dome.”75

  Like Clarkson, Forman wanted the mayor to be bold, to let his blood vessels burst in a moment of authentic outrage at the slow federal response. His national image was sinking by the minute and he needed to pull a public relations rabbit out of his top hat. Time was of the essence. If he waited until Thursday night, then all the federal troops would be in town. He would lose his right to complain. His window of opportunity was dwindling away. “At the time he did the WWL interview, our biggest concern was the people,” Forman said. �
�We were just hoping that locals were listening to the radio. I never thought it was going to have reverberations.”

  IX

  Garland Robinette was the populist voice of passion in the midst of the frightening degeneration of New Orleans. Columnist Dave Walker of the Times-Picayune called him the “reluctant oracle of the post-Katrina apocalyptic air.” Anyone who had a radio in the Greater New Orleans area was tuned into WWL, gaining bits of information, taking good advice, and something akin to the truth from the veteran newsman. At various times in Robinette’s extended broadcast, people would call in and give a description of their situation wherever they were. “We stayed real,” Robinette said. “Or tried to.”

  Robinette had become a local folk hero for having broadcast through Katrina on Monday and having fled the floodwaters on Tuesday. After visiting his wife in Natchez and getting some sleep, he was back on the air from a Baton Rouge studio, living at a friend’s house. Clear Channel had stepped into the fray and was broadcasting WWL live all over the world via the Internet. “I just got furious on the air,” Robinette recalled. “I didn’t care if I had a job or not. I kept saying on the air to the U.S. government, ‘Where are you? Where the hell are you? This is day four and there’s no help. What the hell is going on?’” With Clear Channel allowing Robinette free rein, the reluctant broadcaster started fielding calls from foreign countries. “Got a call from Australia. Got a call from England. All these listeners worldwide were asking, ‘What can I do?’ I said, ‘This can’t be happening in the United States.’ I am reeling. I’m so mad. And the story I get from Sally Forman is that [she and Nagin] were in the Hyatt. She said, ‘I’m going to call Garland’s show.’ So I’m really lettin’ it fly, shaming the government. I’m in one of my rants saying ‘People are dying on the streets! They’re dying on the overpasses! They had no food!’ Just ranting like that and suddenly on the other line was Sally Forman with Mayor Nagin. And he just started echoing what I’d been saying.”76

  Like everyone else in New Orleans, the mayor was angry and chose to let it show. He didn’t sound like a mayor. He didn’t even sound collected. And yet the way that Nagin lashed out, mimicking Robinette, was a perfect reflection of the mood of the city on Thursday. Knowing that federal troops were on the way gave him the opportunity to demand federal troops. That way his grandstanding words would be construed by the press to be decisive. It was the perfect, phony, cause-and-effect gambit.

  Nagin began by speaking of his contact with President Bush:

  NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we’re outmanned in just about every respect.

  You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies….

  And they don’t have a clue what’s going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn—Excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed.

  ROBINETTE: Did you say to the President of the United States, “I need the military in here”?

  NAGIN: I said, “I need everything.”

  Now, I will tell you this—and I give the President some credit on this—he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is General Honore. He came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he’s getting some stuff done….

  ROBINETTE: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

  NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain’t talking about—You know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

  I’m like, “You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.”

  They’re thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can’t emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.

  I’ve got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the Convention Center. It’s bursting at the seams.

  ROBINETTE: Do you believe that the President is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can’t do anything until Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

  NAGIN: I have no idea what they’re doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they’re dying…

  You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, “Please, please take care of this. We don’t care what you do. Figure it out.”

  ROBINETTE: Who’d you say that to?

  NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it….

  ROBINETTE: If some of the public called and they’re right, that there’s a law that the President—that the federal government can’t do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

  NAGIN: I’ve already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

  ROBINETTE: Did the governor do that, too?

  NAGIN: I don’t know. I don’t think so.

  But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we held it under check.

  I’m not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources….

  They’re showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they’re trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

  Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless situation…. But that’s a small majority [sic] of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

  And one of the things—nobody’s talked about this—drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me. That’s why we were having the escalation in murders. People don’t want to talk about this, but I’m going to talk about it.

  You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that’s the reason why they were breaking into hospitals and drugstores. They’re looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

  And right now, they don’t have anything to take the edge off. And they’ve probably found guns. So what you’re seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don’t have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them….

  Robinette pointed out that some people, aware that the federal government couldn’t come in unless formally requested to do so, felt the response so far had been as good as could be expected. Nagin acknowledged that the remark he was about to make would probably get him in trouble:

  NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the President unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

  Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody’s eyes light up—You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can’t figure out a way to author
ize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

  You know, I’m not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly. And I don’t know whose problem it is. I don’t know whether it’s the governor’s problem. I don’t know whether it’s the President’s problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

  Robinette wanted to know what the station could do to help.

  NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the President, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

  I don’t want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can’t even count.

  Don’t tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They’re not here. It’s too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

  ROBINETTE: I’ll say it right now, you’re the only politician that’s called and called for arms like this. And if—whatever it takes, the governor, President—whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.