But he was struggling to keep himself together. She lives out in the east [part of the city] now. Newkirk II: The fact that so many people were willing to take this story at face value is evidence of how intense the paranoia was. He spent the next couple weeks running what he called missions for authorities in the city. They were actually Corps headquarters. Archival (C-SPAN): I was on my front porch. Wellstar Kennestone Hospital was the first in Georgia to receive this certification, and is the only one in the state. People might try to forget the past, but maybe the water remembers as it laps away at the wetlands. Williams: I’m like, “They lying. They are from the convention center in New Orleans …. Newkirk II: The “We’re gonna come get you.”. Craft-Kerney: We were gone, and folks were making plans for that land. Newkirk II: Near the west side of the bridge, two brothers had been holed up for days. It do. Archival (Nagin): And they don’t have a clue of what’s going on down there. Stop shaking me.”. And they throw parades like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t want to go back to New Orleans. That New Orleans would come back just the way it was. Why are you talking? Archival (news clip): In the area around Gulfport and Biloxi, it is a very dire situation …, Archival (news clip): State authorities are gonna be in rescue mode long into this night. So we just was sitting there, just sitting there, sitting there. You may have found it comforting for a moment,” but considering how disaster response works, I don’t want to give her a false hope that somewhere in the future—maybe not her in particular—that this is going to happen again. Vann Newkirk II: Fred Johnson slept through Katrina on the floor of the grand ballroom of the Hyatt hotel. She used her website to try to get the word out that the Army Corps was responsible, not New Orleans. Along with Dr. Kanuru’s expertise, Wellstar Cardiologist Dr. David Caras provides an essential complement to John’s cardiovascular care. But yes. And I’ve never come in on such a fast landing, but they’re trained to land on ships in small spaces. Newkirk II: The history of floods in Louisiana is the history of the Honorés. She went to community college. Le-Ann’s mom thought they were heading somewhere safe. Newkirk II: Yeah, I think actually, for me, I was all the way up in North Carolina. Valerie Orff was done with excruciating pain. That’s romantic. Our heart specialists directly connect to Mayo Clinic and can request detailed consultations and second opinions for complex cases at no additional cost to the patient. He got in a helicopter and flew straight to the Superdome from Mississippi. But, as it later turned out, the man who first reported the shots wasn’t even a cop and might not have actually seen or heard gunshots at all. Her mother’s house in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed. Newkirk II: By Saturday morning, the mayor and the governor still hadn’t called for a mandatory evacuation. Newkirk II: Alice and her family had one other line to the outside: a working TV. Stories of rapes of children and murders of rape victims. Come on! In his book, Decision Points, the president does go a bit further than the exhibit does. Nagin declared the Superdome the shelter of last resort. And the people who stayed had hopes things would get right back to normal. The plaque memorializes what they built. She started dating someone new. My press secretary was instructed, “You find every freakin’ outlet that I can talk to so that I can tell them that I think this is going to be really bad and that you need to get the hell out of dodge.”. I thought I was the stuff. I did like three interviews in a row where I said, “We just learned about the convention center.” Well, in my head, we had just learned about the convention center. And they had so many needs. Everyone knew that neighborhood was vulnerable to floods after hurricanes. Not a street, a road—rocks. Do you see the conundrum? Newkirk II: Fred’s one of those Smokey Robinson types. The thought of armed looters storming the place would have been terrifying. Strictly speaking, some of it wasn’t real at all. But nobody answered. Archival (Siegel): How many days before your operation finds these people, brings them at least food, water, medical supplies, if not gets them out of there? Johnson: And there was a lady, a white woman who was driving a cab. And you’re forced to have to entertain an idea that’s uncomfortable, that the federal government is responsible for this. “The University of [Louisiana at] Lafayette is having a mixed doubles tournament. It wasn’t true. Archival (speech): Everybody in New Orleans is dispersed. He helped get folks loaded up on airplanes, but he couldn’t do much to help them after that. Compass: And, you know. Don’t ever tell law enforcement to shoot to kill your own people.’”. Governor Blanco died a few days before the 14th anniversary of the storm in 2019. You know, the Pitty Pat, it was rolling. Other people say he was just trying to get the cop’s attention. Governor Richardson was right there to greet us. van Heerden: The water didn’t get high enough. But he did know one thing. Newkirk II: —happening during Katrina. And he had no way to communicate with his officers. But he’s also one of the guys people call when big engineering projects fail. She was afraid. The police told Honoré that it was dangerous. Archival (Robinette): I’ll say it right now: You’re the only politician that’s called and called for arms like this. Long as I been there, been having hurricanes. Newkirk II: As investigators worked, Congress started holding hearings. Glover was found bleeding outside and was brought to a makeshift NOPD headquarters nearby. He figured he knew where that idea came from. Williams: I remember my science teacher Mr. Smith telling us to track the storm. When businessmen and bankers had gotten together to blow up the levees on purpose. And I think I had on a little khaki Kangol cap, and I just pulled the cap over my eyes, because the level of fear that was in the room, I was trying to not to visualize it. Honoré had grown up in Lakeland, Louisiana. He thought too much bureaucracy was going to slow FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters. Controlling the narrative. But she kept running into roadblocks. That New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt. Rosenthal: My memory of the weeks afterward is being glued to the radio, glued to the television set, glued to the newspapers, glued to the internet. But General Honoré is going through and telling all of them to put their weapons pointed down. Either they were fed up, or they just wanted to escape Katrina. And I remember just being so depressed and down and out. Would become a part of the narrative that New Orleans somehow brought this on itself. New Orleans was his responsibility now. A frightened-looking Mike Meyers is standing next to him as Kanye is clearly going off script. And the debris that’s in front of my door will testify to that. Newkirk II: The sheer lack of information made it easier to believe the sabotage theory. Johnson: So when we get back in the hotel, we sitting in the lobby, and the police chief run in. It’s so exposed. It’s called Faubourg Lafitte now. So everybody had to stop, because I had blood everywhere. For most people, the only way to get there after the storm was walking on the raised interstate above the floodwater. It didn’t feel like the effort was in your favor, and that’s a difficult place to be. Lots of evacuees said they were never going back to New Orleans. Oh, no. But every time a car would come, I remember we’ll say “Car time! I really, after Katrina is when I really started to notice that [. We never really talked to each other like—“Well, Le-Ann, how you feel? He was eager to talk, but he had one condition: He didn’t want to do this interview over the phone; he wanted to talk in person. Ageless. She was bullied. She tried to fit in, like any normal schoolgirl. Finding fuel for airplanes. Newkirk II: Compass was not implicated in or investigated for any of the killings or cover-ups that happened under his watch. He did soil samples. For the people along the Gulf Coast, it is a catastrophe. They were going to have to save themselves. Nighttime coming. Newkirk II: In Treme, Le-Ann Williams and her family were also waiting to be rescued. That meant convincing her stepdad that it was time to go. Archival (news clip): They now join one of America’s greatest population shifts since the Great Depression. And if the wind pushed the window in, you could get sucked out. Many people were still stranded in flooded buildings across the city. Craft-Kearney: Governor Richardson was right there to greet us. They having a hurricane party. Maybe we should have known we weren’t going to get that from Michael Brown. It was unanimous, in favor of demolition. A place where everybody who was anybody went for the cool salt breeze. Johnson: It’s sunny. Come on! But about all this, she has some things that she will say. And in the middle of it was green parrots. Brown: My general response to Haley Barbour and to Bob Riley is they did a fantastic job. He still wears his Army baseball caps and chugs black coffee. Those levees weren’t deep enough. And my cousins, when they came to school and they kind of blended in with my friends and we were just all always together, all us. Oh, trust me, I understand it. Archival (news clip): When I saw that National Guard that arrived today, I felt like once again I was a part of America, ’cause I really felt like my country had deserted me until then. Archival (news clip): And we have been touring the flooded streets of New Orleans today. You stole it. The black John Wayne dude had come off the chopper, started cussin’, and got shit done. He revels in time spent with family, reeling in a big catch and feeling the crisp wind in his face during a morning bike ride. I’m not riding in that shit. But the mythmaking after Katrina was extreme. The disaster forced the Army Corps to issue new guidelines in levee building, which improved safety for residents all across the country. I’m here. I’m going down.” That’s—I was like, “I’m going down. She’s had to wonder if the people in power ever saw her at all. They tasered protesters who’d made it inside too. The toe dips into the Gulf of Mexico. Newkirk II: In the days after he first landed at the Superdome, the rumors and misinformation had done their work. Just not quite the one they expected. This is real.” You know what I mean? Newkirk II: That’s Ivor van Heerden. They just watching us. It didn’t feel like the effort was in your favor, and that’s a difficult place to be. And Chief Compass did what he could to keep things together. But there were lots of things about it that she didn’t love. There were still X’s spray-painted on the doors, marking the places that had already been checked for survivors, counting the bodies that had been found inside. She was like, “Do you want to just stand in front of class and tell us about y’all self? So she decided to leave him. Rosenthal: That was very damaging. It’s really the local government’s fault in Louisiana. She was gonna have to start over again. The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine. Archival (Siegel): Secretary Chertoff’s spokeswoman called to say that after our interview with the secretary of homeland security, he received a report confirming the situation at the convention center. The Hyatt became the operating base for the whole city government and response. Newkirk II: At other points in the call, he was on the brink of tears. I’m not going back to New Orleans. They were not focused on the safety of their passengers. In New Orleans, the business community worried that the French Quarter was going to flood. But I don’t know if I would call that recovery. We call them “booty braids” in New Orleans because they so long. But I’m also worried that if this is truly the worst that it can be, I know it’s a disaster for me personally. I don’t know. It’s time for us to come together. No helicopters or trucks full of food. Gretna police had blocked a bridge to stop evacuees coming from the convention center. “I feel so comfortable expressing any fears or apprehensions about my conditions or treatment with Dr. Kanuru. Le-Ann worked hard to save up money for her baby girl. I mean, those were the three most prevalent diagnoses that I saw in my clinic. I just didn’t understand. The show’s producers, Alvin and Katherine, kept asking if we wanted to take a break, get some coffee. How long did you know after the storm? Maybe that’s what people heard. And Mark is a guy who covered the worst disasters for years. Honoré: So Michael Brown had found out I was there, and he sent word for me to come over and see him. But I am pissed. Rosenthal: So I put on my tennis clothes and got my tennis bag and went to the mixed doubles tournament, and the first thing I did is talked about the levees. It’s crazy. Williams: We was walking, and this lady swung with this RTA bus. Newkirk II: It was just over four years after she’d gotten back to New Orleans. So in conference calls with officials and through the media, Michael tried to scare everyone into action with the worst-case scenarios. Lots of black Americans. After the life-threatening heart episode, specialists in California diagnosed him with ventricular tachycardia (VT), a severe heart condition in which abnormal electrical signals cause the heart to beat faster. Jarvis DeBerry: So we went as far as we could go. This time, the cavalry was not coming. But the Army Corps of Engineers are just fine. She raised Destiny on her own. And he thought DHS’s focus on terrorism was overshadowing FEMA’s mission. Archival (news clip): There is little or no safety in the city of New Orleans tonight. Newkirk II: That was bad. ... in Tuba City, Ariz., in the Navajo Nation. I’m not going to justify Haley Barbour “shoot to kill.” I’m not going to justify that. The whole thing is designed to put you in a pressure cooker. The police department has also come a long way. So I’mma be in the same position my mom and dad was in. Are you doing fine?” None of that. And if he sounds overly. But her boyfriend stopped showing up for work, lost his job. I ain’t riding in that shit. He wouldn’t. People of power thought that they wanted to change, to change [what] they otherwise would have had holy hell changing. Brown: Looking backward, I might have said, “I fear the levees could break.”. There was not one decision, not one movement, not—there was nothing, not a scintilla of anything of racism in what me, my staff, or the people that are the career civil servants of FEMA did that was based on race. The bus went through. You and I both—you’re a black man; I’m a white man. And the last thing—I promise—is about how hurricanes work. I really, after Katrina is when I really started to notice that [Whispers.] And I look up, and I see Miss Melville. Do you send food to the convention center? Kanuru and Dr. Caras work together as a team,” John said. Many people were still stranded in flooded buildings across the city. Luckily, it wasn’t long before John was connected with an entire team of Wellstar heart experts delivering comprehensive care all within the same health system. And I asked to speak to him. And so you had cars on top of houses that we found, and you had these skilled care facilities with all these dead senior citizens inside of them. Mayor Ray Nagin had to. Who wouldn’t? Johnson: I don’t know. Knocked on the door, hoping somebody might come let us in … let Le-Ann see the tree in the backyard she’d grown up climbing or the place where she used to play Pitty Pat with her cousins. What was the problem? Finally, a combination of skills is used at the end of Geometry to tie together rays and lines with shapes such as triangles, rectangles, and polygons. And 1936. My grandchildren won’t get to see those pictures. Oh, but it will be now. He was also worried about FEMA being under DHS. Rosenthal: When this gentleman spoke to me those words, he opened up a world I didn’t realize was there. So as you get closer to Galvez and Miro, the water was getting deeper and deeper and deeper. I am just—I’m at the point now where it don’t matter. I could see that. Don’t go in there!” I’m like, “Mom, we have to get food and stuff.”. Williams: When I was younger, like the culture here, the music, and everything, I always was around it no matter what. When she got back to Lafitte, the family turned it on. Schleifstein: And they looked down, and they saw that a piece of the wall had failed and that Lakeview was flooding with water running in continuously from the lake. As the storm approached, he sent emails with jokes about wanting to resign. It didn’t put all of the blame on the Army Corps. They cared for a lot of poor folks without insurance, and [it] was the only place lots of them could get mental health care. Archival (Siegel): We are hearing from our reporter—and he’s on another line right now—thousands of people at the convention center in New Orleans with no food. We’ll cut through Dumaine Street and we get to the Claiborne bridge, and the Claiborne bridge leads to my—the project—my house. Where I wanted to be. I understand.” I said, “Just tell me the truth.”, Archival (Robert Siegel): Let me ask you about images that many Americans are seeing today and hearing about. Newkirk II: That shooting supercharged all the rumors about looting. They had plans for Le-Ann. The Wellstar Research Institute is attractive to drug and device companies researching because of our dedicated investigators, diverse patient base, and excellent reputation. You and your family come on.” And we just went running. Just exploded. And 18 feet of water went through. Like so many other Katrina kids, her life had been disrupted over and over again. Some of the first public housing for black folks in the country. He said an Army Corps employee came to one of his lectures and called him a liar. A couple months after they got to Magee, Le-Ann’s parents took her to Scottsdale, Arizona. And I get emotional about it because when you’re portrayed, if you—I had dinner with a friend last night. All I know is I gave my heart and soul to this police department. Newkirk II: It was hard, but eventually, she realized things weren’t going to get better. We are very much indebted to a group of first listeners who made this project better with their notes and guidance. ’Cause they would say mean stuff. They had a lady—she was, like, in her 80s or 90s—they had her on a blow-up bed, and she was at the foot of the interstate. The first time he experienced any kind of real racial integration in his life was when he joined the ROTC. Visit Theatlantic.com/supportus. Our team includes expert heart specialists who will craft a personalized treatment plan just for you, whether it is a lifestyle change, medication, an outpatient procedure, surgery or mechanical support. Craft-Kerney: I was given, as they say, my walking papers. The Honorés lost their land too. It was bad, but not apocalyptic-bad. The officers approached the men. Nothing to see here. Lots of street signs had been washed away, so anybody driving had to navigate by memory. Get y’all something to drink,” and, “I know y’all, you know, thirsty and stuff.”. I wrote letters to former Mayor Ray Nagin. Do you feel like after this maybe you will? So in conference calls with officials and through the media, Michael tried to scare everyone into action with the worst-case scenarios. This town is better today than it was yesterday, and it’ll be better tomorrow than it was today. That’s why I wanted to talk to him. They’re all walking across Danziger Bridge. Then sons-a-bitches going straight to national television. They went out to try to find supplies. Lineage. Her mom worked on Tulane’s campus, and her stepdad was a star musician in a city full of star musicians. Even though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said publicly “that shouldn’t have mattered; we should have still built this properly.” We were never able to get out from under that. His house was elevated. Newkirk II: Responding by saying they were going to shoot people on sight. When we first heard that the city was flooding, naturally we assumed the worst. You could see that lighting up the sky. And the city saw an opportunity. At least from my perspective, I thought we did that. Or likely to die. People had worried about sabotage in 1965 during Hurricane Betsy too. Her sisters, Le-Ann’s aunts, were staying in the Florida housing projects in the Ninth Ward. She was the only girl on the team, and she was known for her lockdown defense. It’s: Can you run as fast as and long as the Army wanted you to? And then we watching the news, and I hear: “It will take New Orleans about five to 10 years to be back what it was.” And “The water still in the city, and it’s taking a long time to pump it out.” And. Just disintegrated. The disaster forced the Army Corps to issue new guidelines in levee building, which improved safety for residents all across the country. Archival (news clip): A battleground over who should be held accountable for the catastrophic failures to respond effectively …, Archival (news clip): The president is fighting the impression that his administration waited too long …, Archival (news clip): Mr. Bush and the White House aware they have a problem trying to change …. They served mostly black folks in the neighborhood. Brown: No, I just, I find that fascinating because clearly by admitting your mistakes, you’re telling the world. Archival (radio interview): We in the senior citizens’ home. Turns out, he was heading right into the heart of the action. But her boyfriend stopped showing up for work, lost his job. Which is a terrible thing for a teenager to feel, right? This city will be a majority African American city. But we were—The question was, When are we going to get rescued? I’m black in America. In my head, having not slept, yes, we just learned about it. So I keep hearing “the levees, the levees.” I think that, although the Corps, as I said, certainly may have designed them, there is responsibility equally for the folks that are there maintaining and supervising those levees on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Rosenthal: No one had ever talked about the levee breaking. After George W. Bush became president, he named his former campaign manager and chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, as director of FEMA. We don’t treat you any different.” But I don’t think that anybody would have wanted to trade places with me that day. All this is gone. Rosenthal: And the Army Corps was very embarrassed about it and actually issued me an apology for it. Honoré saw rumors as one of his biggest obstacles. The actual events that led up to the call are murky. And the tuba players would have sticks blowing [Hums.]. Rosenthal: I found other people who play tennis in Lafayette, and I got a phone call. Go” (MRGO). The surge of water the storm pushed ahead of it raced to the island. And I asked to speak to him. Le-Ann noticed the soldier was standing there with a woman and a baby. I’m headed back to New Orleans.”. Newkirk II: Honoré had grown up in Lakeland, Louisiana. Archival (Chertoff): Well, I would be—I say, I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water. They don’t have jobs. The chief of police, Eddie Compass. We found one gas station that we were going to in Birmingham. I’m sorry.” Like he right here telling me “I’m sorry.” I’mma get y’all two. Newkirk II: The country was trying to figure out what happened. Didn’t knock all the buildings down, but it sure knocked a lot of them down. You think I’m gonna roast you here? The governor was there, and so was Michael Brown, the FEMA director. Well, I can’t really care what people think about me. Newkirk II: There were hundreds of people still taking refuge in the third-floor ballroom. I was. Her friend who was also a nurse had a house they could use. And I could never get good, ground-based knowledge of what was going on because the New Orleans Police Department had utterly disintegrated. Her family is scattered now. From routine to complex, Wellstar offers comprehensive cardiovascular care. Don’t see anything.”. Katrina made landfall southeast of the city, near where the MRGO connected to the Gulf. Brown: I joke with my kids, “You know, your dad was—his obituary was never gonna be in The New York Times. Newkirk II: Le-Ann doesn’t go back to Dumaine Street much anymore. But none of that stuff was at the convention center. What life would be like if it hadn’t happened. Archival (news clip): For nearly 300 years, the sea has been closing in on New Orleans …. None of these people are armed. Local authorities said it would be a safe place, but there’s no electricity, no food, no water. So they decided to head for the convention center instead. Somebody walked down the street, said, “Hey, what happened to you last night?” “Well, I saw five people get raped at the convention center.” They don’t go ask the police if they know anybody. I do believe, if you’re looting in a disaster area to feed your family, I don’t care. There were no sirens, no police cars. You had a choice. Nobody not—you look around and you just see black people babies, just everybody crying they want help. His predecessor, the 32nd commander of the First Army used to ride around in a green Dodge van. Listening to old men telling stories about floods. Like he was busy. This is because the company uses a soft credit check, which will not show up on your credit statement. The water started creeping up. They all have weapons. Instead of shooting looters, he told soldiers to put their guns down. In charge of the whole thing. Newkirk II: I spent six hours with Michael Brown. You got a bunch of reporters still pissing New York beer just showing up. I wanted to ask him about all of this—about what taking accountability for the disaster should look like and whether he felt he’d done it. And 1927. Over 90 degrees and humid. You know about him? What was the problem? But going into the 10th anniversary, Sandy was still worried that New Orleans was getting blamed for the levee breaches. Two days later, there was another tragedy on the Danziger Bridge. Way back in the day, the neighborhood was swampland. I walked out, I looked up, no parrots. Somebody that I never even met. And the helicopters, they’ll pass over us, but they won’t stop. So that was probably the saddest thing of the whole consultation because I’m a military man. Newkirk II: There was a lot of work to do. First, there were code violations. He’s not the type to get worried easy. But on Sunday, they looked out into the waves and felt the bracing winds approach. And then over there, the police. Was that part of the plan? Brown: There’s no ex—there is no explanation for it, other than I think, by that point, the system was overwhelmed. Katrina had a pack on her. Newkirk II: Alice Craft-Kearney and her family joined that great migration. Like, why would you say that? I stayed on the corner in the front. Brown: Yeah, isn’t that an apology? It’s my home. Let’s go loot the Hyatt. People are dying. The problem, But the arguments in favor of demolishing the projects were winning. Ain’t they trained for all that stuff? Is it rising very fast in the most seriously flooded areas of New Orleans? Rescues, supply runs. We’re, we’re, we’re trying to survive. I knew immediately after people had broken into the convention center. Brown: Joe said, “I need somebody I can trust.”. He raised cows for segregated 4-H shows. But she kept running into roadblocks. Newkirk II: Alice and her family were relatively lucky. Archival (news clip): Word that local police have been involved in what appears to be a tragic case of mistaken identity. [, Keep in touch. And you just see them lined up. A spokesperson said [that] as soon as leadership heard about it, they put a stop to it. All I can tell you is to do everything you can to signal them …. They got one. In addition to the user-friendly design and up-to-date information, our new modern platform provides enhanced stability and security. To say, “Oh, we don’t treat anybody any different.” Yes, you do. And so that I had. She even made some new friends. Our producers gave the signal to wrap everything up. It’s calm as shit! I’m gonna be the first person to go to college. I don’t know if they got their marching orders from somebody to say, “Let this area just languish and die,” but that’s what it felt like. Magee, Mississippi, is something like the exact opposite of New Orleans. She talked with a local university about going, but her family couldn’t get the financial-aid paperwork together. The rumors and misinformation that he fought had already claimed lives. A social aid and pleasure club.