With Joe Hagin. White House/Susan Sterner
I knew the city well. New Orleans was about a six-hour drive from Houston, and I had made the trek often in my younger days. I loved the food, culture, and vibrant people of The Big Easy. I was also aware of the city’s lurking fear. The locals called it The Big One, the pray-it-never-happens storm that could drown their city.
Anyone who has visited New Orleans can understand their anxiety. The low-lying city is shaped like a crescent bowl. A system of levees and canals—the rim of the bowl—provides the city’s primary flood protection. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers, the levees had a troubled history. When I was governor, I read John Barry’s fascinating book Rising Tide, about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. After huge rains drove up the height of the river, New Orleans officials persuaded the Louisiana governor to dynamite a levee to the south in hopes of sparing the city. The move devastated two rural parishes, Plaquemines and St. Bernard. Over time, the levees were strengthened, especially after Hurricane Betsy hit in 1965. They held through seven hurricanes over the next forty years.
One lesson of the 2004 Florida hurricanes was that solid preparation before a storm is essential to a successful response. When we learned that Katrina was headed for New Orleans, I put FEMA on its highest level of alert. The government prestaged more than 3.7 million liters of water, 4.6 million pounds of ice, 1.86 million meals ready to eat, and 33 medical teams. Taken together, this marked the largest prepositioning of relief supplies in FEMA’s history.
The military moved assets into place as well. Admiral Tim Keating—the head of the new Northern Command, which we created after 9/11 to protect the homeland—deployed disaster-response teams to the Gulf Coast. The Coast Guard put its choppers on alert. More than five thousand National Guard personnel in the affected states stood ready. Guard forces from other states were prepared to answer calls for assistance. Contrary to later claims, there was never a shortage of Guardsmen available, either because of Iraq or any other reason.
All of this federal activity was intended to support state and local officials. My team, led by Secretary of Homeland Security Mike Chertoff—a brilliant lawyer and decent man who had resigned his lifetime appointment as a federal judge to take the job—stayed in close touch with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Governor Blanco requested an emergency declaration allowing Louisiana to use federal resources to pay for and support her state’s disaster-response preparations. Only once in recent history—before Hurricane Floyd in 1999—had a president issued an emergency declaration before a storm made landfall. I signed it Saturday night, along with similar declarations for Mississippi and Alabama the next day.
At a briefing with Mike Chertoff. White House/Eric Draper
On Sunday morning, the National Hurricane Center described Katrina as “not only extremely intense but also exceptionally large.” Mayor Nagin had given instructions for a voluntary evacuation. I knew New Orleans well enough to understand that wouldn’t work. People had heard apocalyptic storm warnings for years. Some used them as an excuse to party on Bourbon Street in defiance of the hurricane gods. Others didn’t have the means to evacuate. The evacuation needed to be mandatory, with special arrangements for people who needed help, such as buses to transport those without cars—a step the city never took, leading to the heartbreaking scene of empty New Orleans school buses submerged in an abandoned parking lot.
I called Governor Blanco at 9:14 a.m.
“What’s going on in New Orleans?” I asked. “Has Nagin given the mandatory order?”
She said he had not, despite the dire warnings they had received the previous night from Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center. Max later said it was only the second time in his thirty-six-year career he had been anxious enough to call elected officials personally.
“The mayor’s got to order people to leave. That’s the only way they’ll listen,” I told Governor Blanco. “Call him and tell him. My people tell me this is going to be a terrible storm.”
“They’re not going to be able to get everyone out in time,” she said. Unfortunately, I knew she was right. But it was better to start now than wait any longer.
“What else do you need from the federal government?” I asked the governor.
She assured me she had been working closely with my team and had what she needed.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes, Mr. President, we’ve got it under control,” she said.
“Okay, hang in there,” I said, “and call Ray and get him to evacuate, now.”
An hour later, Mayor Nagin announced the first mandatory evacuation in New Orleans history. “This is a threat that we’ve never faced before,” he said. Katrina’s landfall was less than twenty-four hours away.
I also called Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, and my brother Jeb in Florida. I told them they could count on strong support from the federal government.
A little before 11:00 a.m., I joined a FEMA videoconference with officials from the states in Katrina’s projected path. It was rare for a president to attend a staff-level briefing like this. I saw some surprised looks on the screen when my face appeared. But I wanted to convey to the entire government how seriously I took this storm.
There was a discussion of potential flooding along the coastline and the possibility that water might spill over the top of the New Orleans levees. But no one predicted the levees would break—a different and much more severe problem than overtopping.
“The current track and forecast we have now suggests that there will be minimal flooding in the city of New Orleans itself,” Max Mayfield said. “But we’ve always said that the storm surge model is only accurate within about twenty percent.”
A few minutes later, I stepped out in front of the cameras. “Hurricane Katrina is now designated a Category Five hurricane,” I said. “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities. I urge all citizens to put their own safety and the safety of their families first by moving to safe ground. Please listen carefully to instructions provided by state and local officials.”
At 6:10 a.m. Central Time on Monday, August 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The eye of the storm passed over Plaquemines Parish, at the far southeastern tip of the state, and plowed north across the Louisiana-Mississippi border, about forty miles east of New Orleans. “The worst weather in this system is indeed going to bypass downtown New Orleans and go to our east,” NBC News’s Brian Williams reported. He said New Orleans was experiencing “the best of the worst-case scenarios.” Several journalists on the scene said the city had “dodged a bullet.” Governor Blanco confirmed that while some water had spilled over the tops of the levees, they had detected no breaches. My staff and I went to bed thinking the levees had held.
In Mississippi, there was no uncertainty about the damage. Eighty miles of coastline had been obliterated. Downtown Gulfport sat under ten feet of water. Casinos, barges, and bridges were ruined. US-90, a major highway running across southern Mississippi, was shut down. In the city of Waveland, 95 percent of structures were severely damaged or destroyed.