The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  Meanwhile, in front of the media that Friday, Governor Barbour told the President, “The federal government has been great.”

  “We have a responsibility to help clean up the mess,” Bush replied.

  “Y’all are helping,” Barbour followed.27 But up to that point, it just wasn’t true.

  During the first week, FEMA was nowhere to be seen along the coast, except in the form of about a half dozen medical teams. Hancock County, home to Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, among other devastated towns, had yet to see a single FEMA official.28 One would arrive on Saturday: one.

  Nevertheless, Barbour insistently put a cheerful spin on his state’s plight. After first calling Mississippi “Hiroshima,” he was in a different frame of mind by Friday. He started calling his state’s loss of 221 citizens and 68,000 homes across a 28,000-square-mile disaster zone “The Deal.” Perhaps it was his country-boy pride that made him reluctant to sound dependent, whining, or defeated. Perhaps it was good politics to seem pleased, even if there was little to be pleased about. Like his old boss Ronald Reagan, Barbour knew that optimism and humor—even during dark hours—were better tonics than despair. More than any other politician in the aftermath of Katrina, Governor Barbour kept an upbeat, resilient attitude about “The Deal.” He also used his extensive contacts to get provisions shipped into his state. “A burly former high school football player, Barbour prizes the rituals of good ol’ boy bonding—the bawdiness, bellowing and back-slapping that lubricate so many of the friendships he collected,” Mark Leibovich wrote in the Washington Post. “Which, again, might seem frivolous right now. Except that shared history comes in handy in times like these, and Barbour might have more shared history with more well-placed people than any governor in the country.”29 Whenever Barbour was pressed for a comment on the poor showing of FEMA and the White House, he would refer to the national government as “a good partner.”30 Governor Barbour’s reluctance to complain—he was called the “stoic bubba”—was not shared by Robert Latham, director of the state Emergency Management Agency. Latham hadn’t received anything he’d requested of FEMA. Mississippi had been abandoned. “I’ve lost my temper several times,” he said. “It’s time to throw the rule book out on this and do what’s needed.”31

  Among those doing what was needed was Marsha Barbour, the governor’s wife. She and her two adult children joined a Mississippi National Guard convoy at the end of the week and brought a pickup truck full of supplies to Gulfport. They used their pull in getting through roadblocks to run supplies into coastal cities and towns. Mrs. Barbour also rode with police on patrol against looters. The question along the coast was why FEMA couldn’t get through. Meanwhile, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott was using his considerable connections to facilitate private supply efforts.32

  Over and over again, FEMA actually stopped truckloads of supplies, water, or ice on some bureaucratic pretext or other.33 Meanwhile, people stranded along the coast went without drinking water for days. On orders from FEMA, the Bataan, the Navy ship loaded with supplies and fitted with extensive medical facilities, had been redirected from New Orleans (just as one of its landing craft was preparing to reach the city) to the waters off Gulfport. Once again, however, it was stymied from extending any substantive help. The ship was to be some holding area for medical help. At noon on Friday, fifty-six physicians, nurses, and other medical workers were airlifted to the ship, where they had nothing at all to do.34 Along the coast, their skills were desperately needed, but they were stranded onboard the Bataan, awaiting orders from FEMA.

  At Keesler Air Force Base, the sprawling home of the Hurricane Hunters, most of the visiting airmen were being sent home, as soon as possible. The enormous medical center was emptied of patients and most personnel, leaving a skeleton staff to continue medical care in a huge tent turned into a modern hospital.35 Those stationed permanently at the base were hard at work cleaning up the base and the surrounding community. The camp newspaper, which had been renamed the Katrina Daily News, was holding a contest to name the job of overcoming the ravages of the storm. “You survived it, you’re living it; now name it,” invited the editors. With gallows humor, they immediately announced that some suggestions had already been rejected, including “Operation Deny Comfort” and “Operation Provide Gumbo.”36 The eventual winner may have lacked irony but it was spirited: “Operation Dragon Comeback.”37

  That Friday, as President Bush traveled from Alabama to Mississippi, Dr. Fredro Knight of Hancock Medical Center went in the opposite direction. After Katrina hit, he hadn’t been able to reach his parents in Mobile until Thursday. “A Mississippi state trooper let me use his satellite phone,” Knight recalled. “I got through and my mom answered. ‘Hey, I’m alive,’” he declared. “She breathed a sigh of relief. Due to her recent stroke, however, she had a hard time speaking. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Are you hurt?’”38

  “Yeah, I survived the storm, but it’s been hell,” Knight replied. “We’re stitching up people around the clock. I don’t know when I’ll be home because I can’t get out of here. My truck went underwater and there’s no way in or out of Bay St. Louis. If I’m not home in two days, tell dad to call the National Guard to come in and fly me out. But I’m okay.”

  Knight’s father, Fredro C. Knight Sr., had been a schoolteacher for ten years and then a principal for twenty-five. His mother had been an English teacher and choir director in Mobile. “My dad called the National Guard and they got me to Mobile,” Knight recalled. “I sat with Mom and told her all my Katrina stories. Then it was back to the hospital in Bay St. Louis. I couldn’t stay away from the patients for long.”

  Dr. Knight was able to spend the night in Alabama because relief had arrived at Hancock Medical Center in the form of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Funded by Homeland Security, DMAT was like a MASH unit. “They set up tents, they have doctors, they have nurses, they have pharmacists, they have respiratory therapists,” Hal Leftwich, Hancock’s CEO, explained. “They were all people who, in their own community, had geared for this particular service. They came in, a quasi-military unit, a fantastic group of people because they all wanted to help.” Usually Hancock Medical Center saw 75 patients a day; with DMAT’s assistance, they were able to tend to 1,100 patients daily. The Mississippi National Guard, for its part, set up a field hospital in front of the DMAT, equipping it with operating rooms and X-ray machines. “You’d be amazed how many medical support people came pouring in from all over,” Leftwich recalled, mentioning units from North Carolina, California, and Virginia, among others.

  By the time Dr. Fredro Knight returned from Mobile on Saturday, Hancock Medical Center had been transformed from a flooded-out wreck into the leading triage center in Mississippi. “We never slackened the pace,” Knight said. “We never turned anybody away at our doors.”39

  Progress was nowhere near as noticeable on the rest of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Just a few miles from the coast, small farms were still reeling from the storm. Chicken farms, with their flimsy coops, were especially hard hit. Typically, 90 percent of the chickens were killed, trapped inside the coops as the wind raced through. The survivors went hungry, although some farmers and animal lovers tried to save them (for humane reasons only—they were unsalable).40 Likewise, in the Lower Ninth, a chicken processing plant not far from Jackson Barracks flooded, sending dead birds floating down Deleray Street. “What a health hazard,” Reverend Willie Walker said. “The chicken stench was unbearable.”

  In the renewal of the Mississippi coast, goodwill sprung up within the business community. As competitive as commerce was in normal times, outside companies extended themselves to give locals a chance to right themselves after the storm. It was a reflection of the fact that all business was based on a partnership of one sort or another and when one side was hampered, the other side pulled harder. In the gambling industry, Harrah’s Entertainment lost casinos in Gulfport and Biloxi as well as New Orleans. Within two days of the storm, it made a commi
tment to pay employees of the closed casinos a full salary for ninety days; it also made a $1 million contribution to a fund for employees in the region.41 Sanderson Farms, a chicken processor based in Laurel, Mississippi, announced that it would pay its farmers the usual rate, even though all the chickens under contract had been killed or rendered unusable.42

  The greatest favor granted to businesses along the coast, however, was the herculean effort of Mississippi Power.43 For businesses, electricity was a requisite to opening. That Mississippi Power would beat its own estimate of four weeks to restore power, and have electricity back in most areas in only seventeen days, was an enormous benefit. A dismaying indication of just how tough life was during those seventeen days, was found in a Mississippi Power advisory directed at contractors and others involved in the cleanup: “Crews should not pile debris higher than 12 feet (from the ground) in their trucks. Transporting tall piles of trash runs a significant risk of snagging or coming in contact with power lines.”44

  Within a week of the storm, one in ten businesses in Biloxi would be operating again,45 a small percentage, to be sure, but an initial push for the momentum necessary to bringing the coast back for good. “The people have got to understand that out of this rubble is going to come a new Biloxi, Mississippi,” President Bush said on his tour, evoking the ghost of Hurricane Camille. “It’s hard to envision it right now. When you’re standing amidst all that rubble, it’s hard to think of a new city.”46

  Elton Gary of Biloxi lived through the storm and the aftermath, feeling hungry sometimes and overheated all the time. To his chagrin, he was out of a job, since the wax factory where he worked had been destroyed when several railroad cars had blown through one of its walls. Nine days after the hurricane, when Gary pulled into his driveway, he noticed that his porch light was on—it was on! He sat in his car for a long time, looking at the light and letting it find its way to him again.47

  III

  From the disturbing quiet of Mississippi, President Bush traveled to the cacophony of Louisiana on Friday. The plan was for him to land at Baton Rouge and meet with state and local officials, including Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, before touring parts of the ravaged area. New Orleans looked as devastated as it had all week. The water had yet to recede. Crime prevailed. The stench was pervasive. Nevertheless, there were signs that the situation was finally taking a turn for the better. Five thousand troops rolled in on military vehicles loaded with supplies. Most of the soldiers were military police, who took positions at strategic points in the city and began to claim territory in the name of order. From a distance, the scene was reminiscent of the Allied troops entering Rome or Paris during World War II. They sat high in their vehicles, while the locals lined the streets, watching them pass. The response to this arriving army, though, was mixed. Many New Orleanians cheered, certain that water, food, and transportation would soon be available. A little girl waved at an approaching convoy, calling out, “Thank you, Mr. Army!”48 Others had just about run out of patience. They swore at the trucks going by, venting five days’ worth of anxiety and impatience. “I told a group of Army guys to get their rifles the hell out of my face,” one New Orleans resident said on being confronted by the troops at last. “I had just lost my house. And they show up a week late with itchy fingers. F——them.”

  Another good sign was that the Superdome was nearly empty. Buses had been collecting people for the previous twenty-four hours. Once the facility was entirely empty, the Convention Center would be next. It would take the entire weekend to pick up all of the willing evacuees. The next problem was deciding just where to take them. Over the weekend, many of those taken out of New Orleans were taken to the Louis Armstrong International Airport and then sent on to other destinations by airplane. Evacuees often didn’t even know where they were going until they were seated on a plane, listening to the captain describe the itinerary. The state of Utah deserves special recognition for its open-armed acceptance policy. Under the leadership of Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., the state welcomed 582 evacuees, most of whom expressed a desire to find new homes, either in Utah or elsewhere. The state supported their efforts.

  The worst aspect of the hurried evacuation was that FEMA, which was overseeing the understandably frantic effort, didn’t keep track of who was going where.49 In the golden age of information management, that was inexplicable. Package services were capable of telling a customer the location, to within a block, of the delivery truck carrying any certain package. A chain store can trace every box of diapers as it leaves the factory and then travels across the country to be stocked in a far-off store. While it’s not as if Katrina evacuees should have been given bar codes, records ought to have been kept on each person. As it was, people were separated from their spouses, their elderly parents, and even their young children.

  One week after the storm, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) set up a special Katrina hotline. Over the next thirty-six days, the line took 20,932 calls. People were separated, with few ways to locate loved ones. NCMEC posted names and, if available, photographs on its Web site. It registered 5,068 missing children—a disgracefully high number. While some children were unavoidably lost in the course of the storm, and some were safe with one parent, while the other fretted, the rescuers were often callous about separating family members. Eventually, NCMEC resolved 96 percent of its Katrina cases. The National Center for Missing Adults performed a similar service for the 12,514 adults reported as missing.50 It eventually reunited all but a few dozen with those who were looking for them. Within the state, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals set up its own clearinghouse for information on persons missing in the storm; it reunited 7,420 people with family and friends.

  The staging area for the evacuation of approximately 60,000 people during the first days of September was the Louis Armstrong International Airport. And it was at the airport that Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were to meet with President Bush during his visit to New Orleans. Senators David Vitter and Mary Landrieu would be present, along with two congressmen, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal and William Jefferson, and the President’s chief of staff, Andrew Card. With the rest of the airport in turmoil, the meeting was to take place on Air Force One.

  Brian G. Lukas of WWL-TV was assigned to cover President Bush’s stopover at the airport that Friday afternoon—or so he thought. He had left early for the airport in the station’s van, wanting to get a prime filming location on the tarmac. What he encountered instead, however, was a roadblock operated by Louisiana state troopers, who denied him access to the airport. The White House didn’t want local coverage of the Air Force One summit. Refusing to be turned back, Lukas pulled over and started working his cell phone, hoping his friends in Baton Rouge could intervene on his behalf. “They refused me entrance,” Lukas recalled. “The President was trying to do a quick in-and-out of New Orleans, and wanted to control his image. The photograph of him staring out of Air Force One looking over the Gulf Coast had been a disaster. It made him look detached. I guess he didn’t want a repeat.”51

  Lukas was sidelined on the periphery of the airport, behind a wire fence. He was about three hundred yards from Air Force One, within zoom-lens range. But even as the great powers gathered for their powwow, Lukas noticed something even more important, more historic: a human wave of displaced persons hobbling along the Airline Highway overpass, trying to walk out of New Orleans, unable to wait for buses any longer. Lukas had filmed the Beirut bombing in 1983 and the diseased slums of Jakarta and Brazil. Whenever there was a major earthquake or landslide in Central America, he would go and film the devastation. He once even searched the suburbs of Medellín in hope of catching shots of Colombian drug lords in their cocaine warehouses. In 1982, when Pan American flight 759 crashed into Kenner, he was the first cameraman on the scene, filming charred bodies being yanked out of the rubble. Nothing, however—not even his previous four days of Katrina-related footage—prepared him for the horror of the human mi
sery he was now encountering on the Airline Highway overpass, in view of Air Force One. “They were walking together out of shelters,” he recalled. “It was so gruesome, it was difficult to film it.”

  Sitting in the WWL truck, Lukas jotted notes about what he witnessed, never forgetting that President Bush was trying to hide from these poor people, because the Secret Service thought meeting inner-city African Americans was a security risk. “An elderly lady is slowly pushing her aged husband in a wheelchair,” Lukas wrote. “His feet are swollen and bloodied. His bare feet had been scraping on the hot pavement. On the side of the road there are rocks and broken glass. His feet had glass embedded in them. I took one of my shirts and wrapped his feet then lifted his feet above the pavement with a board. I had only a few bottles of water and I gave it to them…they needed something to eat.”

  As the Airline Highway refugees approached the roadblock, he had carefully filmed the aged couple, zooming in on their anguish. “It seems that the world has abandoned them,” Lukas wrote. “They were in a desperate situation. Finally aid came from a passing state trooper.”

  But the displaced people kept coming, erroneously believing they could get aid at the airport. They couldn’t have been more wrong. President Bush had the airport locked down; security was not letting evacuees enter the premises. Why would all these state troopers be so cold and callous to these poor? They had billy clubs pulled for the most feeble human beings America could offer up. “Another group of people came over the overpass pushing grocery carts,” Lukas wrote in his journal. “They were in desperate shape. In the cart they had what appeared to be two lifeless babies on plastic wrapping. Another cart had a small child covered with welts from mosquito bites. Other children were huddled in the carts and looked exhausted.”52