The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just—I’m at the point now where it don’t matter. People are dying. They don’t have homes. They don’t have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.

  ROBINETTE: We’re both pretty speechless here.

  NAGIN: Yeah, I don’t know what to say. I got to go.

  When Nagin hung up the telephone, he broke down crying. Had he just made a fool of himself? Had he succumbed to helpless anger and had a meltdown on the air? Or had that been his Rudy Giuliani moment? According to Clarkson, he sequestered himself in his bathroom for twenty or thirty minutes, despite Clarkson’s and Forman’s efforts to coax him out. “I was proud of him for delivering those words, sticking it to Blanco, FEMA, all of them,” Clarkson said. “He did well.” In the far-off distance you could hear snorting explosions and see columns of smoke. They were sequestered from the deluge, but couldn’t escape its prolonged wrath. Both Clarkson and Forman were proud that Nagin told Bush and Blanco to “get off your asses and do something,” and “let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.” With little knowledge of history, and unable to get accurate information, Nagin truly believed the flooding of New Orleans was bigger than Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor or 9/11. His sense of perspective was shattered. But he had at last found his voice (or at least a voice). His meltdown was a much appreciated tonic to the poststorm bureaucratic abyss of both FEMA and Homeland Security. “I think the world needed to hear it,” Clarkson said. “I think the government needed to hear it. I’ll tell you, two hours later, that general was on that highway, that convoy was on that highway.”

  Forman insisted that “get off your asses” wasn’t meant as a direct punch at President Bush. It was just Mr. Mayor letting off some steam. “CNN showed up for a dub,” Forman recalled. “We gave it to them. I never believed the mayor was speaking to the nation.” That was a very naïve presumption, uttered defensively with a self-conscious air. Her immediate concern was the psychological state of Nagin. “I tried to get him to calm down,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ He eventually stopped crying and wandered into another room. ‘Let me be alone for a while,’ he said. ‘I need to be alone.’”

  X

  Michael Brown of FEMA was all over the television on Thursday, doing so many interviews that people watching began to wonder which business he was in: disaster response or television programming. One press briefing each day would have been understandable, leaving him the time to oversee the response. Instead, Brown was available for one-on-one interviews with all of the major networks and cable news channels. It was clear that Brown was being offered as the face of the disaster for the Bush administration. That day, however, it was not a kindly or empathetic face. Asked by Aaron Brown on CNN’s News Night about the distress seen throughout the New Orleans area, especially by the poor populations, Michael Brown responded, “Unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable to a lot of people who did not heed the advance warnings.”77

  FEMA was playing catch-up all week with the disaster that continually spun ahead of them. Contracts that should have been arranged before Katrina were still in the negotiation phase. Brown tried to fend off criticism of FEMA’s response by pointing out that 30,000 troops were going to be on the ground in the affected areas within three days, that hospitals were being emptied, and that rescues were still under way. During the course of the News Night interview, viewers saw fresh footage of New Orleans. It no longer looked like a Third World country, but more like a biblical throwback. “Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans,” Michael Brown said, “virtually a city that has been destroyed—things are going relatively well.”78 That was a preposterous statement, but he had become the preposterous face of the deluge.

  The false, upbeat assessment from Brown, who had been forced by Chertoff to stay in Baton Rouge, was challenged by anyone who witnessed the Convention Center firsthand. “These people are being forced to live like animals,” reported CNN’s Chris Lawrence that same day. “And we are not talking a few families or a few hundred families. We are talking thousands and thousands of people just laid out over the entire street. Living in these horrible conditions, trash, feces, dirty food—I mean, in just the worst possible conditions. We saw a man right in front of us literally dying. Going into a seizure on the ground, people trying to prop his head up. They have no medicine, no way to evacuate him…. These people are saying, ‘How much longer can we last? Where are the buses? Where is the plan? Where is the help?’ People are saying, ‘We don’t have food. We don’t have water.’ Are you really just going to let us sit here and die like this? Because people are already starting to die right in downtown New Orleans.”79

  Behind the positive face of the director, FEMA employees were suddenly handing out no-bid assignments, costly for taxpayers and futile in terms of timely deliveries of vital necessities. And the director was playing catch-up, too. At two in the afternoon, Mayor Nagin had released an extraordinary special statement for an elected official in the United States: “This is a desperate SOS,” it read. “Right now we are out of resources at the Convention Center and don’t anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the Convention Center is unsanitary and unsafe and we’re running out of supplies.”80 The tour buses FEMA contracted were for the Superdome. Incredibly, FEMA didn’t become aware of anyone at the Convention Center until that day, Thursday. According to reports, the agency learned about the 20,000 people in and around the huge building by watching the TV news—and perhaps by hearing/reading Nagin’s SOS. FEMA did know about a team of Swift Water Rescues airlifted to the scene by the state of California. The team had already rescued hundreds of people in New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish. On Thursday, the Californians were ordered by FEMA to immediately cease operations because they hadn’t received a security clearance from the federal agency.

  Meanwhile, Brown continued to engage in bizarre e-mails to FEMA officials, many of them trying to look on top of things. “Please roll up your sleeves of your shirt…all shirts,” press secretary Sharon Worthy instructed him. “Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this crisis and on TV you need to look more hard-working. ROLL UP THE SLEEVES!”81

  One of the most bizarre clashes of personality in American politics occurred when Brown did a spot check on devastated St. Bernard Parish. Later, in his testimony to a congressional committee investigating the federal, state, and local response to Katrina, Brown called Louisiana “dysfunctional,” partly because of the state’s unique system of parish presidents, sheriffs, and mayors, who were often political opponents. “I distinctly remember making a trip to St. Bernard Parish where I met Parish President [Junior] Rodriguez,” Brown said. “A very vulgar, profanity-spewing encounter with him. Very entertaining. It was surprising to me. So after leaving this meeting with him, who I think is in charge of St. Bernard, somebody pulled me aside and said, ‘Okay, you’ve done this, but you really have to go see Sheriff Jack Stephens.’”

  Brown asked why this was necessary when he had just met the parish president. He was told that both men “think they’re in charge of this parish.” According to Brown, his security guards put him in a Humvee and made a circuitous trek down the back roads of the trashed-out parish. “I even joked with one of my aides, ‘Hey, they’re taking me to go dump me in the river somewhere….’ It was wild.” Eventually, Brown was escorted down a trail to some forlorn structure straight out of The Return of the Swamp Thing and into the inner sanctum of Sheriff Stephens. “And we found him where he had commandeered someone’s houseboat. I walked in and it was like a scene in a movie. I’d just been in St. Bernard with Rodriguez, where they had minimal supplies and we’re having a discussion about what you need—how many MREs I can get you, ‘you’ meaning right there in your emergency operation center, so you guys can go do your work. I go to see this sheriff who is now living on this houseboat and I walk into this huge buffet. It was
astonishing to me. And he thinks he’s in charge of everything.”

  Brown had felt Rodriguez was “just one of these old guys who’s just like a sailor—every other word is a cuss word.” But he didn’t take it personally. Now, as Sheriff Stephens launched into a litany of complaints and demands (while eating delicacies), Brown had time to analyze the man before him. According to Brown, Stephens was “a little more polished and, you know, a little more of a slick politician kind of guy who, with all these deputies all around, with these guns everywhere.” Even though he grew up in rural Oklahoma, Brown had never experienced such back-road bumpkins. “I felt like I’m walking into a Mafia meeting somewhere.” Aside from the lavish spread, Brown reported, there was “all the liquor you could drink. It was absolutely fascinating to me.”82 It was like an old bootleggers den, something from the prohibition days of Bonnie and Clyde.

  Brown had suddenly entered Kingfish land. As Sheriff Stephens started offering up wisdom, and one of his policemen kept spitting tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup, the uptight, refined, and polished Brown plotted an exit strategy. At the first lull in the sheriff’s monologue, Brown wished the posse good luck in coping with the post-Katrina stresses and skedaddled off the houseboat.

  Surrounding the feast was a mass despair. On the Sunday before Katrina, forty-seven-year-old Jimmy Pitre had picked up his mother, Joyce McGuier, from her house in Chalmette. He was forcing her to evacuate. He drove her to the Superdome, but she refused to join the long line. Her heart was bad. She couldn’t handle the heat. He went to four New Orleans hospitals, which all rejected her. She didn’t have a clear-cut medical illness, just heart palpitations. McGuier, a great scat singer, a jazz-blues devotee, and a straight-talking woman full of life, had been in poor health that summer. Jimmy drove her back to Chalmette and decided he would ride out the storm with her. “Brother,” he later said. “I never left her side for a second during the storm.”83

  The Wall of Water lifted her house. In the span of ten minutes McGuier lost everything. With water cascading in, Pitre untied a boat, and with the help of his neighbor got his mother into it, safe from the rising flood. But it was too late. Joyce McGuier died of a heart attack. “Let me make one thing clear for the record,” Pitre said emphatically, recalling the events of the morning. “She never got one mouthful of water in her lungs. Not a drop. No way did I let her drown. She didn’t get water in her. I wouldn’t let it happen. You understand?”84

  Keeping the corpse of his mother in the boat, a defiant Pitre grappled with grief by becoming a hyperkinetic first responder. With no Wildlife and Fisheries or FEMA around, Pitre hoped to avenge the death of his mother. He pulled more than 300 Chalmations out of the floodwater. He took the frantic, displaced people to Chalmette High School. He wouldn’t eat or drink for days. He rescued. He ran on crazed adrenaline, his mother in the boat for days. He prevented a rape of a young girl. “I didn’t want nobody else to die,” he said. “Nobody else around me was going to die.”85

  When Wildlife and Fisheries arrived, Pitre ended his efforts, which bordered on the maniacal. He slowly came to grips with what had happened. Neither FEMA nor the Red Cross ever gave a cent to Pitre for his mother’s house. Nothing would bring his mother back. He lost everything he owned, including a truck, which he was forced to pay the notes on. There was no congratulatory letter from FEMA or the Red Cross, thanking him for saving hundreds of lives. He never appeared on ABC’s Night-line or NBC’s Nightly News. But when the deal went down, Pitre was the man. He piled desperate people onto the corpse of his mother and never complained or sniggered or condescended or rolled up his shirtsleeves. He acted. Pure and simple. It was a matter of the heart.

  Five months before Katrina struck, Michael Brown had warned Michael Chertoff of just about all the breakdowns that occurred after Katrina. In a March 2005 white paper Brown argued that the Bush administration was not prepared for a major domestic natural disaster. He wasn’t comfortable with FEMA being a part of Homeland Security.86 However, Brown’s efforts to persuade his boss to wake up failed. That Thursday Chertoff was interviewed by Robert Siegel of National Public Radio. Chertoff claimed to have no knowledge of the tens of thousands of people trapped at the Convention Center. In fact, the secretary of Homeland Security seemed remarkably uninterested, without the curiosity and compassion one might expect of any American in regard to a report on his fellow citizens.

  SIEGEL: We are hearing from our reporter—and he’s on another line right now—thousands of people [are] at the Convention Center in New Orleans with no food, zero.

  CHERTOFF: As I say, I’m telling you that we are getting food and water to areas where people are staging. And, you know, the one thing about an episode like this is if you talk to someone and you get a rumor or you get someone’s anecdotal version of something, I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place. The limitation here on getting food and water to people is the condition on the ground. And as soon as we can physically move through the ground with these assets, we’re going to do that. So—

  SIEGEL: But, Mr. Secretary, when you say…we shouldn’t listen to rumors, these are things coming from reporters who have not only covered many, many other hurricanes; they’ve covered wars and refugee camps. These aren’t rumors. They’re seeing thousands of people there.

  CHERTOFF: Actually I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the Convention Center who don’t have food and water. I can tell you that I know specifically the Superdome, which was the designated staging area for a large number of evacuees, does have food and water. I know we have teams putting food and water out at other designated evacuation areas. So, you know, we’ve got plenty of food and water if we can get it out to people. And that is the effort we’re undertaking.87

  The arrival of Lt. General Russell Honore drew cheers from the Gulf South, which desperately needed straight talk from someone at the federal level. The three stars on his shoulders were the first tangible evidence that the Bush administration hadn’t forgotten the region. One of the largest humanitarian relief operations in American history was finally under way. The sight of flatbed trucks filled with supplies and M-16s pointed skyward was seen by those still in the bowl as liberation forces. People shouted out, “Thank you, Jesus,” and “Bring ’em on.” Police Superintendent Eddie Compass, in a perfectly pressed police uniform, rode on the running board of a truck around the Convention Center shouting that food and water were on the way. “We got 20,000 people out of the Superdome,” he told them, “and we’re going to take care of you.”88

  As commander of the 1st Army, Honore knew how to lead troops. With a cigar in his mouth and a laserlike glint in his eye, he was not bad in leading civilians in the midst of a crisis, too. But with fires erupting all over the city, people dying at the Convention Center, and looters still on the prowl, Honore had his work cut out for him. “If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I’m talking about,” Honore said. “If it’s easy, it would have been done already. Our number one task is to deal with the concentration of people in New Orleans, as well as those that are isolated. And we’re going to get after it. By and large these are families that are just waiting to get out of here. They are frustrated. I would be, too. I get frustrated at the cash register counter when the paper runs out.”89

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE FRIDAY SHUFFLE AND SATURDAY RELIEF

  Finally, the undersigned can see no reason for a much longer stay in the area since, as we said before, ordinary facilities for receiving visitors are not available in the parsonage. Further activity, such as sniffing around for dead people on glaciers, might be a job for the police or the Scout movement, but is an unworthy task for the spiritual authorities of the country. Furthermore, I understand that I was only scheduled to spend this one day here in the west to complete my mission.

  —Halldór Laxness, Under the Glacier

  I

  At long last, on Friday September 2, President George W. Bush visited th
e Gulf Coast, the fifth day of the Hurricane Katrina crisis. His visit coincided with the arrival of General Russel Honore and massive amounts of food, water, and personnel in the region. In New Orleans, the Louisiana National Guard—under Governor Blanco’s handpicked adjutant general, Major General Bennett Landreneau—had taken control of the Superdome, loading people up on FEMA-contracted buses. The Blanco buses were being directed to the Convention Center. Yet so much was wrong in the region, that it will take years for anyone to feel dramatic improvement. President Bush must have known history would hold him largely responsible for the slow response. Before leaving Washington, he appeared in the Rose Garden to thank those people who were working to help the Gulf South. “The results are not acceptable,” President Bush said. “I’m headed down there right now.”1

  It was a glimmer of the feisty George W. Bush, the one who could get things done, the blunt-spoken man who might put a scare into anyone, even the most complacent bureaucrat. But it was only a phrase in an otherwise vague, meandering statement. Behind the scenes, White House aides were uncertain that Bush actually understood what was going on, or not going on, in the Gulf South. In fact, he seemed to be the only person in America without an outraged opinion about the lackluster federal response to Katrina. As Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin pointed out on September 6, “President Bush somehow missed the significance of what was happening on the Gulf Coast last week as he and his political guru, Karl Rove, flitted between Texas and California and, finally, Washington.”2

  Early Friday morning, the President boarded Air Force One for the three-hour flight to Mobile, Alabama, his first stop. He took a telephone call from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who offered his “condolences and support” of the Katrina victims.3 En route, he sat down to watch a compilation of news coverage recorded onto a DVD by White House Counselor Dan Bartlett. The night before the President’s trip, according to reporting in Newsweek, “some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans.” The magazine couldn’t help wondering where Bush had been, what had kept him from watching the coverage for himself. “How could this be?” Newsweek asked. “How the president of the United States could have even less ‘situational awareness,’ as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that…ranks as a national disgrace.”4 Later, President Bush told NBC News’s Brian Williams, “I don’t see a lot of news. Every morning, I look at a newspaper. I can’t say I’ve read every article in the newspaper…. I mean, I can tell you what the headlines are.”5