The Great Deluge

by Douglas Brinkley

  Before Katrina, the word “debris” had a friendly, culinary ring to it in New Orleans. At Mother’s Restaurant on Poydras Street, the house specialty was the Debris Po’-boy, sliced roast beef with plenty of fat, drenched in a rich brown gravy, placed on French bread and loaded down with mayonnaise, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and, for the real connoisseur, plenty of Crystal Hot Sauce. Such delights were part of the old New Orleans. While Mother’s survived Katrina, and continued to serve their marvelous po’-boys, every time the word “debris” was uttered, people thought of smashed glass or blasted furnaces, sopping wet clothes or splintered church collection boxes, fallen Our Lady of Lourdes statues or deflated soccer balls. When you saw somebody picking through debris, looking for a forlorn memento to snatch out of the wreckage, an awkwardness came over you. It was too humbling to watch; you had to turn away.

  III

  At 1:45 A.M. on Wednesday, August 31, FEMA officials formalized a request known as a tasking assignment to bring vehicles into New Orleans—specifically, 455 buses and 300 ambulances. The action was days late, but at least the bureaucracy had finally budged. The request was duly submitted to the Department of Transportation (DOT). Another full day went by before anyone at FEMA found out that, as one of the officials phrased it, “the DOT doesn’t do ambulances.”21 That was only the beginning of a day that might be considered the eye of the Katrina aftermath. By Thursday FEMA buses started arriving in small numbers at the Superdome.

  The misery of Katrina didn’t wane on Wednesday and Thursday with the nightfall. Darkness made life in the bowl doubly worse. In the bleak, subtropical hours of the early morning, people in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes felt supra-stranded, still frightened, and still waiting. “People had to stay in groups,” said Lieutenant Lawrence McLeary of the Louisiana State Police, “huddle in groups and operate and function as groups, because they didn’t have communication with anyone else. And I don’t know that people can even understand how dark the city got. I mean, no lights at all. It was just pitch-black. There was nothing, no sound at all.”22

  In the aftermath of Katrina, 1.1 million buildings in Louisiana were without power. In some Gulf Coast areas, the blackout was only temporary, but in others, the situation was chronic—for the simple reason that it couldn’t get better. “It’s catastrophic,” said David Botkins, an official with Dominion Virginia Power, a company that sent 200 workers to Louisiana and Mississippi on the day after the storm. “The entire grid system in these areas is completely ruined.”23 Through the grid system, utility companies transfer power between power plants and ancillary stations; they also transfer it for sale to other power companies and deliver it to their customers. On each level, electricity demands balance between the source and the receiver. In making repairs to the mighty grid after Katrina, the local utility, Entergy, had one terrific advantage: it had prepared for just such a hurricane.

  Devastating as Katrina was, it didn’t send the power company into a frenzy, as it had FEMA. The flooding did, however, slow the process. Half of the forty-two substations in the city and its environs were flooded,24 damage that would involve major repairs. In the midst of the flooding, linemen did their best, even climbing from boats onto towers to make repairs and reattach fallen wires.25 But such electrical work was dangerous and time-consuming. The looting also hampered the restoration of power. Crews could not work with thieves circling them and their equipment, often with guns cocked and aimed. Within a week, the company would have power restored to more than 647,000 customers in Louisiana and parts of Mississippi; it would even manage to turn the lights back on in most of the French Quarter.26 The rest of New Orleans, waterlogged and decaying, would wait months for power. Entergy, one of the nation’s largest nuclear generators, sustained $1 billion in storm damage. It could survive financial loss, but not the lack of customers in Greater New Orleans. With so many places, including New Orleans, having lost the majority of its population, the local subsidiary, Entergy New Orleans, Inc., filed for bankruptcy in the third week of September.27

  The efforts of Entergy were called “nothing short of amazing” by Transmission and Distribution World, an electric industry trade magazine.28 All of Entergy’s nuclear facilities in the Gulf Coast states—Waterford 3 in Taft, Louisiana; River Bend Station in St. Francisville, Louisiana; and Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Port Gibson, Mississippi—suffered only minor, insignificant damage.

  The Gulf South region was crumbling, but not merely in the physical sense: the mental strain of seeing one’s hometown wiped away could wear down even the strongest personality. The whole thing might have seemed like an adventure on Katrina’s first day (Monday), at least for those who survived without injury. The second day (Tuesday) was perplexing; a time to complain, loudly, to anyone who would listen. But by Wednesday, it was no longer possible to say what was real in the disorder left by storm and disappointment.

  At 4:30 A.M., Eddie Compass, the police superintendent of New Orleans, was running up and down the halls on the fourth floor of the Hyatt Hotel, where some NOPD officers were headquartered. “Where are all the men?” he shouted. “We need all the men downstairs, now!”29 He rushed from room to room, grabbing anyone he could find, from policemen to frightened hotel guests, insisting that they rush to the first floor. The reason, he said, was that looters were attacking the hotel. There was going to be a battle and he needed troops. When the makeshift army arrived in the lobby, though, they didn’t find any looters at the doors. That Eddie Compass had overreacted was obvious. He desperately needed sleep. At that hour, the hotel was in the process of receiving a load of supplies, including food and gasoline. Compass was so concerned at the thought of losing the commodities—which were practically priceless under the dire circumstances—that he seemed on the verge of cracking.

  Bogus rumors aside, Chief Compass never abandoned his post during the Katrina crisis. He worked harder than anyone to get New Orleans functioning in a coherent fashion. He did not flee to Austin or Galveston to be with his grown-up children. He was asked by Nagin’s communications director, Sally Forman, to fly to Newark somewhat later, to flip the coin at the Saints versus Giants NFL game, along with former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “Forman asked me to go on behalf of the mayor,” Compass later complained. “I didn’t want to go. Not at all. Later, [Nagin] used it as a reason for me to be dismissed.”30 Besides that official trip to Giants Stadium at Forman’s request, Compass claimed he left New Orleans only once, to attend a meeting in Baton Rouge, sleeping for one night in Denham Springs. Another reason it seemed that Chief Compass had skipped out on New Orleans was that he offered the NOPD free five-day vacations to Las Vegas on September 4. “When you go through something this devastating and traumatic,” Compass said, “you’ve got to do something dramatic to jump-start the healing process.”31

  The idea that slot machines and roulette wheels were considered the “healing tonic” only further embarrassed the New Orleans Police Department in the eyes of the American public.

  IV

  Back at Drew Elementary School in the Ninth Ward, Charmaine Neville was trying to hold herself together after being raped. Her nerves shattered like a broken glass jar, she had to put her own pain away and refuse to let the rape mess with her self-esteem. Helicopters flew overhead, their pilots aware that there were hundreds of evacuees to get out of Drew. But they were painfully slow coming back, usually just basket-lifting one or two people at a time. “So that Wednesday,” Neville recalled, “we all decided to get out of Drew, forget about a mass rescue and we walked to Canal Street to get out of the floodwaters.” While they were all standing around, wondering what to do, Neville commandeered a bus that was parked near the French Quarter. Nothing was more valuable in New Orleans on Wednesday than a bus, not even a diamond as big as a bus. If it could transport people, it was priceless. At that exact moment, no one was tending the bus, it was just parked. In an instant, Neville decided to take it. As if singing the Curtis Mayfield song �
��People Get Ready,” she blurted out, “People, get on board,” standing at the front door and waving them toward it.

  Neville knew that the West Bank had only suffered wind damage—no flooding. Getting across the Crescent City Connection bridge was the ticket to freedom. She plopped into the driver’s seat, flipped on the engine and put her right foot on the gas. The only thing on her mind was that bridge. If she made it over, she could work her way toward Baton Rouge, where there would be plenty of provisions and medical attention. She didn’t know how to drive a bus, but she did the best she could. “I was doing well, but all of a sudden, a damn police car pulled in front, making a kind of roadblock,” she recalled. “And all of the poor people around the Convention Center were looking to get out. I just couldn’t take them. My bus was full. I still have nightmares about leaving them behind.” Around New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm, police frequently set up roadblocks, in order to control just who went into and out of the city. With a little moxie, a driver could sail on through most of them. Neville had a lot of moxie. “Instinctively,” she said, “I didn’t slow down, I just put on the gas…. I just kept going. Everybody was screaming, hiding. It was just wild and scary and crazy. I was tryin’ to turn on the windshield wipers and couldn’t. But no way was I going to stop for those clowns.” Seeing it was a city bus, and assuming that it was on government duty, the police didn’t give chase.

  It was a scene straight out of Smokey and the Bandit. Anybody watching would have naturally cheered Neville onward. And drive she did, getting her people out of the New Orleans bowl. By the time she got to Donaldsonville, however, her adrenaline was depleted. At a diesel filling station, a truck driver, seeing her with pump in hand, asked if he could help. He bought her fuel and directed the bus to the Shekinah Glory Full Gospel Baptist Church. Although the church had only been open eight months, it was ready to take care of evacuees by the hundreds. Pastor Ronald Harbin greeted Neville’s exhausted busload at the door.32 For each person, stepping into the church was like falling into heaven. Clean clothes, hot meals, and beverages were provided. Those in need of medical attention quickly received it. Neville herself was able to call her best friend, Wendy Haydel, in Hawaii. The word then hit the extended Neville tribe—scattered all over America—that Charmaine was okay.

  Donaldsonville provided Neville with a chance to catch her breath. In counseling with Pastor Harbin, she described the horrors of the rape for the first time. The national media was clamoring to talk with her, to hear firsthand about her daring bus escape. A devout Catholic, she decided to tell her story on television, with Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans. As she entered the studio in Baton Rouge, a TV executive came up and asked, “What are you, another refugee?” Offended by the remark, Neville shot back, “Honey, I’m a survivor.” Her interview with the round-faced archbishop was extremely controversial, for not only did Charmaine recount her rape, she criticized the Bush administration and told the far-fetched story about seeing alligators preying on people in the Ninth Ward. “I felt blessed to be talking to the archbishop. I wanted people to know that we weren’t crooks,” Neville later explained. “We weren’t looting. We weren’t on crack. But yes, I took a bus and if that makes me a looter, then guess what? I am a looter. And other women were attacked. That’s why I went public.”33

  V

  Early in the day on Wednesday, Governor Kathleen Blanco was keeping her calm, despite her frustration. First thing in the morning, she tried to put through a telephone call to the President, in order to tell him that “expected and promised federal resources still have not arrived.”34 Having spent Tuesday night in Crawford, Bush was preparing to leave Texas for Washington at the time. But at the Crawford ranch—as in any presidential limousine or on Air Force One—the facilities were such that he could speak on the telephone as easily as he could in the Oval Office. Blanco had every reason to insist that she needed to speak with him at once. As former New Orleans Mayor Sidney Barthelemy explained on CNN that morning, “The President of the United States is the only person who has the resources to coordinate, to bring in the troops, to make this city a safe place and solve the problems, particularly the breach in the levee. [People in New Orleans] are losing hope.”35

  In response to Blanco’s call, the White House did not make the President available. Nor could she speak with Chief of Staff Andrew Card. After this futile attempt to reach the nation’s leaders, Blanco joined Archbishop Hughes in ceremonies designating the rest of the day as an official day of prayer in Louisiana. In her remarks, the governor admitted humbly that with monumental work before the state, Louisianans needed the help of a “higher power.” She then returned to her office and tried to reach the President again. After a short delay, her call was transferred to a low-level bureau, the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. That was, of course, a dead end; a silent graveyard of inaction. The governor of the state most affected by the worst national disaster since the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 was being handed around like a small-time lobbyist in search of a favor. During the course of the morning, Blanco received calls from presidential surrogates, including one from Andrew Card, who was then on vacation in Maine, but who listened to her insistent request for buses—as many as 5,000. According to Blanco’s recollection, Card didn’t exactly promise to help. “He affirms that he believes he can help with this,” she noted.36

  To keep up the morale of her constituents, Governor Blanco did not admit publicly that the White House was stonewalling her. Instead, at a little after 10 A.M., she announced that she was in touch with the White House and that buses were headed to the Superdome to begin the evacuation. Blanco’s primary concern was reducing the roiling population at the Superdome. One FEMA medical team had arrived on Tuesday to augment the medical staff that had been on duty since Sunday morning. FEMA also sent a single “Emergency Response Team Advance,” which joined Marty Bahamonde in attempting to satisfy the basic needs of those on hand. “Each day,” Bahamonde said, “it was a battle to find enough food and water and get it to the Superdome.”37 Somehow, the skeleton crew succeeded in providing the crowd with at least two meals per day.

  The hundreds of National Guardsmen on duty at the Dome kept order. They were, however, outmatched by the sheer numbers. Rumors that murders were committed at the Superdome were untrue, but rapes had been perpetrated. Some of the people in the Superdome, according to Terry Ebbert, were addicts. The exact number will never be known, but hundreds there were thrown into withdrawal by the lack of alcohol, crack cocaine, heroin, or some other substance. “Did you have people at the Superdome in withdrawal?” Ebbert later asked rhetorically. “Yes, that was a real problem. The drug addicts were in physical distress. The tremendous heat. All that went into creating a very, very bad situation.”38 And yet those who were managing the disaster operations were continuing to direct rescuers to drop off hurricane victims at the Superdome. Hotels, like the Ritz and W, that were closing suggested that guests find shelter at the stadium. The population there had actually increased by 5,000 since Tuesday evening, when the governor had called for the mandatory evacuation of the Dome.

  President Bush knew what was going on, or at least he should have. He started the day with a teleconference from Crawford on the subject of hurricane relief, speaking with officials spread by vacations all over the country. The participants were Michael Chertoff, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Jackson, White House Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend, Michael Brown, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Deputy National Security Advisor J. D. Crouch, Andrew Card, and White House Counselor Dan Bartlett. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan later summarized the discussion:

  The meeting began with an operational update from Mike Brown. Mike—well, they discussed the options for an evacuation of the Superdome in New Orleans, and the people that have been—that were moved there originally. They also discussed the issues relating to the flooding going on in New Orleans, and Mississippi, as well. And Mike
talked about the work going on to fix the breaches in the levees. And so there’s a good bit of discussion about what they were looking at doing for the levees, to fix the levees, and they’re working with the Corps of Engineers in that regard.

  They also talked about the security situation. As you’re all aware, marshal [sic ] law has been declared in Mississippi and Louisiana. And they talked about the National Guard response to that, as well. And then they talked about the coordination of the response efforts within the federal government. And the President wanted to make sure that Mike was getting all the cooperation he needed from all the different agencies within the federal government on the ground. And Mike expressed that he was getting good cooperation within the federal government.39

  President Bush raised two concerns: the short-term need for food, water, and shelter in the affected areas and the long-term need to rebuild communities. While that much may have been obvious, the devil was in the details that would answer those universally held concerns. Significantly, the President was flanked at the teleconference by Karl Rove. To such a master politico, Louisiana was known as the only Democratic bastion in the South, the region where he had devoted much attention during the previous decade to building a solid Republican coalition. “Wednesday, Karl Rove woke up and said, ‘Hey,’” Blanco recalled, “‘why are the national talking heads criticizing my president? Why not the governor?’ They have a huge network and we weren’t trying to manage anything like that. We were trying to save lives.”40

  By 2005, if Louisiana was a holdout, it was a wobbly one. In the blue (Democratic) versus red (Republican) paradigm, Louisiana was purple, turning redder every month. The partisan politicking of Katrina kicked in. Alabama and Mississippi were red, and, if played right—if Blanco got scapegoated—Louisiana could soon be as bright as a fire engine. While David Vitter had been elected two years before as the state’s first Republican senator in over a century, Democrat Kathleen Blanco had managed to win the governor’s office. The TV political pundits weighed in with an unprovable theory: For any political animal on Bush’s side of the fence, the best-case scenario in the aftermath of Katrina would be the use of federal resources to help the people of Louisiana, without lending one iota of assistance to the state’s beleaguered Democratic governor. Even more tempting, the theory went, was the notion that Katrina could be used as a tragic but convenient excuse to reshape the state politically: gerrymandering by bulldozer. All such plots and subplots undoubtedly occurred to those at both ends of the phone lines connecting Baton Rouge to Washington. Every time Governor Blanco telephoned that week, she was fully aware that she was a Democrat calling an unfriendly Republican White House. And so the struggle for survival that was facing hundreds of thousands of people in southeastern Louisiana on Wednesday was played out in its own way at the highest levels of government. “They were trying to blame Louisiana for all the problems,” Blanco said. “And I just wouldn’t let that happen. The White House just flat out made [up] stuff.”41