I chatted with him on the headset. “It’s been awhile since I was in an Army helo, Mister Hastings. The last time I was in one, it was a Huey. I bet none of the crew is even old enough to have flown a Huey!” I admitted.
“Don’t bet on it, Mister President,” came back the metallic reply. “I’m rated on them, and there’s a few of the other pilots and crew chiefs who have flown them.”
“Huh! You learn something every day! I have to admit, this is a whole lot nicer bird than a Huey.”
“Roger that, sir!”
By now it was obvious that there was some really serious damage. We started seeing a lot of trees and power lines down, and some flooding. Fort Polk was an absolute beehive of activity. I was greeted by a Brigadier General who I never really caught the name of but who seemed to be in charge. I got some good news and some bad news. The good news was that the weather was clearing and he would be sending pretty much every helo he had available on supply and rescue missions any moment now. He was already in contact with a Coast Guard admiral, a guy named Thad Allen, and they were divvying up the load. The Coast Guard helicopters were all rigged for winches and search and rescue. They would focus on that. The National Guard and Army would go to places they could actually land, and there were more than enough spots like that to keep them busy. The bad news was simple — the destruction was beyond massive!
With that he led us outside, to a Hum-Vee, and we headed over to the flight line. We took off again and headed towards New Orleans. As we neared New Orleans the true devastation was becoming apparent. It was all you could do not to stare and gawp like a rube. During the last night before Katrina made landfall, it had weakened back to a Category Three storm, and it looked like there wasn’t anything left. If it had still been at Category Five, it would have been as if God’s road scraper had gone through, and taken everything back down to the original mud flats.
Roads and bridges were gone, trees were down willy-nilly, houses and garages were simply gone, either under water or floating down river, or simply missing. I didn’t have words for it. Over everything was a bright sheen of sun reflecting on water, water that in most places was a brown and thick industrial sludge. They don’t call the Mississippi the Big Muddy for nothing, and now we were adding in millions of tons of God only knows what else. Below us I could see people on the roofs of houses or on what passed for a high spot, frantically waving for rescue. I could hear the co-pilot calling in coordinates to the command center for follow-up rescues. That would be somebody else’s job.
When we got into the city, the devastation was simply heartbreaking. I didn’t know how we would be able to describe it. Behind me the reporters and the cameramen were in shock, though you could faintly hear them pointing at things and talking to each other. The side doors were open, and they were shooting video and taking photos. Eventually we found the Superdome, which looked pretty beat up but was still standing. Earlier we had gotten reports that the roof was damaged and leaking, but otherwise holding together. We didn’t land, but instead turned east and kept flying. I was happy that I wouldn’t have to put up with Ray Nagin at the Superdome, which was about the only amusement I could find at the moment. After a few hours the destruction simply became numbing to me. This was a disaster beyond anything the nation had ever seen.
We landed at an emergency and refugee center outside of Mobile, where the Army had set up a FARP, a Forward Area Refueling Point of the type used to refuel helicopters in war zones. They fueled up the Blackhawks, and we went through the line at an emergency chow hall, and then headed back. I was beat by the time I made it back to Shreveport, after a delicious meal of an MRE and some bottled water at Fort Polk. I slept the entire trip back to Washington. I was still tired when I got off the plane, and fell asleep in Marine One flying back to the White House from Andrews. I went to bed after leaving instructions to let me sleep in, and that Will needed to set up a national broadcast the next night, and that Matt and Marc needed to write a speech. I was going to have to report to the American people how bad it was, and what we would need to do.
Chapter 160: Katrina Aftermath, Kurdistan Beginning
I don’t know which made more news that night, the first video of New Orleans after Katrina, or the video of Nagin being dragged out and cursing me out. I thought one of the better moments was when an ABC crew caught Nagin being loaded on the helicopter and trying to order the two soldiers to let him go. One of them, a black private, said, “Shut yo’ mouth, [BLEEPED], and git yo’ ass on the bird!”
The other soldier, a white corporal, laughed and added, “Yeah, y’all’s getting a free trip to the Big Easy!”
It got better when Charlie Gibson reported that Nagin had refused to order the evacuation of New Orleans, and that when I had overruled him, he had hung up on the President of the United States. While he refused to name his source, he reported multiple confirmations of the story. I couldn’t be surprised. We had almost a dozen people on that first conference call, and God only knew how many more were listening in over speakerphone. All this made for some fascinating comments from the nightly comics. It did not make Nagin look good.
For the next few weeks, right through the end of September, the only thing on the news was Katrina, Katrina, Katrina. The destruction was simply mind-numbing. While the photos of New Orleans under 20 feet of water were riveting, vastly more damage was actually done to coastal communities from Florida to Texas. In most of these towns and cities everything man-made was destroyed! Ninety-plus percent of the homes were gone, and the remaining ones were condemned. Ditto businesses; ditto ditto every church, school, hospital, clinic, police and fire station, etc. Every bridge was washed out, every road was cut, and every telephone pole and power line was down. Every single road was blocked by hundreds of trees. There was no electric, phone, or cell service, and every single transformer and substation was blown. Every radio, television, and cell tower had toppled. We could bring in every spare piece of equipment from around the nation and it still wouldn’t be sufficient. Refugees in the millions were displaced, more than during the Dustbowl of the Great Depression. If John Steinbeck was still alive and was writing The New Grapes of Wrath, the Joads would live in Pass Christian, Mississippi, and would move to a trailer park in Beaumont, Texas, the day before Rita hit.
To add insult to injury, roughly a month after Katrina, Hurricane Rita slammed into the northeast Texas coast. Prior to Katrina, Rita would have been an unimaginable disaster in its own right. Compared to Katrina, Rita was small potatoes, and never got the press it truly deserved. Many of the repairs underway in Louisiana were destroyed, and worst of all, many of the refugees had been relocated to eastern Texas, and now went through it all over again. Thousands of people were suffering from post-traumatic stress, the same as some soldiers did after combat. Mike Brown had returned to Washington after a couple of weeks in Louisiana; when Rita was announced, he simply hopped on a plane and flew to Texas without prompting. He earned his paycheck that fall, in spades!
The good news was that by being proactive at the start and forcing the mandatory evacuation early, we managed to minimize the loss of life. Rather than the almost 2,000 dead that I knew could have happened, we lost just under 250. It was still too damn many, but a lot of people had been saved, and rescue operations had been much better coordinated and quicker than they could have been. I didn’t need to fire Michael Brown, for instance, and he and John McCain got a lot of very favorable press for how they had handled things. I was content to let them, since John was going to need some help when he announced he was going to run for my job.