The Ongoing Bureaucratic Cock-Up, Part 2
Exhibit A: The political pissing contest!
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D)...
..."Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,"
Also reflected at the national level!:
For days, Bush's top advisers argued over legal niceties about who was in charge...
...While Washington debated, the situation in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast deteriorated...
...But for many, the help was arriving too late. Officials worked through the weekend trying to hammer out the jurisdictional issues.
Exhibit B: The Jefferson parish president, in a television interview today:
Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.
In case you thought being fired for gross incompetence from a job overseeing horse shows is poor preparation for the head of FEMA..
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D)...
..."Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,"
Also reflected at the national level!:
For days, Bush's top advisers argued over legal niceties about who was in charge...
...While Washington debated, the situation in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast deteriorated...
...But for many, the help was arriving too late. Officials worked through the weekend trying to hammer out the jurisdictional issues.
Exhibit B: The Jefferson parish president, in a television interview today:
Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.
In case you thought being fired for gross incompetence from a job overseeing horse shows is poor preparation for the head of FEMA..
posted by Management at 10:29 AM
6 Comments:
Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting
White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; A01
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 -- Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.
President Bush authorized the dispatch of 7,200 active-duty ground troops to the area -- the first major commitment of regular ground forces in the crisis -- and the Pentagon announced that an additional 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total Guard contingent to about 40,000.
Authorities reported progress in restoring order and electricity and repairing levees, as a hospital ship arrived and cruise ships were sent to provide temporary housing for victims. As Louisiana officials expressed confidence that they had begun to get a handle on the crisis, a dozen National Guard troops broke into applause late Saturday as Isaac Kelly, 81, the last person to be evacuated from the Superdome, boarded a school bus.
But there remained an overwhelming display of human misery on the streets of New Orleans, where the last 1,500 people were being evacuated from the Convention Center amid an overpowering odor of human waste and rotting garbage. The evacuees, most of them black and poor, spoke of violence, anarchy and family members who died for lack of food, water and medical care.
About 42,000 people had been evacuated from the city by Saturday afternoon, with roughly the same number remaining, city officials said. Search-and-rescue efforts continued in flooded areas of the city, where an unknown number of people wait in their homes, on rooftops or in makeshift shelters. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the flooding -- 250,000 have been absorbed by Texas alone, and local radio reported that Baton Rouge will have doubled in population by Monday. Federal officials said they have begun to collect corpses but could not guess the total toll.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
"The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana," White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. "The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana."
Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.
Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."
In a Washington briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was "because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."
Chertoff planned to fly overnight to the New Orleans area to take charge of deploying the expanded federal and military assets for several days, he said. He said he has "full confidence" in FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, the DHS undersecretary and federal officer in charge of the Katrina response.
Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."
New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas acknowledged that the city was surprised by the number of refugees left behind, but he said FEMA should have been prepared to assist.
"Everybody shares the blame here," said Thomas. "But when you talk about the mightiest government in the world, that's a ludicrous and lame excuse. You're FEMA, and you're the big dog. And you weren't prepared either."
In Baton Rouge, Blanco acknowledged Saturday: "We did not have enough resources here to do it all. . . . The magnitude is overwhelming."
State officials had planned to turn to neighboring states for help with troops, transportation and equipment in a major hurricane. But in Katrina's case, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were also overwhelmed, said Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokesman.
Bush canceled a visit with Chinese President Hu Jintao that had been scheduled for Wednesday and made plans to return to the Gulf Coast on Monday. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled visits to the region, as troops continue to pour in.
Top Bush administration officials met at the White House with African American leaders amid criticism that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has neglected impoverished victims, many of them black.
Chertoff, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, White House domestic policy adviser Claude Allen and Pentagon homeland security official Peter Verga met for two hours with NAACP President Bruce Gordon, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. The caucus's current chairman, Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), participated by phone.
"I think they wanted to make sure that the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Urban League and the NAACP knew that they were very sensitive to trying to make sure that things went right from here on out," Cummings said, according to his spokeswoman, Devika Koppikar. "And I think they wanted to try to dispel any kind of notions that the administration did not care about African American people -- or anyone else."
Caucus Executive Director Paul A. Brathwaite said Bush officials promised to keep black leaders informed. He credited the administration with reaching out to the caucus for the first time to solve a national problem.
In New Orleans on Saturday, smoke from several fires that have burned for days swirled over the French Quarter. Outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the stench and heat worsened the long wait of the thousands of evacuees lining up for buses. Many of them said they had no idea where they would go.
Columbus Lawrence, 43, a landscaper, shambled down St. Joseph Avenue searching for the end of the line. He pushed a cart piled with packets of dry, chicken-flavored noodles. "It's like a chip," he said hopefully, putting another handful into his mouth.
Others have been here since the day of the storm, the early part of the week made increasingly awful because there were no toilets, no water, no food.
Herbert J. Freeman arrived in a neighbor's boat with his mother, Ethel M. Freeman, 91, frail and sick, but with an active mind. She kept asking him for a doctor, for a nurse, for anyone who could help her. Police told Freeman there was nothing they could do. She died in her wheelchair, next to her son, on Thursday morning.
It was half a day before he could find someone to take away her body, he said. "She wasn't senile or nothing," he said. "She knew what was going on. . . . I kept saying, 'Mom, I can't help you.' "
Next to Freeman, Kenny Lason, 45, a dishwasher at Pat O'Brien's, a French Quarter restaurant famous for its signature "Hurricane" cocktail, took a long slurp out of a bottle of Korbel extra-dry champagne. He broke a store window to get it, and he is not ashamed. "They wasn't giving us nothing," he said. "You got to live off the land."
Outside New Orleans, frustration boiled over among the boatmen who spontaneously left their homes in central Louisiana to rescue stranded residents in the first hours after reports of flooding hit the airwaves. For the past two days, many have been turned away because of security concerns in a city that had turned violent and chaotic.
"It's a tragedy that's unfolding now," said Moose Billeaud, a former New Orleans prosecutor who is now in private practice in Lafayette, La. "It is not organized at all."
The boatmen who made it in came back with harrowing memories. Kenny, who did not want to disclose his last name, said friends were shot at by stranded people who wanted to steal their boats. "It's total chaos," he said.
Isaac Kelly, the last to depart from the Superdome, said "it feels good" as he boarded the bus. A young guardsman put an arm around the stooped Kelly and said, "Good luck and God bless."
The dome, which once housed more than 20,000 evacuees, became a symbol of the chaos that gripped New Orleans, with television network cameras capturing scenes of filth and misery.
Just before Kelly stepped aboard, Isaiah Bennett, leaning heavily on a wooden cane, was helped onto the bus. "It was hell," said Bennett. "I don't like this kind of mess," he said. "I never thought it would be this bad.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said that it will take as long as 80 days to remove the water from New Orleans and surrounding areas.
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) sent a letter to Bush Saturday urging him to provide cash benefits and transportation assistance to stranded people and to use federal facilities for housing. They wrote that they "are concerned that rescue and recovery efforts appear to remain chaotic and that many victims remain hungry and without adequate shelter nearly a week after the hurricane struck. Clearly, strong personal leadership from you is essential if we are to get this effort on track."
The administration said that 100,000 have received some form of humanitarian aid and that 9,500 have been rescued by the Coast Guard. The administration said it is providing funds to employ displaced workers and has arranged for Amtrak trains to help in the evacuation. The rail service expects to remove 1,500 people daily. In addition, the Energy Department reported that 1.3 million customers were without electricity, down from 1.5 million Friday.
The 7,200 additional troops announced by Bush on Saturday are scheduled to arrive within three days. They will come from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., the 1st Cavalry Division at Food Hood, Tex., the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
The decision to employ active-duty ground troops and Marines was particularly significant given the administration's initial desire to limit ground forces largely to Guard units. Regular military troops are constrained by law from engaging in domestic law enforcement. By contrast, Guard troops, who are under the command of state governors, have no such constraints.
At a Pentagon news conference Saturday, Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge, the deputy commander of the Northern Command, said the active-duty ground forces would be used mainly to protect sites and perform other functions not considered law enforcement.
The Air Force is repatriating 300 airmen from Iraq and Afghanistan so they can assist their families back in their home base in Biloxi, Miss.
Law enforcement officials said order is beginning to be restored in the city. A temporary detention center has been set up in the city to house those arrested for looting and other crimes after the hurricane, and the city's court personnel have been relocated to neighboring jurisdictions unaffected by Katrina, said New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten. Trials are expected to begin within two weeks, he said. "We're going to bring these guys to justice," he said.
Members of federal law enforcement agencies are in the city, he said. More than 200 Border Patrol agents have been sworn in to reinforce New Orleans police, and state police officials said hundreds of law enforcement agents from other states are expected in the coming days.
Hsu reported from Washington. Staff writers Justin Blum, Dana Milbank, Jacqueline L. Salmon and Josh White contributed to this report.
Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign'
By Brett Arends
Saturday, September 3, 2005 - Updated: 02:01 PM EST
The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.
And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.
The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.
The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.
``I look at FEMA and I shake my head,'' said a furious Gov. Mitt Romney yesterday, calling the response ``an embarrassment.''
President Bush, after touring the Big Easy, said he was ``not satisfied'' with the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
And U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch predicted there would be hearings on Capitol Hill over the mishandled operation.
Brown - formerly an estates and family lawyer - this week has has made several shocking public admissions, including interviews where he suggested FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation of refugees stranded at the New Orleans convention center.
Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.
``We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. ``This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,'' she added.
Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.
``He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.
Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.
The White House last night defended Brown's appointment. A spokesman noted Brown served as FEMA deputy director and general counsel before taking the top job, and that he has now overseen the response to ``more than 164 declared disasters and emergencies,'' including last year's record-setting hurricane season.
Dear NHAHA Members,
Our Halloween Cauldron Luck meeting held at the UpReach Therapeutic Riding Center was "quite tasteful." There was more food than could be consumed in an evening, so we donated the deserts and candy to the UpReach horse show that was being held the next day.
We became more aware of riders with disabilities and their equine partners, and the over 120 volunteers that it requires to maintain this program. It may not be validated in the medical journals YET... but those of us who have worked with horses know the therapeutic and emotional value of our equine companions and, that "There's nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse [Winston Churchill]." We hope in the future NHAHA will utilize this excellent equine facility in Goffstown.
I am headed to the IAHA convention in San Antonio after Thanksgiving. It should be a hot time down there this year. A complete counter slate of officers has been offered from the floor of convention. There is a lot of unrest in this industry right now. There are 17 resolutions pertaining to Resolution 5-90 (The office of the Judges and Stewards Commissioner) i.e.; the $3.00 fee. Mike Brown who was commissioner was requested to resign after all of the controversy regarding the number of lawsuits that are pending transpired.
The NHAHA has a resolution to allow dual ownership by 2 unrelated, AHSA recognized amateurs to show in AOTR & AOTH classes. Thus allowing more people to purchase and show their Arabian horses in IAHA recognized shows.
[WEB NOTE: Click here for the results of the IAHA convention resolutions and elections, at their website.]
Michelle Hartley-Smith has resigned as treasurer of NHAHA. Thank you Michelle for having supported us in many ways. We look forward to having you work with us in the future.
June Barber has agreed to fill the position of treasurer. Her work in accounting will be of considerable value to our club. She will also continue to write our newsletter.
Our new recording secretary and trail ride chairman is Laura Susman of Dublin, NH. Thank you both for volunteering. It is our Volunteers who are the cornerstone of any organization.
GOOD NEWS!!! The NHAHA has been selected By IAHA from 257 clubs as one of the top 3 clubs to receive a Club Excellence award. If we win it's $500.00 for NHAHA.
Are you aware??? Although we held our 26th annual show in 2000 we actually celebrate our 25th anniversary as an incorporated club in 2001.
HAVE YOU SENT IN YOUR 2001 MEMBERSHIP???
To quote Nike, "JUST DO IT!"
Click here for a membership form.
COME CELEBRATE. Please bring a stuffed toy or book to the awards banquet for those children who may not be as fortunate as ours.
Wishing you all many magical moments in this very special season,
AWhiteHorse Equine Industry Articles, Editorials and Opinions Page
From Tom Connelly to the Board of Directors:
As the Board directed during our recent conference call, negotiations
have been ongoing with Mike Brown in relation to his resignation.
Attached is the final agreed upon separation agreement which Mike has
executed and presented to us. He realized that this matter was going to
go to the Board and he wanted to have signed it before it was actually
presented.
I plan to sign the agreement Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, but in
the meantime, if you wish to make any comments, please forward them to Joleen White and she will make sure we all see them.
SEPARATION AGREEMENT
I. PARTIES
The Parties to this Agreement are:
A. International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado non-profit corporation, which is located in Arapahoe County, Colorado ("IAHA"); and
B. Michael D. Brown, an individual who is a resident of Boulder
County, Colorado.
II. RECITALS
A. Mr. Brown is employed as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA.
B. Mr. Brown and IAHA are currently involved as co-defendants in litigation.
C. Mr. Brown desires to resign from his employment with IAHA, and IAHA desires to accept Mr. Brown's resignation. However, in an attempt to accomplish an orderly transition for IAHA, the parties desire a gradual disengagement of the relationship so that Mr. Brown can complete his pending work and continue to assist in the defense of the pending litigation.
III. COVENANTS
In consideration of the mutual covenants set forth herein, and for other good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency of which the parties
hereby acknowledge, the parties agree as follows:
A. Upon execution of this Agreement by the parties, Mr. Brown
will resign from his position with IAHA, effective January 31, 2001.
B. Mr. Brown will employ his best efforts to conclude his work on pending matters during the month of September, 2000, and will assist in an orderly transition, and will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work as Judges and Stewards Commissioner.
C. Prior to January 31, 2001, Mr. Brown will use all of his accrued vacation time.
D. IAHA will continue to pay to Mr. Brown his full salary, including benefits, through January 31, 2001.
E. During the months of February, March and April, 2001, IAHA will pay Mr. Brown his full salary, as severance pay.
F. Mr. Brown will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work for IAHA as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, as reasonably requested by counsel for IAHA, unless reasonably objected to by counsel for Mr. Brown.
G. IAHA will pay to Mr. Brown a consulting fee of $100 per hour for time he spends assisting in the defense of litigation after April 30,
2001, such fee to be paid within 30 days of the date services are billed to IAHA by Mr. Brown.
H. IAHA will continue to provide and to pay for health insurance for Mr. Brown and his wife through October 31, 2001.
I. By October 1, 2000, Mr. Brown will cause to be contributed from the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund the sum of $25,000.
J. IAHA will, without limitation and to the fullest extent allowed by law, continue to indemnify Mr. Brown and to hold Mr. Brown harmless from all liabilities, obligations, claims, causes of action, or expenses of any kind, including reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, that may arise or be incurred by Mr. Brown arising out of the performance of his employment as Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA, including his duties under the terms of this Separation Agreement.
K. Mr. Brown further agrees to abide by the provisions of Paragraphs 17 and 18 his Employment Contract and the confidentiality requirements of Resolution 5-90.
L. This Separation Agreement shall not in any way be construed as an admission by either party of any acts of wrongdoing whatsoever.
The parties recognize that, due to the nature of Mr. Brown's duties as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, he has been the subject of numerous personal attacks, and that there have been numerous allegations made during the course of his employment that Mr. Brown engaged in conduct that would constitute cause for the termination of Brown's contract with IAHA. IAHA specifically acknowledges, however, that no cause exists to terminate Brown's contract with IAHA.
M. The Parties hereby and forever release and discharge each other, their heirs and assigns, from any and all causes of action, actions, judgments, liens, damages, losses, claims, liabilities and demands whatsoever, whether known or unknown, which arose prior to the date of this Separation Agreement.
N. Any dispute arising under this Separation Agreement shall be
submitted to arbitration before the Judicial Arbiter Group in Denver,
Colorado. In the event any arbitration is held pursuant to this Agreement, the arbitrator shall award the prevailing party his or its reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.
O. This Separation Agreement sets forth the entire agreement between the parties hereto, and fully supersedes any and all prior agreements and understandings between the parties hereto pertaining to the subject matter hereof.
P. The parties have each been represented by counsel in connection with this Separation Agreement and have read the entire Separation Agreement and understand each of the terms hereof.
Q. Colorado law shall govern the interpretation of this Separation Agreement and the resolution of any dispute arising in connection herewith.
R. No modification to this Separation Agreement will be effective, unless such modification is made in writing and signed by each of the parties hereto.
S. In the event that any part of this Separation Agreement and General Release is determined to be void, or otherwise unlawful, the remaining portions hereof shall remain in full force and effect.
Date:
Michael D. Brown
International Arabian Horse Association
Broussard
Jefferson Parish President. On Timmeh:
Sir, they were told like me. Every single day. The cavalry is coming. On the federal level. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. The cavalry is coming. I have just begun to hear the hooves of the cavalry. The cavalry is still not here yet, but I have begun to hear the hooves and were almost a week out.
Three quick examples. We had Wal-mart deliver three trucks of water. Trailer trucks of water. Fema turned them back, said we didn't need them. This was a week go. We had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a coast guard vessel docked in my parish. The coast guard said come get the fuel right way. When we got there with our trucks, they got a word, FEMA says don't give you the fuel. Yesterday, yesterday, fema comes in and cuts all our emergency communications lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in. he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards said no one is getting near these lines.
...
The guy who runs this building I'm in. Emergency management. He's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said. Are you coming. Son? Is somebody coming? And he said yeah. Mama. Somebody's coming to get you.. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday. And she drowned Friday night. And she drowned Friday night. Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For god's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.
MSNBC.com
The Lost City
What Went Wrong: Devastating a swath of the South, Katrina plunged New Orleans into agony. The story of a storm—and a disastrously slow rescue.
Newsweek
Sept. 12, 2005 issue - It wasn't exactly a surprise. "This ain't gonna last," New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas told his security guard as they watched the waters of Lake Pontchartrain rising and racing and eating away at the dirt levee beneath the concrete floodwall built to protect New Orleans from disaster. It was 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 28. Hurricane Katrina was still 14 hours away, but the sea surge had begun. Thomas returned to the city's hurricane war room and announced, to anyone who was listening, "The water's coming into the city."
Thomas was asleep on his office couch early Tuesday morning when he was awakened by the sound of banging on his door and someone yelling, "The levee broke!" Thomas stood up on his soaked carpet and felt as though he were standing in concrete. He was paralyzed, he later said, by the fear of predictions coming true. Thomas, who had been rescued off the roof of his house in New Orleans during Hurricane Betsy in 1965, had been a city councilman for a dozen years. His specialty is water. He knew all about the studies and reports and dire warnings stacked up on the desks of bureaucrats, he knew about all the relief and reconstruction and restoration projects that had been discussed but never paid for or carried out, and he knew his beloved old city was doomed.
A few rescuers were ready, but precious few. On Monday morning, as the storm slammed into the Gulf Coast, Col. Tim Tarchick of the 920th Rescue Wing, Air Force Reserve Command, got on the phone to call every agency he could think of to ask permission to take his three rescue helicopters into the disaster zone as soon as the storm abated. The response was noncommittal. FEMA, the federal agency that is supposed to handle disasters, told Tarchick that it wasn't authorized to task military units. That had to come from the Defense Department. Tarchick wasn't able to cut through the red tape until 4 p.m. Tuesday—more than 24 hours after the storm had passed. His crews plucked hundreds of people off rooftops, but when they delivered them to an assigned landing zone, there was "total chaos. No food, no water, no bathrooms, no nothing." There was "no structure, no organization, no command center," Tarchick told NEWSWEEK.
Only despair. The news could not have been more dispiriting: The reports of gunfire at medical-relief helicopters. The stories of pirates capturing rescue boats. The reports of police standing and watching looters—or joining them. The TV images of hundreds and thousands of people, mostly black and poor, trapped in the shadow of the Superdome. And most horrific: the photographs of dead people floating facedown in the sewage or sitting in wheelchairs where they died, some from lack of water. For many across the city and the Gulf Coast, prayer seemed one of their few options. On CNN, Mayor C. Ray Nagin asked the country to "pray for us," a plea repeated by survivors who needed that, and much more.
New Orleans has long been an inspiration to soulful writers and artists who sing the blues. But there was nothing romantic about Katrina's wake. Most of the poets had headed for higher ground (although legendary R&B man "Fats" Domino stayed, was reported missing, then found alive). Left behind were the poor who couldn't get out, a few defiant members of the local gentry and gangs of predators.
No one seemed to have any idea how many people died, but it was clearly the worst natural disaster since a hurricane wiped out Galveston, Texas, in 1900, killing 6,000 to 12,000 people. No major American city had been evacuated since Richmond and Atlanta in the Civil War. The economic cost will be enormous, starting with gasoline prices jumping to more than $3 a gallon. The political cost to President Bush could also be stiff. When Air Force One dipped below the clouds on Tuesday so the president could peer out the window down at the disaster, the image was uncomfortably imperial. A folksier Bush toured the wretched region on Friday, hugged some victims and did a rare but necessary thing: he admitted that the results of the relief effort had been "not acceptable."
Day after day of images showed exhausted families and their crying children stepping around corpses while they begged: Where is the water? Where are the buses? They seemed helpless, powerless, at the mercy of forces far beyond their control. The lack of rapid response left people in the United States, and all over the world, wondering how an American city could look like Mogadishu or Port-au-Prince. The refugee crisis—a million people without homes, jobs, schools—hardly fit George W. Bush's vision of the American Colossus.
What went wrong? Just about everything. How the system failed is a tangled story, but the basic narrative is becoming clearer: hesitancy, bureaucratic rivalries, failures of leadership from city hall to the White House and epically bad luck combined to create a morass. In the early aftermath, fingers pointed in all directions. The president was to blame; no, the looters. No, the bureaucrats. No, the local politicians. It was FEMA's fault—unless it was the Department of Homeland Security's. Or the Pentagon's. Certainly the government failed, and the catastrophe exposed, for all the world to see, raw racial divisions.
Bush's many critics will say that the president was disengaged, on vacation, distracted by Iraq and insensitive to the needs of poor black people. The White House blames the magnitude of the storm itself, patchy information on the ground and a confused chain of command, according to a senior Bush aide who requests anonymity in order to speak freely about internal administration discussions. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Bush is fighting a war, and he is sometimes slow to react, and he may have been lulled by early reports that New Orleans had been spared the worst of the storm. These are all legitimate excuses. Still, we expect more from a president.
Mother Nature was a major villain. A hurricane like Katrina packs the energy of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb—exploding every 20 minutes. Global warming does not explain the recent increase in hurricanes, the scientists say. A natural cycle of rising and lowering ocean temperatures accounts for the frequency of tropical storms; a lull in hurricanes from about the mid-'60s to the '90s was the exception, not the norm. But man may be making storms worse. As the planet heats, hurricanes will become more intense. And during that period of relative calm, homeowners and industry crowded the fragile shore all along the path of hurricanes in the South and Eastern United States.
Man robbed the Mississippi Delta of its natural protection from storms—ironically, to prevent flooding. Dikes and levees that channeled silt, and would have normally been allowed to build up the bayous and outer islands surrounding New Orleans, have instead been left to sink slowly into the mud. The wetlands along the Gulf Coast have been disappearing at the rate of about 33 football fields a day.
The government knew this and planned for the "Big One," at least in theory. The latest exercise by state, local and federal officials, looking at the impact of a fictional "Hurricane Pam" last year, pretty well predicted the crushing impact of Katrina on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. But the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to coordinate the relief effort for all disasters, natural and man-made, has been more focused on the terror threat since the sprawling agency was created post 9/11. Planners spend more time preparing for exotic (but less predictable) biochem or dirty-bomb attacks, which are more likely to get funding from Congress or the administration. (Though given the events after Katrina, one has to wonder about the nation's readiness to respond to such terrorist strikes.)
Wedged between the Mississippi River on the south and Lake Pontchartrain on the north, New Orleans is mostly below sea level, a saucer waiting to be filled. The "Big Easy" is a city of indolent charm, and its residents can be fatalist about enjoying the moment. The city, known for its "Cities of the Dead" because bodies must be buried aboveground, is somewhat otherworldly. It has long been better known for corruption than efficiency.
Over the years, hundreds of miles of earthen levees, concrete floodwalls and pumping stations have been built to keep out the water. Louisiana politicians have lobbied for more money to shore up and heighten the walls and to restore the entire Delta coastline. In June, Sen. Mary Landrieu brought 25 schoolkids into the French Quarter, put them in life jackets and had them stand on the beautiful old wrought-iron balconies. A blue tarp was draped below them to show how high the water would reach. That's almost how high the water—not blue, but brown with sewage, gas and chemicals—did rise last week.
For years, the Army Corps of Engineers has asked for more money for New Orleans and not received it. The Bush administration, strapped by the war in Iraq and eager to hold down spending and cut taxes, actually reduced funding for bolstering the city's levees. Patchworked and aging, the levee system was originally built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. With winds reaching 140 miles an hour, Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it hit New Orleans at dawn on Monday.
Incredibly, the hurricane could have been worse. It had grown to Category 5, with winds of 165 miles an hour, as it bore down on the Gulf Coast over the weekend. A hurricane is like a huge straw sucking up water, which creates a storm surge. The surge that hit the Gulf Coast, some 29 feet, was the highest ever recorded. The storm steered just to the east of New Orleans and blew away much of Biloxi, Miss. One Biloxi survivor, a Navy vet named Kevin Miller, described clinging to a tree as people floated by, "some dead." Miller told NEWSWEEK of grabbing a desperate woman by the hair—and losing her. "I just lost my grip," he said, choking up. The suffering all along the Gulf Coast, where homes and whole islands vanished, has been terrible, with people's whole lives falling into ruin.
A poll taken for the "Hurricane Pam" planning exercise in 2004 predicted that, if ordered to evacuate New Orleans, about 30 percent of the city of a half-million people would stay behind. So it should have come as no surprise that some 80,000 to 100,000 people chose not to heed the order of Mayor Nagin to get out of town on the Saturday before the storm. A few stayed behind by choice. Brooke Duncan, who was "Rex, King of Carnival," at the 1971 Mardi Gras, wanted to remain in the city his family had first come to before the Civil War. But when the water began to lap at his house in the French Quarter, Duncan, 81, set out carrying his pet dog, a corgi, and a gun to a friend's house. He joined a convoy of well-off Garden District residents driving out of the city. "We had weapons and displayed them through the window," said Duncan, who is now in Cincinnati.
About a fifth of New Orleans residents live below the poverty line, and one in five does not have a car. This disadvantaged population is overwhelmingly African-American. The South has a sordid history when it comes to poor blacks and hurricanes. In 1927, when the Mississippi flooded, blacks were herded as virtual prisoners upriver in Greenville, Miss. As a steamboat, half-filled with whites, took off to safety, the band played "Bye-Bye, Blackbird." Racial tensions may have been even worse this time round. "I think the black population feels abandoned, and they were abandoned" in Katrina, says John M. Barry, author of "Rising Tide," a history of the Great Flood of 1927.
Those who were unable to leave New Orleans were told to go to the Superdome for safe haven from the storm. It quickly became the first circle of hell. First the air conditioning failed. Then the lights. A generator kicked in, but with only enough power to keep the huge arena dimly lit. (When the sun came out, it sent Biblical shafts through a couple of holes Katrina had blown in the roof.) The Salvation Army doled out thousands of ready-made meals (a choice of jambalaya, spaghetti or Thai chicken), but bottled water was scarce, and in the steamy heat, the stench of unwashed bodies ripened. On Wednesday, all running water shut off, and the reeking toilets overflowed.
In the dark bathrooms, the walls and floor were smeared with feces. A black market grew up. Hot sellers were cigarettes (at $10 a pack) and antidiuretics, to enable people to go longer without peeing. The occasional gunshot rang out. A man fell or jumped from the upper deck onto the concrete below and died. In a dank bathroom, someone attacked a National Guardsman with a lead pipe and tried to steal his automatic weapon. In the scuffle, the Guardsman was shot in the leg. Crack vials were scattered around the floor. At least two rapes were reported, one of a child.
At the adjoining and equally squalid New Orleans Arena, people began putting plastic bags on their feet to walk through the pools of urine. And yet, in a scene from Hieronymus Bosch, a man named Samuel Thompson, 34, took out his violin and played Bach's famous lamentation, Sonata No. 1 in G minor. He told L.A. Times reporter Scott Gold, who witnessed the scene, "These people have nothing. I have a violin. And I should play for them. They should have something."
Life went on, barely. On Monday night, in a dark attic surrounded by floodwater, Waldrica Nathan, 19, gave birth to a baby boy. The child was delivered by his father and grandparents, who had picked up a few tips by watching cable TV. The grandfather "knew just where to cut the cord and how to tie a shoestring around it," a hospital spokesman later told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. To keep the baby cool, family members fashioned a combination crib/boat out of a laundry basket and floated it in the cool waters of the flooded living room.
Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, the water kept rising in New Orleans. The floodwalls breached in at least three places. Trying to plug one 300-foot gap on the 17th Street Canal, the Corps of Engineers dropped giant sandbags and concrete blocks from helicopters. But the choppers were called away to rescue people crying for help from rooftops, and the engineers were never able to get ahead of the flooding. As the water rose, New Orleans's Canal Street became a canal again. In a looted travel agency, some homeless men sat around eating potato chips and drinking Miller Lite beer.
Stranded residents became resourceful. People tore off chair legs and used them as torches after dark. Some people screamed as they waded by giant rats in the garbage-strewn water, but others improvised, making boats out of empty refrigerators. Rumors flew. There were alligators swimming in the ghetto. And sharks from the flooded aquarium downtown. Not true—but there were poisonous cottonmouth snakes and water moccasins.
The giant Wal-Mart store in the Lower Garden District stayed above the floodwaters and did a booming business—in freeloaders. Some people emerged with shopping carts full of food and water and medical supplies. Others appeared with TVs and DVDs. "Is everything free?" asked one woman arriving at the door. Told yes, she began chanting, "TV! TV! TV!" The looters took chain saws and fishing poles. One gang chased away the security guards and emptied the Wal-Mart of guns and ammunition, enough to arm a company of soldiers. The police themselves may have helped trigger the lawlessness, as reports that some of their own had engaged in looting swept through the city.
On Wednesday night, Mayor Nagin ordered 1,500 policemen—virtually the entire city force—to stop trying to rescue people from attics and rooftops, and to turn instead to stopping the looting. "They are starting to get to the heavily populated areas—hotels, hospitals—and we're going to stop it right now," he said.
By Thursday, New Orleans was on the verge of anarchy. Policemen, many of whom had lost their homes, were turning in their badges rather than face the looters for another day. Jail inmates were moved out of town, but their criminal records are underwater. Sorting out who has been charged and with which crime could be a nightmare. Shoplifters might be incarcerated with rapists, and the system might be compelled to let some suspects go free.
Mayor Nagin issued what he called a "desperate S.O.S." to the federal government. In a radio interview, he exploded at the Feds for holding "goddamn press conferences" instead of doing much to help his city. Nagin himself had problems of his own. He had opened up the Superdome to thousands of people—but nobody seemed to have had a plan to care for them or to get them out of there. There were promises of buses that never came. Some 500 National Guardsmen showed up to keep order, but the nervous young soldiers waved their weapons about. People began to complain that they were being held in a prison. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco seemed uncertain and sluggish, hesitant to declare martial law or a state of emergency, which would have opened the door to more Pentagon help.
Washington, too, was slow to react to the crisis. The Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was reluctant for the military to take a lead role in disaster relief, a job traditionally performed by FEMA and by the National Guard, which is commanded by state governors. President Bush could have "federalized" the National Guard in an instant. That's what his father, President George H.W. Bush, did after the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Back then, the Justice Department sent Robert Mueller, a jut-jawed ex-Marine (who is now FBI director), to take charge, showing, in effect, that the cavalry had arrived. FEMA's current head, Michael Brown, has appeared over his head and even a little clueless in news interviews. He is far from the sort of take-charge presence New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani conveyed after 9/11.
Up to now, the Bush administration has not hesitated to sweep aside the opinions of lawyers on such matters as prisoners' rights. But after Katrina, a strange paralysis set in. For days, Bush's top advisers argued over legal niceties about who was in charge, according to three White House officials who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. Beginning early in the week, Justice Department lawyers presented arguments for federalizing the Guard, but Defense Department lawyers fretted about untrained 19-year-olds trying to enforce local laws, according to a senior law-enforcement official who requested anonymity citing the delicate nature of the discussions.
While Washington debated, the situation in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast deteriorated. Bush traveled to the region in part to work out a deal with local officials to establish a clearer chain of command. By the weekend, federal officials said there could be tens of thousands of troops in New Orleans in short order. Saturday, Bush pledged to return to the region on Monday—and to deploy 7,000 additional active-duty troops under the Pentagon's control. But for many, the help was arriving too late. Officials worked through the weekend trying to hammer out the jurisdictional issues.
The losses in the meantime have been heartbreaking. At Tulane University, Dr. James Robinson, a prominent AIDS researcher, and his wife, Monique, decided to stay behind to protect some cell lines—white blood cells infected with the disease—that represent decades of research on his part. He packed his lab with food and water and relied on generators to keep his freezers and incubators operating. He and his wife even managed to have a glass of wine and watch a DVD on a computer after the storm abated. But by Wednesday, with the water rising, his generator failed. Fearful of getting robbed or drowned, the Robinsons made their way to a Tulane parking lot, secured by guards, where he called his daughter in Providence, R.I., to tell her they were all right—for now. "I didn't dare ask him about his work," said his daughter, Lisette Dorsey. "I fear it's all probably a loss."
At least the Robinsons seemed safe. Sherri Johnson, a 52-year-old woman who walks with a cane, fled her house and all her belongings to spend Tuesday night on the St. Claude Bridge, where she cowered amid isolated shooting. In the morning, she was ordered off the bridge and began a three-mile hike to the convention center. She arrived at a scene of mayhem. Someone had opened fire on a crowd, which panicked, knocking Johnson to the ground. There was no security, no water, no medical help, aside from a pair of overwhelmed nurses—no sign of any organized relief—at the convention center. Just people crying "Help us!" to passing cameramen. "Where is the Red Cross?" Johnson plaintively asked a NEWSWEEK reporter.
The skies in New Orleans gradually filled with search-and-rescue helicopters, but there was no central command to coordinate them. A NEWSWEEK reporter on a helo flown by the Arizona Air Reserve heard this conversation as the crew readied to leave New Orleans Louis Armstrong Airport after dropping off two evacuees. FIRST CREWMAN: "F---, is he hearing us?" (referring to the air-traffic controller). LIEUTENANT: "I don't know, we should just take off." ENGINEER: "We just got back from Afghanistan. Organization's a lot better there."
Overwhelmed local officials struggled to bring order to chaos. The cloverleaf where Interstate 10 meets the causeway in Jefferson Parish became a kind of crude sorting place. As helicopters landed, disgorging hundreds of dazed and often filthy refugees, Dr. Joel Eldridge, the medical director for Louisiana, set up a makeshift hospital and medical triage. On Thursday, he wearily lamented that he had medicines—but not water or toilets. "It is difficult to see a child ask you for water and you don't have anything to give him," said Eldridge.
Sad little groups dragged their meager possessions on pieces of Styrofoam. Col. Stanley Griffin, in charge of the muddy, jammed cloverleaf site for the state police, tried to quell a small riot as the first buses finally arrived Thursday. He waded into the fracas as people screamed and pushed. A baby was handed into the bus, but the doors closed, leaving a frantic woman behind. Griffin could only hammer on the windscreen of the bus, urging the driver to move out.
When the first buses arrived in Houston, to unload their unhappy cargo at the next domed stadium—the Astrodome—desperation mixed with relief. "I have no idea where my 2-year-old son is," said Nicole Williams, 41. She wore a T shirt marked PLEASE HELP ME FIND MY FAMILY. On the back were listed the names of four family members. They were separated at the I-10 cloverleaf. When Williams tried to reach for her baby so he could ride in her lap, she says, a state trooper sprayed Mace in her face to keep her from getting off the bus. "They maced my mother and my daughter," she said. "Then the door slammed shut."
The feeling of despair was not confined to the refugees. On Friday afternoon, Chief Bill Hunter, the No. 2 man at the New Orleans Criminal Sheriff's Department, stopped City Council President Oliver Thomas. "I hate to say this, Oliver, I really do, but it's over." Thomas resisted the blues. "No, we'll rebuild," he said. "At least 20 years," said Hunter, shaking his head.
For many refugees of New Orleans, the weekend brought just the first stage in a long, arduous journey to a better place. But at least there were some hopeful signs. On Craigslist.com, the popular Internet site, offers of housing and help poured in from all over the country (though how many of the refugees could go online was another question). Even the French offered to help. In time, the city will rebuild. Thomas scoffed at a remark by House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois that New Orleans could not be saved. "I'm ready to show the Dennis Hasterts of the world that we will rebuild, that we have the best jazz, the best gumbo, the best Margaritas, the best French Quarter. And they'll be better than before." Cities do die. But they can come back from the dead—even Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Chicago was rebuilt after its fire in 1871, and San Francisco came back after its earthquake in 1906.
Fires and earthquakes are spectacular. Water is more insidious. It seeps and lurks, undermines and rots. The water in New Orleans is a toxic stew of chemicals, petroleum and waterborne diseases. It will take months just to pump it out. If New Orleans can muster the human spirit, the sense of soulfulness and joy that has sustained it through the centuries, through a British invasion, Yankee occupation, floods and earlier hurricanes, it is not too much to imagine that the good times will one day roll again. But the 21st-century Battle of New Orleans has just begun.
This story was written by Evan Thomas with reporting from T. Trent Gegax in Baton Rouge; Jonathan Darman with the National Guard; Catharine Skipp and Joseph Contreras in New Orleans; John Barry, Pat Wingert, Martha Brant, Daniel Klaidman, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff, Holly Bailey, Susannah Meadows and Steve Tuttle in Washington; Carol Rust and Staci Semrad in Texas, and Andrew Murr and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/page/5/
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