This stuff happens all the time, and while you can never predict it will happen in any particular place, you can definitely predict it will happen somewhere on a regular timeline. Flooding in Dubuque will be different than flooding in Duluth, but a flood is a flood, and what you learn in one place will be useable in another. The same went for tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, and so forth. Furthermore, if you handle it right, the practice sessions get a huge amount of positive publicity.
As part of this, the agency had prepared a list of the Top 1 °Cities for various disasters. For floods that was mostly cities along the Mississippi, for hurricanes it was cities along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, for earthquakes there was a different list, and so forth. Then each city was provided a grant to determine the best ways to evacuate the city as needed, and exercises were planned around these lists. New Orleans landed on two lists, hurricanes and flooding. For real fun, they played a game in New Orleans called Beat the Feds. We would provide them a grant to study the problem, half the money would disappear, they would dust off the previous study and retype it, and report that they needed more money for another study. Actual preparation was secondary at best.
One of the overwhelming concerns I had was that Hurricane Katrina was going to smash into quite probably the single most unready city in the country. If New Orleans didn’t exist, we’d have had to invent it! It is easily the most corrupt city in the nation! Per capita it has one of the highest murder rates. The police in New Orleans have a national reputation for graft and corruption, and more than a few of those murders are committed by cops killing for hire. Other crimes weren’t far behind. Physically the city itself is mostly below sea level, and protected by a system of levees and pumps. Since an incredibly corrupt city and state government handled the contracts for most of this stuff, it was questionable whether it would function even in good times. As for the government, New Orleans had a black Mayor and a white Governor, neither of whom really cared much for the other one, and they were both Democrats and neither of them liked me.
In good times, the city had a certain reputation for fun. ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler!’ — Let the good times roll! — is the city’s slogan. Mardi gras is just an excuse for a gigantic party, and it seems like there is always a party. It’s a fun place for visitors.
In bad times, the place turns to shit!
Being informed of weather events takes up about 60 seconds in the morning when I get my daily brief. Most of the time it is fairly quiet and normal. In a nation the size of America, it is always raining somewhere, it is always hot and sunny somewhere, and it is always snowing somewhere. I am informed when things start going bad, but you can also always figure it’s going to go bad somewhere. There are certain criteria that need to be met to declare someplace a disaster area, and you can count on the appropriate Congressman or Senator to call me asking for Federal assistance. As a general rule, you pretty much rubberstamp the requests for assistance. After all, dealing with disasters is really the job of any government. You normally don’t say no.
Katrina became an official storm on Tuesday, August 23, though it was just a Tropical Depression in the Bahamas at that time. It was given a name, Katrina, the next day. By then it was obvious that this was a storm that was going to hit the United States somewhere, and not veer right and head into the middle of the Atlantic. I was informed that morning that we had a possible hurricane level event in the offing, named Tropical Storm Katrina. As soon as I heard that name, I knew I had to get involved.
Shortly after my briefing, and my early morning staff meeting, I called Michael Brown. “Michael, it’s Carl Buckman. How are you doing this morning?”
“I’m fine, Mister President. How can I help you this morning?”
“Well, have you been following the weather news?”
“To a certain extent, sir. It’s a big country. You’ve obviously got something in mind. What’s up?” he asked.
Okay, he’s right. It is a big country, and this thing hadn’t even made it out of the Caribbean. “There’s a brand new tropical storm and it’s aimed right at Florida. We don’t need another Hurricane Andrew,” I told him, reminding him of the hurricane that devastated southern Florida years before.
“No, sir, that would be bad. I will look into it with my forecasting staff.”
“That’s all I can ask for now, Michael. Hey, maybe you can use this as a live fire training exercise.”
“I’ll look into that, sir. Thank you, Mister President.”
We hung up. I could expect a response from him by the end of the day. Presidents don’t just call up to say ‘Hello!’ If I called, I would expect a positive response.
I heard from Brown late on the 23rd that, as per my suggestion, they were going to use this as a large scale training exercise. I told him I thought that was a good idea, and if he needed me to give any appropriate orders, to simply let me know. I kept an eye on things over the next few days. On the 24th it kept strengthening, and looked like it would clip southern Florida and head into the Gulf. It did that on the 25th. The FEMA preparations for Florida went fine, and nobody died, but there was some property damage. Everybody gave a sigh of relief as it drifted into the Gulf and began to weaken back into a tropical storm. I went along with them, but I knew better. I simply told Michael Brown to keep the exercise running, since a big storm like that could still cause a lot of coastal flooding. I also brought it up at my morning staff meeting.
On Friday the 26th, everybody took a deep breath and let out a loud, ‘Oh shit!’ That sigh of relief had been premature! All day long Katrina increased in strength, reverting back to a hurricane and heading towards the Gulf Coast. Predictions were that Louisiana was going to get slammed. The National Hurricane Center was officially predicting a hurricane level impact on the Louisiana coastline. In response, I ordered a conference call for that afternoon with everybody I could grab. I knew what was coming, and I knew that the locals were figuring this to be just another big storm that the Big Easy could ride out, with hurricane parties and a lot of bourbon and rum.
The conference call was a big one, with the Governors of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the Mayors of New Orleans and Mobile, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, the boss of the National Hurricane Center, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In my office, on speakerphone, I had John McCain, Frank Stouffer, Will Brucis, and Michael Brown of FEMA. You might not like the government, but by God we had a hell of a communications system! We started out with a briefing by Max Mayfield, the head of the Hurricane Center, on what the storm was doing and what we could expect. It wasn’t good. The storm was strengthening, moving back up to hurricane strength, and getting stronger by the minute. At current trends it would go from a Category One up to Category Three by the 27th, and probably still be growing when it made landfall. It was aimed directly at New Orleans.