- 7 hours ago
Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time - Season 1 Episode 3 -
A Desperate Place
A Desperate Place
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😹
FunTranscript
00:11Communities, homes, and lives all along the Gulf Coast have been shattered and destroyed.
00:17The mayor of New Orleans said that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people in the city are dead.
00:22Bodies are being left floating in the floodwaters. The emphasis is all on rescuing the stranded.
00:30We're told that about 100,000 people are still in this city with no way to get out.
00:34Leaving residents to hold up desperate messages for whoever might be watching from above.
00:48After all the panic in the attic, we found an old cell phone that still had some power.
00:58I was like, oh my God.
01:01I called 911.
01:04They said, we're going to send someone over to rescue you guys.
01:08And maybe about five hours after that, a boat came.
01:15To the interstate, offload, I'll come right back.
01:17It won't take me long.
01:18So, he drove us toward interstate 10.
01:24And on the way to the bridge, there was a baby, hair freshly combed, that was in the water.
01:39And she was deceased, but I so wanted to get this baby out the water.
01:44And I told the guy that was driving the boat, I said, there's a baby right there.
01:50So, let me get the baby.
01:54And I'll take her to someone on the bridge, and maybe we can find out who her parents is.
01:59You know, he said, that baby's gone.
02:02She's deceased.
02:03And I was like, anyway, just let me get her, you know, out the water.
02:07And I'll take her to the bridge.
02:09And maybe, you know, the ambulance or something up there is waiting.
02:12And they can take her, and they can identify her.
02:18And he took a stick or some kind of board he had in the boat, and he pushed the baby
02:29away.
02:31He was like, ma'am, we're worried about the living, not the dead right now.
02:36We have to, we have to get the living.
02:45We have to get the living.
02:56Wednesday was already becoming a particularly bad day.
03:01Our first responders were exhausted from dealing with one crisis after another.
03:08And by that point, FEMA had a full 24 hours to take action on that list of our needs.
03:17But there was still no cavalry, no help.
03:20And so we felt as if FEMA was maybe not the right organization for what we were dealing with throughout
03:30the city of New Orleans.
03:32Because we knew that the deterioration was quickly getting worse.
03:36And people needed to get out today.
03:48The Superdome, which was the shelter of last resort, has become the last place anyone wants to be.
03:54Inside, the toilets and air conditioning are broken.
03:57She just passed out here.
04:00They got a disease in there.
04:02They got dead bodies.
04:04The bathrooms, we haven't used it since like Tuesday.
04:08And then when you have to really use it, you have to use it almost anywhere.
04:21It was unbearable.
04:24So a lot of us started going around gate to gate and talking to the different National Guard members and,
04:30you know, trying to see if they'll let us out.
04:32And they would say, we'll go down to that gate.
04:34And he wouldn't let us out.
04:35We'll go down to the next gate.
04:36They wouldn't let us out.
04:37We'll go to another gate.
04:38They wouldn't let us out.
04:41But then all of a sudden, somebody that was with my group just started checking the gate like, yeah, man,
04:47let us out here.
04:47We're getting, you know, such and such and this.
04:49And he just started saying a whole bunch of stuff.
04:51And that's when the National Guard pulled the M-16 out.
04:54And he said, y'all better go down that way.
04:58Go, go, go.
05:04It's kind of like they didn't really work with us.
05:08They was rotating different groups of National Guard members.
05:12But nobody still would say who was in charge.
05:17In a disaster, the First Army collaborates with the National Guard.
05:23But Louisiana was not my assigned area when Katrina hit.
05:28The general that was actually in charge of Louisiana, he was still in his headquarters in San Antonio.
05:34So when he told the Pentagon I was in Mississippi, they said, get that general in New Orleans.
05:42And that's how I ended up designated by the president to be the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina,
05:48which put me in charge of coordinating the response with FEMA.
05:54When I arrived at the Superdome, it was like thousands of eyes who were looking at me.
06:01And my first thought was, we've got to get these people out of here.
06:07So General Honore comes in, where the mayor and I were.
06:11Come on in, General.
06:13How you doing?
06:14I'm hanging in there, man. How are you?
06:16We had FEMA, the city, and emergency personnel represented.
06:21And everyone is sharing with him what we need.
06:25But the FEMA representative interjects to say, we can't do this.
06:31We will do that.
06:33This we have to do by the book.
06:35We're going to do that, but it takes time.
06:38General Honore at this point had had enough.
06:41And he says, excuse me, FEMA.
06:44Before you speak, you need some fucking success.
06:50So I said, all right, what is the priority?
06:54The mayor said, we need to get food and water.
06:56We need to save these people.
06:58Okay?
07:00And we've got to evacuate the city.
07:02Same thought I had.
07:05By this point, we had already asked federal and state officials for buses to transport people out of the city.
07:14They knew buses were one of our top priorities.
07:19So we expected that the buses would be arriving later that day.
07:29So after that meeting with the mayor, I said, well, I need to go check in with the governor in
07:33Baton Rouge because they had trouble talking to each other.
07:37Not only politically, but the lines were down.
07:43There is no comms.
07:45And since the loudspeaker system didn't work, I walked around to the 30,000 people in the Superdome to let
07:53them know we're working on it.
07:54I think it's going to be buses and we're going to bring it.
07:56I don't know how it's all going to work, but buses are coming.
08:01It did uplift our spirits.
08:04And so I was watching people settle beefs and shaking hands, you know what I mean?
08:10The place started getting real trashy.
08:12So a lot of the teenagers, they started coming together and they started cleaning up.
08:21There was a young man pushing around one of those hotel luggage carts with a person laying on it.
08:28And he said, hey, this lady just passed out.
08:31What do you want me to do with her?
08:32And she was okay, and she was conscious, but she was clearly overheated.
08:37And I said, can you roll her to the medical center?
08:41It's right down there.
08:42And so he took it, and he came back about 10 minutes later.
08:45He's like, you want me to keep doing this if I see stuff or I need people?
08:48And I was like, please do.
08:50He loved that he had a role.
08:53The risk of allowing that young man to help push people to the medical arena was this much.
09:01The impact of other people seeing how he was helping was colossal.
09:20The National Guard chaplain would talk to us, and he'll say, what are your concerns right now?
09:27What are you thinking?
09:28And people just, you know, would say, my loved ones.
09:32I know, my loved ones.
09:34Look, one of the things we want to focus in on is, as bad as it is, we can rebuild
09:40the house.
09:41I have no home to go to either.
09:43Everything I have has been destroyed.
09:45I'm wearing what I have.
09:47So we're all on the same boat.
09:49But you know what?
09:51All of my family is okay.
09:53And that is important.
09:58New Orleans is a city that pray.
10:01And I thought he did a great job.
10:03And he, as a man of God, stood up there and he spoke to us and he made us feel
10:07better.
10:08Even though we are uncomfortable, we give faith that God sent this angel down to comfort us.
10:18A lot of people started feeling like, you know, now we're chosen at this point in time.
10:25Amen.
10:26Amen.
10:27We're in this thing together.
10:29And before we get it even worse, we're going to get out of here.
10:42I've called for the president.
10:44I'm expecting him to call me back anytime soon.
10:46But I've asked the president to give us all the resource possible today.
10:52We need his help today.
10:56Time is of the essence.
10:58It's critical that we move quickly and begin to stabilize our situation.
11:07We are live on top of the Causeway Bridge over Interstate 10, where the scene behind me here is just
11:13unbelievable.
11:15It is a massive refugee camp filled with thousands and thousands of people waiting for a ride out of the
11:22city.
11:23They have been rescued from...
11:24We went up onto the Interstate Bridge on Wednesday.
11:27My sister and the people we were with decided we were going to go as far down as we could
11:31go.
11:32So we walked miles away from my house, hoping to cross into Algiers because it wasn't wet over on the
11:40West Bank.
11:43We got to where we could look at the Superdome and the National Guard was driving past us.
11:50And it became very apparent that they weren't going to worry about us until the last minute.
11:57It was really stressful because there were a lot of seniors and kids.
12:01And we were almost in 100 degree temperatures on concrete.
12:06But there was no access to water.
12:09That's the thing that really gets me because you can survive without food for a couple of days, but you
12:14have to have the water.
12:17You got a governor.
12:18What the fuck is they doing?
12:22Look at the people right here, bro.
12:25This ain't no game.
12:27This is serious.
12:28People's life is on stage.
12:33So it was unbearable.
12:35But then we noticed that some guys went down under the bridge to the Kentwood Water Company and they took
12:43trucks and they came up on the bridge with water.
12:46And this is the part that I was amazed at when they started distributing.
12:51The only thing they said was drink it, don't waste it because we don't know how long this will last
13:00or how long it'll be before we get out.
13:02So that's when I started noticing that you have to be very careful about media and what you read and
13:12what you see.
13:13I've watched all day long the stories of the people who are causing trouble, who are, you know, screaming and
13:19yelling about things and just being thugs.
13:23These are supposed to be the thugs that they talk about.
13:29They were the ones who went to the Circle Food Store, which is about a half a mile from where
13:35we were to get us dry food, dry clothing, because they had a clothing store inside of there, too.
13:41You know, you're not supposed to do that.
13:43I know we don't, but if we're badfooted and we're walking in the water, our feet is going to get
13:47cut.
13:49Most of the networks, live setups, weren't in those areas that were heavily flooded.
13:55They were generally in downtown, tethered on Canal Street, broadcasting live from satellite trucks.
14:00So if there's a shooting on Canal Street and there's looting, you just got to turn the camera there.
14:05That's easy sleazy.
14:06Hey, come back from over there.
14:08And you're done, you know, and that can lead your broadcast.
14:11The unrest is so bad that his boss ordered him to leave the city.
14:15He said the looting was starting to get so out of control, our general manager is fearing for our lives.
14:22As if emptying the store shelves wasn't enough, some decided to go one step further and take the shelves themselves.
14:30They're so busy with hauling out big racks full of food, they're not concerned about anybody else.
14:35They're just, I mean, they're...
14:36Everybody for themselves.
14:37Everybody for themselves.
14:38Everybody for themselves.
14:39I was dismayed watching the news, the way they depicted black folks who were living in New Orleans during Hurricane
14:49Katrina.
14:50It's like they didn't see us as regular people, law-abiding, church-going, hard-working people.
15:03It's just hard to believe this is reality.
15:05And yet people living in these conditions turn to, you know, in some cases turn to animals.
15:14It's much more difficult to get the full story and not just the headline.
15:23My news director always said, people come first, property comes second.
15:28And that's what we kept the focus on.
15:38Look, you had some stupid stuff that was going on, but the majority of this community was not
15:45people in chaos wanting to go out and just loot everything.
15:50There was people trying to survive as things got worse all over the city.
16:12So I flew to Baton Rouge, saw Governor Blanco.
16:15And she said, we've asked FEMA for buses.
16:18We don't know when they're going to come, General.
16:21But I'd appreciate it if you do what you can to help New Orleans get evacuated.
16:25I said, I got it, man.
16:30Shortly after that, I got a note that the FEMA director, Michael Brown, wanted to see me.
16:36General Honore has been working incredibly closely with FEMA and doing all the civil support stuff
16:42that we've asked him to do.
16:45So I went to his office.
16:46He was in a big, fancy mobile command headquarters in Baton Rouge.
16:51And he said, that's your desk right there.
16:53I want you right next to me.
16:55I said, I don't think so.
16:58I said, I'll put somebody in that desk, but the problem's in New Orleans.
17:02I can't solve it here.
17:05And he insisted that we have to have unity of command.
17:10I said, well, we can have that, but it won't be me.
17:15I've seen the eyes of those people in New Orleans.
17:17That's where I need to be.
17:19So I left.
17:23The situation in the Superdome was getting worse and worse and worse.
17:28So I sent a lot more emails to FEMA headquarters to alert them just how bad it was.
17:36Wednesday, August 31st, an email to Mike Brown.
17:41Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical.
17:45Here are some things you might not know.
17:47Hotels are kicking people out.
17:49Thousands gathering in the streets, hundreds still being rescued from homes.
17:54The dying patients at the disaster medical assistance team tent are being medevaced.
18:00Estimates are that many will die within hours.
18:04Plans developing for dome evacuation, but hotel situation is adding to the problem.
18:10Phone connectivity is impossible.
18:12More later.
18:15The tone of the entire building changed dramatically.
18:20And I found myself wondering how many unanswered questions is this group of people who are here,
18:27how much longer can they take this environment?
18:30That we're asking them just to hang in there with us.
18:32Hang in there, hang in there, hang in there.
18:33And I felt that, boy, if we make one false promise, we would lose their trust.
18:40Like, if I say to them, buses are going to be there today, and then the buses don't come,
18:46I think it'll all tip over.
18:48I felt that.
18:50So, it was very, very important to me that I didn't overcommit or overpromise anything.
18:54Because, again, it was a razor-thin level of trust between me and, probably, thousands of people who I talk
19:03to every day.
19:12From where we was at on the bridge, all the people that were looking for somewhere to go,
19:16they were saying, don't go by the Superdome because, you know, the Superdome trashed out.
19:22There's nowhere to go in there.
19:23You know, so they were like, well, go to the convention center because that's where, you know,
19:27that's where the shelter's supposed to be and that's where the bus is supposed to pick people up.
19:34My main focus was to get the kids to safety, and the little bitty babies, they can't really walk.
19:40So, I had one baby, and my brother had the other baby, and we got the other two little children,
19:44and we walked for miles.
19:48Because of the conditions in the Superdome and the Interstate 10 bridge,
19:52we started hearing that people were now spilling over into the convention center.
19:57So, we just worked straight through.
20:00I don't remember sleeping much at all.
20:02For days now, people have been rationing what little food and water they have, waiting for help.
20:07They say they feel like they've been abandoned by humanity.
20:10What's it been like here?
20:12It's been like hell.
20:13It's been like hell.
20:15We have people here, sick people, haven't had medicine in four days.
20:18We just worried about medication for my mom because she's almost out of the incident.
20:22My sister is going through a sick cell attack right now.
20:24We're trying to see what we can do to get some IV fluids to her.
20:28We're trying to keep the babies hydrated.
20:30And my little baby getting sick, he just keep crying in diarrhea, and he don't have no more milk or
20:35nothing.
20:36I've been crying for two days, and I try not to let him see me cry.
20:43What do you do as a reporter?
20:45Like, people are asking you for water, and like, I had a few bottles, and I gave it away, but
20:48like, I can't help them.
20:51And that was a sobering time for me because I realized that all the stuff that I wanted to do
20:57as a reporter,
20:58like, let's get the story, let's get great pictures, like, at that point, none of that mattered.
21:02When you're dealing with people's lives, like, they want to let their family know that they're alive.
21:09Ma, my grandma, one of y'all, if y'all out there, you heard me, and y'all hear you,
21:13son, just let me know y'all living, you heard me?
21:17Because I ain't seen y'all since Katrina hit, and I really miss him, y'all, you feel me?
21:21And I'm hurting, I'm hurting.
21:23See this body right here?
21:25That woman been dead since Tuesday.
21:28There's six bodies upstairs on the third floor, and another lady laying on the floor by the lady's bathroom dead.
21:35It's just terrible.
21:36It's an awful situation to have to live in.
21:41We went inside the convention center, and the only way that I can describe it, and I don't want to
21:46get into detail,
21:47is that it is the smell of human suffering.
21:52I couldn't stand the smell that's on myself.
21:54You know what I'm saying?
21:55I'm nasty, my shoes wet, everything wet.
21:58I don't have nothing.
22:01I felt embarrassed, you know, like I couldn't talk to nobody.
22:06And even though, you know, all the people out there, they was in the same predicament.
22:09So, you know, we all was like, you know, people who used to having stuff and having things and taking
22:15care of themselves,
22:16and they couldn't, you know, they felt the same way.
22:22I was totally, like, out of myself already.
22:24I just felt like I was just going to pass out and die at any time.
22:29But also, the kids didn't have no more food, and they was dehydrated, you know, their lips was turning white.
22:38So, through the shame and embarrassment and the guilt, the only thing I could do is just use the little
22:45strength.
22:45I got to try to get these children some help.
22:48So, when the media came out there with their cameras and all that, you know, I had my two little
22:52babies in my hand,
22:53and I just wasn't hollering on the camera.
22:55We didn't have no food.
22:57We didn't have no food.
22:58We don't have nothing here.
22:59If the police taken it out of the store, we didn't expect these people.
23:02Our children been out here for days.
23:04They don't have nothing to eat.
23:05We don't have no cold water.
23:06We don't have no food.
23:08We got babies that's hungry.
23:09Send people to get the bus out of here, folks.
23:12We hungry, we starving, we need help.
23:14We need medical attention.
23:17They got old people that's sick.
23:18They got people dying.
23:19I felt neglected.
23:20I felt like the city that we masked in all these years and paraded in with the second lines and,
23:28you know,
23:29worked in and built these regular houses and, you know, that they just let us down.
23:34Like, at this time, to them, it was like we wasn't even human no more.
23:40People still in New Orleans, if they looked to the sky, saw Air Force One, the president flying over for
23:46a personal look at the devastation.
23:48His plane was low just over the city skyline.
23:52I basically told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does
23:59not do it justice.
24:00And I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources.
24:06A lot of people suffered, and a lot of people suffered needlessly.
24:12If we had had the leader of the free world show up in New Orleans on Monday, instead of just
24:18flying over the city two days after the storm,
24:23we would have had a much different situation after Katrina.
24:28Powerful country as we are, and we can't take care of these people.
24:31They're out here all this time.
24:33Doesn't make sense.
24:34And I'm pissed.
24:43When I joined the police department, my aspirations were high.
24:49Then in 2002, I became superintendent of police.
24:53And in that position, I wanted to be always accessible to the media.
24:59And from a communication standpoint, the mayor told me any kind of cover-up wouldn't be tolerated.
25:07That stuck in my mind.
25:09I think I overthought it.
25:11I didn't want to hide anything from the people.
25:14And I was so dead set on not covering anything up that things that were reported to me, I reported
25:22them quickly without getting verification the way it would have been under normal circumstances.
25:27So when my tactical guys said that a sniper was shooting at our officers, I reported that a sniper was
25:39shooting at our police officers.
25:40And my captain and I were fighting for the snipers.
25:44We went from rescue to tactical almost instantaneous.
25:48They were shooting at us in a helicopter.
25:49They were shooting at my SWAT team.
25:51I mean, it was crazy.
25:53Well, that whole thing of people shooting at helicopters is a reflection of people who watch too much TV.
26:00They thought if they shot up, the helicopter would hear them or see them and come get them.
26:07I spoke to the police chief and I said, chief, where did you get this notion that there's snipers in
26:12the city?
26:13He said, I was in the helicopter general and they shot at us.
26:16Hmm.
26:17Did they hit the helicopter, chief?
26:19No.
26:19I said, why did you use the word sniper?
26:22Maybe from the military, the jargon and parlance for a sniper is different than the jargon and the parlance that
26:27we use.
26:28But when an unidentified person that we can't spot randomly shoots at police officers, in my opinion, I was a
26:35sniper.
26:36Maybe I shouldn't have used those words.
26:38In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have used those words.
26:40It was getting reported over and over again.
26:44And it took a life of its own.
26:46About the sniper fire.
26:48They were actually taking a sniper fire as they were trying to evacuate patients.
26:51I was there just about an hour and a half, two hours after that, looking at that same area.
26:56In fact, I didn't see any snipers myself.
26:59Big searchlights looking all around to make sure that there were no snipers that were going to attack us.
27:06Things became so much more difficult for us to do because of this fear.
27:11As simple as, where's the truck that's bringing all the new food?
27:17And the National Guard would go out and we'd find the truck that had been abandoned by the delivery driver
27:22who was told there were snipers all around the Superdome.
27:25They were shooting and killing all the delivery drivers.
27:27And all of that completely made up, but just made our jobs infinitely worse and more difficult.
27:34I over-reported things I should have verified.
27:38And I'm sorry I did that.
27:40Sir, a lot of respect to you tonight for what you have been going through.
27:44Seeing your men and women go through so much.
27:48When Katrina came, there was no school you could go to to deal with the worldwide media on a 24
27:56-7 basis.
27:57I was working off of one and a half to two hours sleep a day.
28:01I wasn't eating well.
28:03I had migraine headaches almost the entire time.
28:06And I had gotten to the point where I was around the media so much.
28:09It had so many cameras pointed on me.
28:11I actually forgot the cameras were around me.
28:16With communications being fragmented, some people were getting reports that a young lady was raped.
28:22And it was in proximity to me where my daughter was at.
28:26So by the time it got to me, it went from a young lady being raped to my daughter was
28:33raped.
28:34And when I thought my daughter was raped, it just, it tore me up.
28:39I need somebody to get me a cruise boat or some type of boat, a cruise ship or some kind
28:45of ship,
28:45so I can put my people in some comfort, so I can help the people.
28:49We have people who have lost their families and they have not gotten out of this fight.
28:54I didn't know where my daughter was at for two days and we endured.
28:56I'm so tired of this, but it's finally almost over.
29:00That's it. I don't talk no more.
29:02During Katrina, the first responders were also victims.
29:07Their homes are gone.
29:08Their families were moving from place to place to try to survive.
29:13So, when your first responders are also victims, it changed the character of the response.
29:20I made tremendous sacrifices during Katrina.
29:24My family wanted me to stop being the chief and go get my elderly aunt and uncle.
29:29Unfortunately, my aunt and uncle died.
29:33And it haunts me every day that I could have saved them and I didn't.
29:38So, people that was not privy to the circumstances at ground zero where I was at for an entire time,
29:44they had no idea of the challenges that we faced.
29:48All they saw was a microcosm of what the media wanted them to see.
30:00We are live in front of the convention center, which has not been emptied of people at all.
30:06Chief, what do you figure? How many people here?
30:08We have at least 30,000 people here around.
30:1030,000?
30:11At least 30,000.
30:12And none have been taken out?
30:13None have been taken out. The buses were promised. The buses are not here.
30:16They built these people's spirits up.
30:18We need to get these people out of here now.
30:25So, unfortunately, we discovered that while FEMA had put in requests for buses,
30:30whatever reason, that didn't get moving as fast as it should have.
30:35So, people are going to have to stay there another day.
30:40We knew that these people were getting to a desperate place
30:44in terms of their ability to withstand the environments that they were in.
30:48And we were really worried whether we could survive another day like this Wednesday.
30:59Good afternoon, everyone.
31:00I first want to express my thanks to President Bush for the confidence that he has shown in me.
31:07I also want to speak to the civil unrest and some of the disturbances that we have seen.
31:12It's just not acceptable.
31:14And I understand that the National Guard, troops, local law enforcement,
31:20all of those will do everything in their power to minimize that.
31:28We had National Guard elements from every state come here in Louisiana.
31:32And some people who deployed to Louisiana had already been to Iraq.
31:36And now, sprinkle on that, you know, all those rumors of lawlessness and snipers and shootings and all of that,
31:43it was like, oh, we're going to need weapons.
31:46So, as the deputy public affairs officer,
31:50I was really just trying to stomp out a lot of the myths that were becoming so problematic
31:54because they were just creating fear.
32:04After I came back from Baton Rouge, I had to see to marry him.
32:08I said, let's walk through the crowd at the Superdome.
32:12My National Guard buddies told me, I said, well, we need more guards for protection.
32:16I said, no, we don't need any more guards.
32:17We're all right.
32:19So, I had two of them with me.
32:20I said, put your guns on your back.
32:22Don't be pointing guns at nobody.
32:25That's when people noticed me and they noticed my name and they would say,
32:29hey, brah, you going to get us out of here?
32:31I said, yeah, we're going to get you out of here.
32:35So, how do you recommend we handle this?
32:37I think we try to get a public message out on the radio.
32:40And you tell the governor, the buses need to be there early in the morning.
32:45We need her to get on the television and tell people.
32:48So, I saw the mayor and discussed the evacuation plan for the next thing
32:52that was being coordinated with staff down in Baton Rouge and with FEMA Director Brown.
32:57In all sincerity, my heart goes out to those people and I am determined, absolutely determined,
33:05to speed this thing up, make this thing work, and get the aid to those people.
33:12Bullshit.
33:24So, Cindy Taylor, who worked in the Office of External Affairs, received an email from
33:31Sharon Worthy, who was the handler for Undersecretary Brown.
33:35It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.
33:40Given that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy.
33:44He needs much more than 20 or 30 minutes.
33:48We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choice,
33:52followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc.
33:58And so, Cindy Taylor then forwarded that email from Sharon Worthy to me,
34:03and she said, let me preface by saying, I know he needs downtime,
34:08but, um, how much time do each of you need for dinner,
34:12including travel time to the restaurants of your choice?
34:17Question mark.
34:20I'm trying to coordinate where the buses are so I can answer the mayor's questions
34:24and deal with the press.
34:27But 72 miles away in Baton Rouge, this son of a bitch is waiting in lines to go in the
34:32restaurant.
34:33I mean, there was some stupid shit happening.
34:36Just plain stupid.
34:38So, after I got that email, I immediately responded to Cindy.
34:43Oh, my God.
34:45With eight exclamation points.
34:48I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome
34:53along with 30,000 other close friends.
34:56So I understand her concern about busy restaurants.
35:00Maybe tonight I will have time to move the pebbles on the parking garage floor
35:05so they don't stab me in the back while I try to sleep.
35:08But instead, I will hope her wait at Ruth's crisp is short.
35:17This email exchange was really starting to show the disconnect,
35:24the tone deafness.
35:36At the Superdome, almost everything they needed, any kind of satellite or a tower, still didn't work.
35:45But what did work, and we became aware, was that a lot of people had brought radios to the Superdome.
35:55That was how they were getting their news, which was problematic because there was a lot of mistrutes
36:01and a lot of the exaggerated stories that were being perpetuated by the radio.
36:06The situation is getting really chaotic.
36:08There's fights breaking out.
36:11There's a lot of murders that have occurred, rapes.
36:14Look, you name it.
36:18All of a sudden, walking around, we heard that some little girls was raped and killed in the bathroom.
36:29Now, the chick said a woman.
36:31It was a little girl.
36:33Oh, a little girl?
36:33It was a little girl.
36:34It's going here?
36:35A little girl, they said.
36:37I don't know where it happened.
36:39Because where we at is no bathroom.
36:41Yeah, they said it was a little girl in the bathroom.
36:43They killed and raped or something.
36:44I just heard the same thing.
36:46That's what I'm saying.
36:47So I'm going in there, girl.
36:48I know what it is.
36:49No, we can't do that, baby.
36:52I really was looking for somebody to be screaming at the top of their lungs, murder, somebody did this.
37:01But I never seen anybody come forward.
37:04And it's fascinating because some people are asking me, did I have video on that?
37:09I was like, are you serious?
37:11Like, I would have video on somebody getting raped and killed, for real.
37:15We had already heard from the security team inside the Superdome about what was actually transpiring.
37:24So we knew that that wasn't actually the case.
37:29But still, the rumor took a hold.
37:33Then it started spreading like wildfire.
37:36You see how people do rapes in here?
37:38You know, you kill in here?
37:39I mean, a lot of people, yeah, rape, all type of violence.
37:43You don't know who's here.
37:45You got people that's druggies.
37:47You got people that's raping and doing everything they can do and breaking in and looting and everything.
37:55The media was irritating.
37:57You're not allowed.
37:58They just wanted to be in everybody's face and getting all these interviews.
38:01And they wanted people to be scared.
38:04I would get people who would call me and they would ask me to confirm facts.
38:07And then I would say, well, that's not the facts at all.
38:10And they would write their story anyway.
38:12And it could not have spun more out of control.
38:15At the Superdome, there have been rapes, a murder, and various shootings.
38:20There was a lot of misinformation all over the place.
38:25And it wasn't just the media.
38:27It was within our organization.
38:30What one of the police officers told me was it is a war zone out there.
38:35People are fighting.
38:36He said in his words, people are losing their minds.
38:41Some things were completely exaggerated.
38:43Some things were completely made up.
38:46Some things were said that just literally did not happen.
38:49And you had all of this going on in the middle of a disaster.
38:54There was chaos.
38:55There was no communication.
38:56But I saw cops on the street firing back at thugs that were on rooftops, etc.
39:02I've never seen the breakdown of American society like this.
39:06But there's certainly a lot of...
39:07The media wanted to lead the American people to focus on chaos.
39:10Yeah, that's what happened in a disaster.
39:13If you don't have chaos, then it's not a fucking disaster.
39:16It's an inconvenience.
39:18But there are people who wanted to exacerbate it as a crime problem in the city of New Orleans.
39:24It wasn't a crime problem.
39:26It was an evacuation problem.
39:39It is now shortly before dawn, about 5.30 in the morning.
39:43For the last four hours, we have seen no buses here.
39:47Meanwhile, the size of the crowd has been growing.
39:50And so has its level of frustration.
39:54We've been out here since 9 o'clock yesterday morning, just like this.
40:05It's about 6 in the morning, listening to the news.
40:10A lot of people lost everything, man.
40:14Getting their last sleep and to find out if they could go home.
40:18By this time, we were supposed to be out of here.
40:23But they never had anybody to say that they was about to evacuate the Superdome.
40:28So I was like, oh, man, I just don't believe some of this.
40:32I don't know what's going to happen.
40:34Eventually, it's getting worse.
40:35So we have to move these families out of here.
40:37But from you, I would like to know, are there buses coming for these people to get out?
40:43They keep saying that, but who can believe them anymore?
40:46Exactly.
40:48I tell these people, believe what you see, not what you hear.
40:57If you go to the Superdome, what is the plan for them?
41:00They are going to start to be moved right after we get all the medical patients out.
41:05We're going to move them.
41:06They're our first priority.
41:07Then after that, we will have 350 buses that are staged,
41:11and they're going to start to move people out of the Superdome.
41:16The buses started to show up, and we came up with a route that would bring them in
41:20and a way to walk the people out to the buses.
41:25And at the air medevac site of the Superdome, I had them knock down the power poles
41:31so we could bring large helicopters in and take out the elderly.
41:37Everything seemed to be going well.
41:39But then a call came over the radio that a pilot reported being shot at.
41:47When that went out, all the helicopters in route, diverted.
41:51And that just turned this situation on his head.
41:58Desperate situation in the city of New Orleans as we speak.
42:02The effort to move those evacuees from the Superdome to the Astrodome
42:05now halted after shots were fired.
42:07Rescue helicopters came under fire,
42:10and violence spilled out into the streets right outside.
42:13The largest ambulance service says it will have to severely cut back its rescue efforts
42:18if security doesn't improve.
42:20We were told that the buses were stopped
42:23because things inside the city of New Orleans were so dangerous.
42:27The drivers of those buses and ambulances, they said,
42:30I'm not going in there.
42:31I've told my wife, I'm not going in there.
42:33There's still a sense this is a riot zone, and it's not.
42:38It was just a story that got out of hand.
42:41And eventually, people tried to draw us into being more focused on security
42:46than we are on the mission of saving lives.
42:49Some of the things like security, you look at and you think the time has come
42:52to empower our law enforcement officials, our military officials,
42:55to say, let's adopt a zero-tolerance attitude.
42:58Let's take these people off the street so they can't be causing this danger.
43:01When we realized that the looting was getting out of control,
43:06we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets.
43:09They were dead tired from saving people, but we redirected all of our resources.
43:15All of a sudden, I just got inundated with people coming to me.
43:20They were confused.
43:21They said, chief, are they going to evacuate us?
43:25Well, we got to go.
43:26Who going to feed us?
43:27We were asking the Louisiana authorities to hunt down those looters.
43:31They must make sure those rapists, looters, and assailants get what they deserve.
43:35With the exposure to the national media,
43:39all of a sudden now, at police headquarters,
43:42the message was to stop the looting.
43:45That was the message.
43:48And what came next was a complete mess.
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