Original subtitles

So, General Honoré, people always want to figure out who was at fault, who

have done a better job.

How would you answer that question?

We're part of a culture that we want an instant solution. We normally watch the

world in the front of our eyes, strike our emotion in a movie, and in an hour

and a half, that's somebody's over with and everybody's smiling, there's a hero.

That's not the case in a natural disaster.

People running out of food.

People run out of water. Perhaps the death toll will go into the thousands.

So everybody is looking for somebody to blame.

And the city was a black city.

So there was a presumption that there would be danger.

And the American people only knew what they saw on television.

So perception became reality.

The lawlessness in New Orleans.

Angry mobs set fires. That's now ravaged by widespread looting.

Back then we called it rumors.

Now we call it misinformation.

I call that survival.

New Orleans thought it had been spared the worst, and then two major levees

broke and slowly the city has filled with water.

Those leaders who yesterday thought they might be able to clean things up

quickly have come to the radio to explain we were wrong. The only answer

to leave.

The water from the lake has gone across the entire city.

And folks with money, who've got two cars and a backup house in the mountains

North Carolina, they just drive there.

Or they call a hotel in Nashville and say, save me a room.

Poor people don't have that liberty.

If, in fact, a million people left, but still leave, 400, 500 ,000 people in the

area without much drinking water, without power.

These people are people of not much means.

Some of them, I would guess, do not have cars and didn't have the option of

driving away from here.

It's hard for me to comprehend how many people might be out there and how many

people's lives are in jeopardy.

This brings back so many memories. It's crazy.

This is where I stood right here.

They rebuilt it. They tore it down, but this is where my house sat on the

corner.

We live close to the French Quarter area. It never floods around there, so

never was a problem.

Can you show us how high it was?

At the time, it was...

About right here to me at first.

After the levees broke, we didn't have cell phones.

We just had a house phone, and it was down.

I managed to get a radio.

Orleans officials have only been able to begin finding out what Katrina has left

behind. There are a lot of areas throughout the city covered with water,

Ninth Ward.

They said the Ninth Ward was underwater.

People are stranded on top of their homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

And my mom just started to cry because her two sisters lived there and they

couldn't swim or their kids.

So we just roofed like they're dead.

Hello, you're down 9 -1 -1. Do you need police, fire, EMS? Hello?

Katrina, she's a bad chick.

Look at my hood.

That's my house over there.

I was in that attic. I'm across the street now.

I'm going back out there to get some more people to bring them out.

There was a lot of houses down there that people couldn't get out.

And that's when we was riding around, seeing who we can find. We were hearing

people hollering.

We rode from St. Claude to Floyd Avenue.

From Delaware Street to Jordan Avenue.

Once we get at least 10 people, bring them to Martin Luther King School.

We was rescuing, like, everybody.

Dogs and whatever.

People that was barely making it, that was halfway drowning.

People trapped on roofs.

We pick them up, some we had to cut in the attic.

Get him on the beam.

Come on. One, two, three.

On the beam behind you, not in front of you. Come on, I'm holding him.

All we're doing is we're out around saving people.

It's a good thing that we did.

Because to be honest with you, our leaders wasn't here for my people.

The project is flooded.

We don't have no water and no light.

This is awful.

The mayor and the governor need to do something about this. They sent people

overseas to fight walls.

Send them over here to help us.

Right after the levees broke,

I was in the Lower Ninth Warden trying to help.

We got a man in the attic of this house right behind us that we're going to take

out of there.

The lieutenant governor's rescued people in a boat. That means the system

failed.

Oh, it's been devastating. I mean, as you can see, I mean, the homes are 10

underwater. We don't know where people are trapped right now. We've got people,

dogs swimming in the land, and we're trying to get the boats in here, which

difficult.

There's no blueprint for 80 % of a city, a major city, being underwater. There's

no blueprint for that. There's no blueprint for that.

But the strategy was to save people's lives.

We knew the low -lying areas had been overwhelmed, and we knew many people

didn't evacuate.

So before the federal government even came, that's the areas that we were

targeting to help evacuate people to different locations, like the Superdome.

conditioning, sleeping on the floor, dealing with all the people, standing in

line, army rations.

When the rain stopped, I was looking at it like now it's sunny.

You're like, okay, cool. I guess we are. Okay, cool. Let me get my bag.

We're about to get up out of here. No, that wasn't it. We wasn't about to go

anywhere. There's over 200 National Guard personnel here at the Superdome,

keeping people in the Superdome until it's actually safe to leave.

I haven't.

Seen my son yet. I haven't seen my mom just yet. Like, if I wanted to leave to

go help my aunties or get out there to go in, I couldn't leave.

Yes, and it's very aggravating. And what do we have to go home to?

Many of us, our homes are going to be flooded, are going to be destroyed.

On top of that, people started coming in more and more and more.

They maybe was in a lower night wall, got rescued from a bad situation, and

they dropped them off at the Superdome.

Keep your family members together.

I was like, oh, Lord, I went from one hell to another.

It's crazy, man, to see some strange shit up in here.

All the bathrooms got shit flooding everywhere to the top, man. It's nasty

already.

It was dark as hell, extremely, extremely warm.

And the smell was just so bad because you had all those bodies in there.

I got me thinking about the president. What's going on, man?

Like, you're going to let us suffer in a superdome like this? I mean, that

really baffled me.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Our Commander -in -Chief, the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

President Bush is out in San Diego where he's going to give a speech in Iraq and

also commemorate the ending of World War II.

Thank you all.

Thanks for the warm welcome.

It's good to be back in California.

President Bush and his team's response.

completely failed, especially in the first day or two.

This morning, our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens along the Gulf

Coast.

I urge everyone in the affected areas to continue to follow instructions from

state and local authorities.

As we deliver relief to our citizens to the south, our troops are defending all

our citizens from threats abroad.

George W. Bush was on vacation at the time of the hurricane striking.

We're now getting word that President Bush plans to return to Washington

tomorrow to deal with some of the ramifications of the hurricane.

He stayed on vacation, I think, for another couple of days.

And those are the most critical days.

Katrina was spread out over a number of different states.

We as a nation didn't really have a good emergency response system set up.

There was no clear command and control.

There was no coordination.

Everything was broken.

Michael Brown is the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. What

advice can you share for those who live in some of those hardest -hit areas?

To be very, very patient. This is going to be a very long and difficult process.

I can't even get my teams in right now to assist. It was a complete

and everybody had a piece of it.

There's not really a plan that's working in place. Is that fair to say?

Our challenges are enormous, Soledad. We've got an engineering nightmare

to fill the breach of the levee.

There's been a helicopter trying to drop sandbags to clog up this hole, but

that's an operation being manned by one helicopter.

Another dilemma Louisiana had is the majority of its troops, the National

were in Iraq.

And most of the equipment from the Louisiana National Guard was in Baghdad.

And then those federal, state, and local officials, they did not get along.

So President Bush had no interest in helping Kathleen Blanco. And Kathleen

Blanco didn't particularly care for Mayor Ray Nagin.

So they all had no problem watching the other person fail.

The real issue was that if the other person failed, they were going to drag

everybody down with them.

If ever the cavalry was needed, it is now and it is in New Orleans. The scene

nothing short of apocalyptic.

80 % of New Orleans... We're in a hotel and the search is on from the rest of

our family members.

I knew the seriousness of it, but I didn't realize how much you were going

through, you know?

My grandmother lived with my cousin Greg along with some other family members.

in the basement apartment.

We had been calling everyone's phone in the home, not being able to get a signal

from anyone.

We stayed in the house for, like, two days.

It was a townhouse.

We stayed in the bottom part, and my grandma was at the top part.

We kept most of our stuff, like, downstairs in the garage area.

So most of our clothes was washed away. Everything we owned was wet.

Food supply was kind of running short.

We all in this house together, we all trying to salvage what we can get and

to make ourselves comfortable until the rescue people come, hopefully.

We're seeing the helicopters, and we think, okay, cool, we're about to get

saved. We have people coming to help.

I saw a helicopter come so close to us, I can see the man's wisdom tooth.

That's how close it was.

I'm waving the towel. I'm losing my mind, screaming and yelling.

Looking back at it, I guess they said, well, it's just about five feet of

water here.

Let's go somewhere where somebody's in worse trouble.

But shit.

Rescuers have their hands full.

Look at the writing on this rooftop showing a diabetic and a person with a

condition need rescuing.

Perhaps 100 ,000 more people are in the same situation.

That's when we say, you know what, we have to get up out of here.

We escape back through here, through the back door.

We walked from back here to over here by the interstate where the cars are going

up at.

At this point, some people in the neighborhood started, you know, talking

we got to get to the interstate.

My dad held my little brother on his neck and my mom held my little sister.

My cousin Arielle couldn't swim, so I held on to her.

We had a really big refrigerator.

We dismantled the doors, took those off. We pretty much put all our supplies in

there. We put all the kids in there.

And we had to walk real slow because there was definitely stuff like swimming

the water.

Knowing what was in the water, that was fearful.

Disease, fuel, sewage, human remains, and poisonous snakes swimming in the

water. We have bayous, we have alligators, water moccasins, you name

it. And most of it we fried and cooked the asses, but at that point in time we

wasn't thinking about that.

When they come out of here, they come up to a freeway overpass, right over here

to your left, this freeway overpass.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.

The whole entire neighborhood was on the interstate.

And we all just, we stranded.

No cover, no helicopters, buses, no anything.

To be honest with you, I can remember the look on my grandparents' face. It

you know, it was like, you know, this is the

end of our existence, you know, here.

Now, mind you, some of them people died.

Yeah, people covered them.

I can never forget, you know, what I saw.

People have come by all day. They don't get instructions as to where to go, but

by the thousands they've come. And five minutes ago, while you were in another

report, this lady and her family came walking by.

This is a five -day -old baby. How is she?

I guess she's all right. Hopefully she's all right.

When we got to the interstate, the police officers, they told us that we

walk up this way.

One of our engineers and I went out in the street and physically stopped the

police who drive by constantly. I'm not saying anything negative about the

police or anyone else. I'm just trying to give you an explanation of the

enormity of this. In fact, if you'll point over there, the line around the

Superdome has not gotten any shorter.

But the truth is breathed by the tens of thousands with no instructions of where

to go.

It is a refugee crisis like the nation has never known.

After two days, Matt Nagin showed up at the Superdome.

I know a lot of people want to ask him.

How could we get out of here, and why are these people holding us against our

will in here?

But it's not like you could really get to him.

What's the purpose of y 'all, like, walking in front of some, like, cameras

talking to the news about our situation if y 'all not about to stop all of this

right now?

You're supposed to be the one to reassure your people that they're going

okay.

They could have did that. They could have done better.

I am very concerned.

We have a shelter of last resort with about 15 ,000 to 20 ,000 people in it.

The Superdome's roof has been breached.

Food is starting to become an issue.

Generators are failing.

If we could evacuate, we would. The problem we're having is we do not have

transport vehicles to handle that.

We need all the help we can, and I would love to have the president's help.

Air Force One.

Remote 48, Air Force One flying over Super Bowl.

It's Air Force One.

The president of the United States.

Two days after the storm, he left vacation.

Today in Air Force One, President Bush flew over the disaster zone that Katrina

has left behind.

He was on his way back to Washington after cutting short his holiday as it

became clear that hundreds of his people are dead. Hundreds of thousands more

are homeless.

There are pictures of President Bush looking very, very concerned as he kind

you know, sternly looks out the window from his airplane.

His aides say the president looked grim and his fists were clenched as he looked

at the damage.

Can you talk about George Bush?

I could, but I ain't seen him. Shit. He flew over 35 ,000 feet, looked out the

window and said, damn, that shit looked bad.

Then he kept going.

The people in the affected regions expect the federal government to work

the state government and local government with an effective response.

I have directed Secretary of Homeland Security Mike Chertoff to chair a

-level task force.

We are extremely pleased with the response that every element of the

government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy.

It takes logistics to solve the freaking problem.

And none of those fucking politicians are trained to do that.

That's why you need assholes like me around.

When I learned the surge had breached the levee, I was the closest Army

commander to the problem. And there was some solace in the fact that I was a

Louisiana guy.

So Tuesday evening, I think it was around 7 o 'clock or 1900 military time,

when I was told that I would lead Task Force Katrina.

Okay.

Find me.

helicopter support.

So the next morning, I got operational command of the USS Baton and its

helicopters, and we flew in to New Orleans.

It was devastating.

We established our tactical command post right at the Superdome.

I sat with the mayor and told him we were here to assist.

He said, well, the general priority is to get the people out of here.

I said, okay, I need to go talk to the governor.

And the governor told me to my face on Wednesday, tell the president to send

everything he got we needed.

Because she was very concerned about security of the city.

Every disaster, security come up.

I said, imagine how pissed off those people would be.

If I brought troops to watch them, to focus on security as opposed to

them, I said, we need to get the evacuation done before we deploy troops.

Mike Brown had a headquarters adjacent to the governor's headquarters, and he

cordially showed me where my desk was.

He said, I want you right here so we could have unified command.

And I said, well, the problem's in the city.

You can have that fucking desk. I'm going.

after Hurricane Katrina, and the situation is getting more desperate by

minute.

Thousands are still stranded in misery.

We've been out here for three days.

We've been asking for help.

They've been telling us the bus is going to come. What the fuck is they doing?

Some people were still trying to go to the Superdome.

We came from the Superdome, past the Superdome, all the way to where the

breached at. We've been walking in deep water, everything.

But the police, they're telling you go to the convention center.

Somebody heard the bushes sending buses down there.

Buses are on the way to take those people from New Orleans to Houston.

So let's try the convention center.

It's about a two -mile walk.

When we made it to the convention center, there was nothing.

No means to get anybody anywhere. We have no medical attention.

The government hasn't sent us anything.

No kidding.

We didn't have any food, any water, anything.

They had dead bodies there.

We got to get away from here. We have no water.

And my brother and sister, it was real dehydrated. They needed to get something

to drink.

Everybody just was sitting around.

Waiting for help.

After 9 -11,

we gave the president unprecedented powers to take care of New York and

places. You mean to tell me that we can't figure out a way to authorize the

resources that we need?

Excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed.

Now, I will tell you this, and I give the president some credit on this.

He sent one John Wayne dude down here that could get some stuff done, and his

name is General Honoré.

Louisiana had a contingency contract for buses to come in, and when the city

flooded, everything...

Stop until we could get a sense of where buses could come in and where they

could pick people up.

So it was taking time to get the buses and the aircraft to float.

I talked to the governor. I said, well, you got a lot of school buses.

I remember telling me, well, some of the parishes still have schools. I said,

well, close the schools.

Some of the parishes gave up their buses but didn't send their drivers in

because of fear.

Because what they were hearing on the news was New Orleans is out of control.

People are standing around.

Well, all they wanted to do was get their ass out of the city.

15 ,000 people in the city's convention center alone.

Can you do anything to help these people? We have people coming to help.

Who's coming?

How many days before your operation finds these people, gets them out of

Well, first let me tell you, there have been deliveries of food, water, and

medical supplies to the Superdome, and that's happened.

almost from the very beginning. But this is the convention center. These are

people who are not allowed inside the Superdome.

I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who

don't have food and water.

So you're not telling me you just learned that the folks at the convention

center didn't have food and water until today, are you?

Paula, people who were unable or chose not to evacuate, those people have

suddenly appeared.

Is that fair to blame the victims, many of whom tell us they had no way out?

We tried to cross the Geno Bridge to get to the West Bank, but once you got up

there, the police turned you back around and told you to go back to the

convention center. We couldn't go across the river.

They were met by a line of armed Gretna policemen who fired shotguns over their

heads and turned them back.

Police arrested this desperate family who'd stolen a car, saying they just

wanted out.

Some people just started to go to the garage and high -wire your cars and get

out of there and take their family.

And my dad, I remember, he didn't know how to high -wire your car, you know.

So I pulled my mom to the side and I said, Mom, just tell me or we're going

die.

I just couldn't believe, you know, my country. The world just keep moving and

just, we're stuck.

Is anybody going to come help us? What's the problem? Why?

I felt lost. You know, I felt like I was never going to make it out.

We seen that the water wasn't rising anymore.

Now, my grandmother suggested that we go back to our original house.

And we got back to the house.

The men, they went out into the water to go, like, get in stores to get, like,

supplies, food.

People said they got to get what they can get because people running out of

food, people running out of water. Well, they're giving us food. Thank the Lord

for that.

As you know, we're getting reports that perhaps the death toll will go into the

thousands. Well, I think the death toll may go into the thousands, and I don't

make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate.

I'm not going to sit here and second guess why or why not the city didn't

buses available.

I'm not asking you, Mr. Brown, why the city didn't have buses available.

I'm asking you why you didn't have National Guards in there with trucks to

them out there. Why you haven't done it to this day.

Where is the aid? It's the question people keep asking us on camera.

Brian, it's an absolutely fair question. And I got to tell you from the bottom

of my heart how sad I feel for those people. The federal government just

about those people today.

And I've got to tell you, we are moving heaven and earth to give pallets of food

and water to those people.

I've watched all day long the stories of the people who are causing trouble, who

are, you know, screaming and yelling about things and just being thugs.

Try to get y 'all some water, bro.

There will be 30 ,000 National Guard troops in New Orleans.

I am going to take control of that, and we are going to make certain that this

city is safe.

I think officials were more than happy to move off of their incompetence to the

unruly folks here are out of control. And you know what we do well? We do

control. The police will manage it. We're coming in. We've got guns.

Drop it!

Drop it!

I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We redirected

all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets.

They were dead tired from saving people.

TV news loves a crime story more than almost anything else. So the idea that

would turn to covering crime pretty quickly didn't surprise me.

We all did it, me included.

I bet. All right. Thanks, Suzanne.

Well, as New Orleans struggles with the devastation, authorities must contend

with yet another problem, restoring order in a city that's now ravaged by

widespread looting. But it was also how they were framed. This is a picture

we'll show you right here, and it shows a black man, and the caption underneath

it says this, a young man walks through chest -deep water after looting a

grocery store.

And then you have this picture that shows two white people, two residents

through chest -deep water after finding bread and soda.

They were literally doing the exact same thing.

For many, it's the only way to get drinking water or food.

But for others, it's high crime. Some people stole

guns and used them to break into other stores.

By Thursday, we had gotten a few thousand people out of the Superdome and

started to flow.

I just thank God for living, baby. Thank God for the people that's helping us.

That didn't last long.

Because when the scene meets your perception, a lot of black people, a lot

poor black people, you got to be scared of them. They got to be doing something

wrong. Chaos reigned at the Superdome and fights broke out as thousands

inside and outside, frantically awaiting bus transportation.

A few busloads did make it out, but the operation shut down when someone shot at

rescue helicopters.

When that hit the news.

I got a call from the White House, and the White House said, if there are

snipers in the city, the president may take the city over.

I said, no, there's no snipers here. They said, well, go verify that.

Well, guess what?

People would see a helicopter flying, and they were isolated.

And they take the shotgun, shoot it in the air, think they'd get the helicopter

attention. Again, reality from what we see on TV.

Reporter from our affiliate station WDSU, Ed Reams, said the unrest is so

that his boss ordered him to leave the city.

He said the looting was starting to get so out of control, our general manager

is fearing for our lives.

Matter of fact, I had to make a call to my friend, the governor. She had done a

news conference.

and said that she's ordered a National Guard going in tomorrow to shoot, to

if somebody's looting.

These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do

so. We will do what it takes to bring law and order. This is not a time or a

place for any of that behavior, and I am just furious. This is intolerant. So I

called her up and said, Governor, you don't want to ever tell your people to

shoot your people.

We struggle if people go and lose stores and they're bringing us the juices and

eggs, they're about to kill us. Then we're going to have nothing. We feed the

church. Tell you, if you stood there from Saturday and it's now Thursday and

you're still waiting on a fucking bus, I'm not sure if you call that looting

when people go in the store to get food and water. Everybody going to go into

survival mode. Should police be focusing on the looters at this point? We would

later learn when they would examine crime statistics in the city that

the narrative of like, oh my God, crime is out of control and now police have to

patrol the streets.

It just wasn't accurate.

But people are armed, and so there was a lot of a sense of, I'm going to go and

protect my home.

Some people have taken the law into their own hands.

They're right down there stealing boats, breaking in our store here.

There was so much misinformation and hysteria. It literally led to people

getting shot.

One of my neighbors told me that they're evacuating people at the ferry.

from the LJS Point.

And that was an area that I wasn't too familiar with.

I didn't really make none of it. I just kept walking.

Before you know it, I was on the ground.

I didn't even know what hit me.

But now I'm kind of, like, snapping out of it a little bit.

And I see a guy with a shotgun in his hand.

I don't even know where he came from.

And he let off another shot.

Now I hit the ground again and stumbled to the corner on the next block.

And I came across a couple black people who was living in the area.

From there to West Jeff Hospital.

This hospital typically gets one or two gunshot victims over a 30 -day period.

But in just a few days following Katrina... Six to ten.

So that's pretty unusual. Yes.

It was after the fact that I started hearing these stories about

Algiers Point.

Algiers Point is not a pushy community.

A few white guys.

was shooting at people or shooting at black people.

We shot them.

They were looters. It was great.

It was like pheasant season in South Dakota.

If it moved, you shot it.

Later, the FBI got involved in all of that because, of course,

it was a hate crime.

Federal prosecutors say 56 -year -old Roland Bourgeois Jr.

fired a shotgun at three black men who were trying to evacuate.

Reports say he and others discussed shooting black people and defending

Point from outsiders.

He pled guilty under a plea agreement and faces up to 10 years in prison.

Right now, when I think about that story, it makes me mad. You know what I

We all in this together.

Like, it's a common thing. We trying to evacuate.

You know what I'm saying?

Pull a shotgun in, you know, and you shoot me?

We're not doing anything wrong. We're not looting or we're not doing, you

none of that stuff.

We're trying to get to the ferry.

Today, a full four days after the storm hit, more federal aid finally started

arriving in the area.

The National Guard also brought their guns and are under orders to take back

violent streets of the city.

Thousands of storm victims remain stranded without food or water and no

go. And at the same time, looting, carjacking and other violence goes on,

even rescuers being attacked.

President Bush has been in Mobile, Alabama for about the last 10 or 15

to get a firsthand look at what the hurricane did and what the government is

doing to help.

Since Monday, we've made progress.

We've made little progress every day. But we're told at this point he may only

tour New Orleans by helicopter.

This is dangerous territory, and a decision has not yet been made, frankly,

to whether it is safe. We are going to restore order in the city of New

And the federal government, John, is big and it's massive and we're going to do

it. And, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

The FEMA director is working 24 hours a day.

Despite the firestorm of criticism, President Bush is standing by his man at

FEMA. No one knew who Michael Brown was until the president said, you're doing a

heck of a job, Brownie.

So then I think people said, well, who is Brownie? This was his biggest job

before joining FEMA.

commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association.

Association officials tell NBC News that Brown resigned under pressure from the

horse show job, and that many who worked with him were stunned when he became

director of FEMA.

It's rather interesting. You had two Republican governors there, both of whom

said the federal government is doing a great job, very much in contrast to the

statements coming out of New Orleans.

When the National Guard was there at the convention center, they just had their

rifles pointed down at us.

I felt like we were treated as criminals.

As the days went on, the tensions was getting really high in the Superdome.

Something happened where the National Guard fired around.

We knew everybody ducked, and we knew everybody started charging and running,

because I was one of them. With that happening, this guy named

Redio, he was like, man, we got to come together.

So next thing you know, started marching and singing.

And I'm singing with them.

And it felt good.

It's like just for a few minutes, we was able to erase what we was going

through.

Next thing you know, it changed drastically.

I once was lost, now I'm found, like we was lost.

I was waiting to be found.

I

think

I'm one of the first people, I say, to escape, to get out of there, because

there are too many people to pay attention to.

We slept on the floor in the convention center probably about four days, I want

to say.

So we just started walking, and we saw a lady with an RTA bus.

I ran and ran to that bus.

She said she worked for the RTA company, and she took a bus from her job.

We just was riding and riding until we wind up in Lafayette.

The state has opened up the Cajun Dome down in Lafayette. Apparently there is 6

,000 evacuees there.

I remember walking to the Cajun Dome with my family. They gave us some

a shower, food, and things like that.

We just was lost, lost everything.

Once you get out of danger, now you're glued to the TV to see who's left

That was me.

I was thinking about those people.

This is a city built on the coast in an area that has hurricanes in it, that is

built below sea levels, and that is a soup bowl.

People have talked for years about, you know, whether it makes sense to have a

city like that.

Well, there you have it.

New Orleans is to blame for existing.

There are, of course, five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining,

depression, and acceptance. The White House has denial covered. So most

celebrities moved right along to anger.

Like this moment from NBC's Benefit Telephone, where Mike Myers was

mismatched with rapper Kanye West.

See if you can figure out which one of them went off script.

The destruction of the spirit of the people of southern Louisiana and

Mississippi may end up being the most tragic loss of all.

George Bush doesn't care about black people.

When he said that, it almost felt like relief, like, man, somebody spoke on it.

We already realized a lot of the people that could help are at war right now,

fighting another way, and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us.

Help finally arrived. Military helicopters.

This family was among the first aboard.

but not without getting frisked first.

Even if you are visually impaired, on a minimal

scale, you could see that shit.

If you're a one -pass -eye fucking pirate, you can look and see that this

was racial.

Your troops that are coming in, they've been hearing and watching the news, and

there's a perception that there's danger in New Orleans.

That's the perception we fought the whole fucking time.

And the mission of the military is to defend the people of the United States.

We're going to treat people with respect, and we're going to get them out

goddamn city.

What I learned in my military training is when you're in the front of the

camera, you're talking to the American people.

And much of that is to push aside the bullshit.

So I went on TV.

We went with him all day yesterday throughout New Orleans for about 20

does not want this to look like Iraq. He says this is a humanitarian

relief mission.

And I just told him, put your goddamn guns down.

I mean, I'm a goddamn lieutenant general. You a sergeant, a captain, put

fucking guns down.

And he listened.

And the police did the same thing.

People hadn't seen an Army commander operate in the U .S.

in modern TV time.

It really felt like, okay, we're on the next phase

now. And it's going to be a good phase because this guy seems to know what the

hell he's doing.

Have the guys put it on the ground and send these trucks back for another load.

Yes, sir.

What you see in New Orleans is really a combination of both hope and misery.

When

it

was time for the rest of the evacuation, five or six days, After the storm,

the people are going to come through the hallway that connected the Hyatt

to New Orleans Center and then to the Dome.

All I could think of was all the horror stories I'd been hearing about what was

going on in the Dome. Lack of water, lack of food, folks going crazy,

and all these things going on.

Make one single line and keep your family members together.

Then they opened the door.

It looked like the other concentration camps where human beings were just

treated really badly, inhuman.

That's the look of 80 % of the folks who came out of that shell shot,

eyes wide open.

And to be quite honest, I haven't probably done this in 20 years,

I don't live my life looking in the rearview mirror, but it still kind of

with you.

And that was probably the hardest part.

What happened is...

The original flow group that was at the Superdome, most of those people

moved. Then we had more people come in.

Right. And then we got the convention center, which is, we got the outside

center. How many of you think we moved there?

Oh, I had that number.

This morning at 4 o 'clock, it was 15 ,000.

It's now been six days since Katrina hit, and this morning the Superdome and

Convention Center are nearly empty.

But Louisiana State Police continue to field hundreds of calls from people

trapped in attics, and New Orleans officials say 40 ,000 people may still

the city.

time in this game we might be losing 50 to nothing but I'm gonna focus on this

next half there's still people hiding in the top of the houses if we could see

to see them we'll go to them at

this

point I'm still in a minor shock I'm like okay how am I gonna how are we

get out of here Everybody felt devastated.

We felt, you know, tired, hungry.

People just get aggravated.

You know, being in one, closing one every one small spot.

We prayed together.

You know, we tried to read books. Anything just to keep our mind off of

actually going on outside.

Our neighbors, they had like a little garage.

So I got up there.

We had a big sign. We just wrote help on it.

They saw my son.

We got to the lakefront airport.

We're broken.

We smell like shit and piss.

I ain't take a bath in six or seven days.

There's a thousand and something freaking people packed in the airport.

In New Orleans, more evacuees are heading out, ready to somehow,

start over.

We get to San Antonio.

I fell to my knees and I just started crying.

the gate, if you will, a breach in Phyllis happened.

You know, that was my levee breach. It was a Phyllis breach.

And if you have not yet registered, may you need to do so to receive benefits.

No registration equals no help.

Of the hundreds of thousands of evacuees from the hurricane zone, most have gone

to Texas, and many are desperate to contact missing relatives.

At this point, we're not able to locate my family. Nobody.

We're just going from shelter to shelter, holding up poster boards with

grandmother's name on it.

Have you seen checking in with registries?

Red Cross is registering evacuees at shelters so family members across the

country can call and find out where their loved ones are.

We called and we called and we called.

1 -877 - loved ones just like it sounds l -o -v -e -d the number one and s

you start to think did they make it out did they drown are they one of those

bodies that's floating in the water that they're showing on tv there

are bodies floating in the water yes and to people who say you got to move

faster you got to do more when are you going to get that cleaned up you say

Well, right now, I could either have these troops go do this

or move the living.

I think it may have been another two or three days before my phone rang.

They were in San Antonio.

Ladies and gentlemen, my brother just walked up to us, right up in here, just

reunited himself with us. And I just thank God for that. Come on, man,

just go ahead on and just get up. Get up here.

You heard me.

I am here to be with your brother right now.

I am here to be with him.

They can't pick this up.

Everybody's mind just went, you know, we can actually inhale, exhale.

You know, it was a sense of, all right, we're good now, but what's the next

plan? We still didn't know what was going on.

Your evacuation plan, obviously in hindsight, was disastrous.

You bear the brunt of the blame for some of this, a large chunk of it.

Look, I'll take whatever responsibility that I have to take.

You tell me what else we could have done. What has Secretary Chertoff

you? What has Donald Rumsfeld given you and promised you? Look, I've gotten

promises to...

I can't stand anymore promises. I don't want to hear any more promises. I want

to see stuff done.

More than 1 ,800 people died during Hurricane Katrina in the days following

devastating storm.

More were displaced, many never to return, and entire communities lay in

What assurance can you give refugees if they'll ever be able to come back,

especially people in poor areas? First of all, they're not refugees. They're

citizens of the city of New Orleans.

Through the work of FEMA, we're going to rebuild this city.

Through the work of the federal government, through the work of the

this city and the state, we're going to rebuild this city, and they will have a

great city to come back home to.

Real talk, man.

It's hard to even come here before the levees broke.

This spot, it was cool for us. We was able to chill, and he loved it here.

I used to ride the hollies up and down the street, or sometimes I might go on

the levee.

I'd come inside and mainly be with my grandmother and just be around her while

she cook.

So it was just like this.

Family good vibes, man. Family good vibes.

Yeah, a lot of good times, man.

A lot of good people, a lot of barbecues, a lot of crab balls, a lot of

balls.

I've stood with hundreds of people whose houses were in the water.

People I met during Katrina and years after.

Those who survive recovery, no recovery is a living hell.

Lower Ninth is still struggling to rebuild five years after the storm.

I have flashes.

It's like flashes that go off, like memories, like a spot that just, like I

see all those faces.

The elderly lady.

The little kid that I was close to.

This veteran or this man, I can remember the conversations.

What are they telling you 10 years later?

There's something washed away in the storm that they can never get back.

The soul was definitely ripped apart from this neighborhood.

I stayed out here many years, but I had to move away because it's just

overwhelming.

20 years later, the shit is still real.

That's what makes it a disaster.