Hurricane Katrina

The Bush presidency was largely shadowed by two events over which he initially had little control: the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane

Katrina, which swept across Florida and into the warm waters of the Gulf Coast in August 2005. On the morning of August 28, the National Weather Service released so dire a warning about Katrina— “devastating damage,” “most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks”—that some broadcasters refused to read it, thinking it might be a hoax. State and federal officials ordered mandatory evacuation of the Louisiana coastline.

Millions fled in their cars, clogging the highways. But of the half million residents of New Orleans,

100,000 remained, many of them poor African Americans who lacked access to automobiles. As rain started to fall that evening, some 10,000 took refuge in the New Orleans Superdome stadium.

Early the next morning Katrina crashed ashore. Within minutes, it destroyed nearly every building in Plaquemines Parish. Winds approaching 150 miles per hour ripped two holes in the Superdome. By afternoon, the hurricane had moved north, dumping more water along the way, swelling the rivers, streams, and canals that emptied into the Gulf. Within hours, rising waters spilled over the banks and collapsed canals.

Downtown New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Then the levees at Lake Pontchartrain broke, flooding much of New Orleans.

Rural areas were hit equally hard. Waters rose so rapidly that thousands sought refuge on their roofs; many drowned when rising waters trapped them in attics. At St. Rita’s Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, water rose to the ceiling of the one-story building in twenty minutes. Frantic workers attempted to float bed-ridden elderly out of windows on mattresses; within an hour thirty-five were dead.

By that evening, much of New Orleans was underwater. Some 25,000 people crowded into the Superdome. Food and water grew scarce. Fights broke out. When officials locked the Superdome’s doors, the thousands left outside went to the nearby Convention Center, surged past security guards, and took possession of the complex.

At first, no one comprehended the dimensions of the catastrophe. Communication systems failed. The winds knocked out power and phone lines and cell phone towers; those cell phone towers that remained standing were overloaded. Over the next three days, the situation worsened. Over a million people had been displaced from their homes. In the heat and humidity, dead bodies, sewage, rotting food and plants, and factory effluents combined to form a fetid and toxic inland sea. The Convention Center, which now housed 20,000, descended into anarchy. There were reports of rape and murder. Throughout the storm-devastated region, looting became widespread; public order collapsed.

“Mr. President, we need your help,” declared Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. But TV crews arrived on the scene long before assistance from the Federal Emergency and Management Agency (FEMA). Television viewers were outraged to see footage of the dead floating in pools of filth or abandoned in wheelchairs.

Yet Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security (which oversaw FEMA), expressed satisfaction with its efforts. “Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed—things are going relatively well,” he declared. By then, more than 1,300 were dead.

Many shared in the blame. For decades, engineers had warned that the levees and canals in New Orleans could fail, but little was done to strengthen them. Environmentalists had complained of the overdevelopment and erosion of the coastal marshes and wetlands whose vegetation sponged up excess water, but their warnings, too, had been mostly ignored. Officials in New Orleans had neglected to devise an evacuation plan for those without cars; worse, one-sixth of the police force abandoned the city before the storm struck. Mayor C. Ray Nagin inexplicably took refuge in the twenty-seven-story Hyatt; when he ventured down the stairs—the elevators ceased working when power failed—his statements were emotional and confused. In Washington, FEMA director Michael Brown was so worried about making a mistake that he failed to do much at all—the worse mistake possible. Bush erred in publicly complimenting the beleaguered FEMA director: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” a statement so obviously at variance with public perception that it became an instant joke. Within a week Brown was demoted; soon afterward he resigned.

Katrina was not the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. In 1900 a hurricane destroyed Galveston, then the largest city in Texas, killing

10,000. In 1906 an earthquake hit San Francisco, ignited hundreds of fires that burned 500 blocks of the city, and killed 700—a larger proportion of the population than perished in Katrina. But apart from Katrina’s terrible human toll, the hurricane pointed up the nation’s vulnerability. If Homeland Security could not get buses or water to New Orleans in a timely fashion, how could it protect the nation from determined terrorists or respond effectively should they mount another attack?