The most telling moment in this whole narrative is Bush's ultimatum on Friday, four days into the disaster, that he will send Federal troops only if they and the National Guard answer directly to the White House — i.e., the White House is to take direct and absolute military control of the city. This, in a democracy. Because of Federal inaction — indeed, Federal interference with state, local, and private relief efforts — the situation had deteriorated to the point where Bush's ultimatum amounted to a gun to their heads:
[NPR's MELISSA] BLOCK: Three days before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, public officials knew that the potential for a disaster was great. For years, emergency agencies had been planning how to respond before and after precisely this kind of emergency. [...]
[NPR's DANIEL] ZWERDLING: Now it's Friday, one day later. It's 1 PM, and Walter Maestri gets a troubling call. Maestri runs the Emergency Management Center in Jefferson Parish. The parish surrounds New Orleans on three sides. It has a bigger population than the city. And when Maestri answers the phone, he's talking to the man who runs the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
Mr. WALTER MAESTRI (Emergency Management Center, Jefferson Parish): Max Mayfield. And Max said to me, `Walter, I just want to alert you that a couple of the models are heading this thing right to New Orleans, and I think this thing is going to seriously intensify. You need to be ready.' At that time, the track was going up the west coast of Florida, so I said to Max, `Are you kidding me?' And he said, `No, Walt, this is real.
ZWERDLING: Maestri says he immediately rounds up his staff, and they gather in their war room surrounded by maps. Their building looks like a concrete fortress. [...]
ZWERDLING: Meanwhile, a scientist named Joe Suhayda is staring at his home computer 75 miles away in Baton Rouge. Suhayda ran a research center until a few years ago at Louisiana State University. Back in the 1990s, he and his staff developed the first computer models that showed how a Category 4 or 5 hurricane could destroy New Orleans. But on this particular Friday, Suhayda is tracking Katrina on the Web. He says he's watching his models come to life, and he feels sick.
Mr. JOE SUHAYDA (Scientist): Because all the conditions necessary to bring the flooding into the city were, at that point in time, being met. I mean, it was just as though it was following a script.
ZWERDLING: Walter Maestri says government officials have studied that script for years. They've held conferences where they've discussed how all New Orleans could be flooded, and up to 40,000 people could die. They've written hundreds of pages of manuals that spell out which local and state and federal agencies will do what when the monster storm hits. They keep running hurricane exercises to practice. [...]
ZWERDLING: Max Mayfield is also warning officials in the nation's capital. He briefs FEMA headquarters in a teleconference, so he can see decision-makers on the screen. [NPR doesn't say it, but Mayfield also briefed President Bush himself at his ranch in Crawford, by videoconference.] [...]
SULLIVAN: On Saturday, the Louisiana Guard calls up 4,000 troops, every Guardsman in the state. But almost half of its force is out of the state and out of the country. Three thousand Louisiana Guard troops are in Iraq, along with most of Louisiana's heavy equipment, including its watercraft, high-water vehicles and generators. Lieutenant Colonel Schneider says the troops fan out to staging areas across the state. According to the emergency plan, they're to wait there until the storm passes. Their job is to distribute supplies and maintain order. The plan anticipates there might be some looting and violence. [...]
SULLIVAN: That same Saturday, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco says the storm will be so big that state and local governments won't be able to handle it. She asks President Bush to declare a state of emergency. Later that day, he does.
The next day, on Sunday, at 9:30 AM, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issues the first ever mandatory evacuation in the city's history. [...]
ZWERDLING: The state's deputy director of emergency planning, Jeff Smith, says almost one million people do leave. [...]
SULLIVAN: As people pour out of southern Louisiana, others say they are ready to come in. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson calls the governor of Louisiana to offer his National Guard troops. That's according to Richardson's spokesman, Paul Shipley.
Mr. PAUL SHIPLEY (Spokesman for New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson): We had offered our assistance and told Governor Blanco and her people that we'd be ready to help, and we had already put our National Guard on standby.
SULLIVAN: And on this Sunday, Lieutenant Colonel Pete Schneider at the Louisiana National Guard knows they need the extra help.
Lt. Col. SCHNEIDER: `We need everything you got, you know. We need the full support of the federal government for this hurricane.' And we still didn't have the final concept of what we were dealing with.
SULLIVAN: All weekend long, key officials coordinate their disaster plans in almost constant conference calls. There are staff members for more than 40 state and federal agencies camped in one room at the state's emergency planning center in Baton Rouge. FEMA's there. They're supposed to make sure that the food gets to hurricane survivors. The US Army Corps of Engineers is in the room. They're in charge of water and structural damage. The National Guard is at the center. They're supposed to provide the troops and trucks and boats to forge through the flood. And they're all on the line with local managers like Walter Maestri to confirm that they'll move in as soon as the hurricane passes by.
Mr. MAESTRI: All day Saturday and all day Sunday and all day Monday, until the winds got so high that the phone lines blew down, we were in constant contact. Every two to three hours, we were talking. [...]
SULLIVAN: Both the state and city emergency plans outline how to overcome communication problems. But according to the plans, officials appear to have assumed that at least one mode of communication would work. If the landlines fail, use cell phones. If the cell phones fail, an emergency land hot line would be set up. Neither took into account what actually happened.
On Monday, soon after Katrina hit, landlines are inoperable. Cell phone towers topple over. Some are underwater. And power isn't available to recharge handheld or ham radios. The few generators that could have recharged them are in Iraq or at command centers as far away as Baton Rouge. Officers in the field use their battery-powered radios to communicate short distances among themselves, but several hours later, the batteries are dead. State Police Lieutenant Lawrence McLeary.
Lt. McLEARY: People had to, you know, stay in groups and 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.
LAURA SULLIVAN: As the sun comes up Tuesday morning, rescuers are overwhelmed by thousands of people calling out to them for help, trapped inside their attics, running out of air. That morning, at a press conference, William Lokey, chief coordinator for FEMA from Washington, doesn't seem to realize that two failed levees are flooding the city.
Mr. WILLIAM LOKEY (Chief Coordinator, FEMA): I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening.
SULLIVAN: But that's exactly what is happening. For the next 12 hours, across the below-sea-level city, the water keeps rising. [...]
DANIEL ZWERDLING: That same morning, Walter Maestri follows the disaster plan to rush help to Jefferson Parish. He gets on his shortwave radio, and he calls the emergency command center in Baton Rouge. He talks with FEMA and the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. [...]
Mr. MAESTRI: ...They said they would place the orders and that they should be here within 12 to 36 hours. That's Tuesday morning.
ZWERDLING: And Mayor Nagin says he's confident that help is about to pour into New Orleans. He says an official at FEMA has just briefed him.
Mayor RAY NAGIN (New Orleans): We have the highest levels of government in the United States, including the president of the United States, focused on this issue and ready to send resources. They have told us to put together your wish lists. [...]
ZWERDLING: Now it's Wednesday afternoon. Local officials like Walter Maestri say they haven't seen the food or water or medical supplies that state and federal officials promised.
Mr. MAESTRI: You know, we're hearing all kinds of excuses. We're hearing all kinds of rationales that `We don't step in until the locals ask.' Well, you know, the asking was going on.
SULLIVAN: While Maestri is waiting for supplies, FEMA contractors like Dan Wessel are trying to send them. Wessel owns Cool Express of Wisconsin, one of the main companies under contract by FEMA to bring ice and water to the area. First, he says, his fleet waits two days for FEMA to give the go-ahead. Then, he says, FEMA sends the deliveries to the wrong place.
Mr. DAN WESSEL (Owner, Cool Express): Our first trucks got staged in Montgomery, Alabama. The second trucks, second wave, got staged in Dallas, Texas.
SULLIVAN: When they are finally redirected to Louisiana and other areas that actually need supplies, there is no one around to greet the trucks or distribute the ice and water.
Mr. WESSEL: We are told to go to a certain location. We get there. There's nobody there. We don't know what to do. So it was my driver fending for himself. But pretty well what they did is they opened up the doors and let people take the water and ice.
ZWERDLING: By Thursday, there seems to be a total disconnect between what's going on on the ground and what officials in Washington say is happening on the ground. That morning, Mayor Nagin goes on local radio.
Mayor NAGIN: I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country, and get that (censored) moving to New Orleans.
ZWERDLING: Meanwhile, top officials in the Bush administration are painting a different picture. In fact, the secretary of Homeland Security sounds like he doesn't know what's been going on at the convention center in New Orleans for the past two days. Here's Michael Chertoff on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
Secretary MICHAEL CHERTOFF (Department of Homeland Security): I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water.
SULLIVAN: It's Friday, four days since Katrina hit. Everybody in the region is clamoring for the government to send in troops. On this day, President Bush makes his first visit to New Orleans. He calls Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco to a meeting aboard Air Force One on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong Airport. According to city, state and federal officials, the president tells the governor he will send the troops, but only if they and the National Guard answer to the White House. Governor Blanco says she needs 24 hours to think about it.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard reported on Meet the Press that FEMA came in and cut their emergency communication lines. He then had the Sheriff reconnect the lines and post armed guards to protect them.
Video here:
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