Hurricane Katrina: First Person

Washington Post staff writer Ann Gerhart just returned from a week of reporting for The Post from New Orleans. Her stories chronicled the plight of residents as flood waters following Hurricane Katrina devastated the city:

Inside the Superdome: 'And Now We Are in Hell' , (Post, Sept. 1)

Overnight Baton Rouge Becomes Largest City in Louisiana, (washingtonpost.com, Sept. 1)

A Tale of Two Ripples in the Tide of Humanity, (Post, Sept. 2)

The Plucky Few, (Post, Sept. 5)

Gerhart was online Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss her reporting from, and experiences in, New Orleans over the past week.

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Normal, Ill.: How many people are still in New Orleans? Are there any areas where normal live is continuing, such as restaurants and shops being open? How easy is it to get in/out of New Orleans now?

Ann Gerhart: Good afternoon, everyone. It felt amazing to sleep in my own bed last night after a week on the floor, and I feel privileged to have been a witness to help record this enormous catastrophe.

There is no normal life in New Orleans. All power is still out, and water remains in some places 20 feet deep There will be no normal life for months to come. I suspect, based on my reporting, that there are thousands still living there. Those who stayed relied heavily for information on the great broadcasters of AM radio, and the tales of chaos and misery at city shelters convinced many of them to stay put.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Did you have a "moment" during your week in N.O., when the devastation and tragedy of it all just sort of "hit" you? Can you describe the one image, or sound or smell that just completely captured the despair of it all?

Ann Gerhart: There was one moment when I lost my composure and wept, and that occurred late Saturday, when I entered the Louis Armstrong Airport for the first time. I had spent the day with rescue personnel using boats to pull people from their flooded homes, and it was hot and long and exhausting. When I reached the airport, the line of misery stretched for a half-mile---people waiting to be evacuated on buses--and they had been standing for nearly a dozen hours there, after an ordeal of four days in the Convention Center, then waiting outside it, and not waiting here. When I walked inside, there were dozens of very ill people laying side by side on the floor on stretchers; a nurse told me they were dialysis and diabetic patients, who had been there for four days. We caught each other's eye, and she bit her lip, and I started to cry.

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Alexandria, Va.: Why didn't New Orleans' mayor and his disaster team have the Superdome and the Morial Convention stocked before the storm -- so when the residents of New Orleans who were unable to get out of town -- for financial or health reasons -- there would be food and water. It is one thing to blame FEMA for their incompetence, but New Orleans could have also been prepared. Putting together an evac plan to the major shelters using public buses would not have been that difficult to implement.

Ann Gerhart: The only official shelter was the Superdome. The convention center became a hidden shelter when police, who were able to have next to no communication with anybody, began taking those they evacuated there. What shocked and angered so many, including reporters, was that no one noticed, in looking at satellite imaging for heat sources (i.e. living people) or in listening to television accounts that up to 20,000 people were in there, in the dark, with no food or water.

The levee broke. That changed everything. Yes, buses could have been used to transport to the Superdome, but once the streets flooded, they couldn't traverse the city. When I went inside the Superdome on Wednesday, the water I waded through was at least three feet, and still rising.

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California, Md.: Did you personally see incidents of violence in the evacuation centers or in the streets?

Ann Gerhart: You know, I did not. When I was in the Superdome, as dire as life seeemd, I did not feel personally at risk. I did have a commodity people desperately wanted---information. But "old-fashioned print" reporters, even in this era of instant technology, maintain one advantage: we don't have to carry a bunch of expensive equipment that makes us a target for thieves or flashpoint for anger. We can move more easily without attracting notice. That is what I tried to do. Additionally, I saw very little TV coverage in my week down there, and didn't get to read much coverage either---how much looting and violence was there really? Hard to say. Has someone actually seen photos of people carrying plasma TVs? Those I saw with shopping carts had them stuffed with food, or milk. That sort of thing.

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Pittsburgh, Pa.: Ann,

Was it true that gangs of thugs had taken over both the Convention Center and the Superdome and were responsible for unspeakable crimes? Was there ANY police presence at either of those sites for the first few days of the evacuation? And, finally, when it all settles down, do you believe any of the New Orleans police who were caught on tape looting stores of shoes, electronics, etc., will be criminally charged?

Ann Gerhart: Here again, I haven't seen the tape of NOPD looting. In one case, I heard from another reporter that one platoon did take food and water, because they said they had been essentially abandoned--left on their own, because they could not communicate.

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Los Angeles, Calif.: I'm concerned that with the current degree of bureaucratic fumbling going on with FEMA, etc., that we are not being given any honest feedback from the government about what is going on. They seem to indicate that everything is under control. What am I to believe?

Ann Gerhart: The biggest problem, across the board, is that all communication failed in the aftermath of Katrina. The local police could not talk to each other, or the state police, or the firefighters, or the federal authorities. No one could coordinate anything, for days. I was struck that the only thing that truly worked--the ONLY thing--was the old-school cheap transistor radio, using that reliable antiquated AM signal. These problems persist today, although cell service is getting better every day. It was nonexistent in New Orleans in the first few days. As for things being under control, I think that is an expectation that will not be met for months.

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Washington, D.C.: Had you been to New Orleans before?

Ann Gerhart: I have never been to New Orleans before, and more than once I felt sharp regret for that. The New Orleans of before will not return again.

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Herndon, Va.: Did you run into any of the Virginia Task Force teams (VATF1 from FFX, VATF2 from VB)? I've seen a lot of coverage of the Maryland teams, but I haven't heard much from the Virginia teams.

Ann Gerhart: One evening, I did talk to a pair of Virginia State Police helicopter pilots, who were flying back and forth between Baton Rouge and New Orleans delivering supplies, etc. They said the view from the air was staggering, and I wish I had gotten up with them to see that. The alligators in Lake Ponchartrain were many and big! And I don't like alligators---it's my one irrational fear.

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Alliance, Ohio: How did you take care of yourself while there? How did you find food and water yourself? Did you travel with a photographer as well?

Ann Gerhart: I stayed in Baton Rouge, on the floor in a room at the East Baton Rouge Parish Emergency Operations Center, where the officials were extraordinarily hospitable to those of us in the press. I went back and forth by car. I kept the trunk fully stocked with water and Chex Mix. I never had time to eat much--I can't say enough about the Hurricane Diet (all the Gatorade you can eat, Chex Mix and a banana a day, and only four hours of sleep!!!)---but there was plenty of it outside New Orleans. I traveled one day with the intrepid photographer Carol Guzy.

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Maryland: Having relatives in Baton Rouge I was wondering how the people in the rest of the Louisiana are adjusting and reacting to the influx of thousands of evacuees into their communities.

Ann Gerhart: This, I think, is one place the story goes from here: Following the lives of those residents who may never go home to New Orleans again. The Post had an excellent story I think on Sunday or Monday about how Baton Rouge,the state capital, is coping without doubling in size essentially overnight. Every single institution feels the wallop---the health care system, the public schools, which opened for the first time today, housing, infrastructure, etc. And there are cities all over the South and Southwest struggling with this rapid expansion. Officials need to freeze some transactions and land sales for 30 days, if it's not already too late, to be able to control their development and make a plan for it.

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Northern Virginia: With the water being pumped out now is it all just going back into the lake? If all of this water was contaminated are they making a bad situation worse? I realize they need to get the water out but it is now contaminated water going unfiltered into a lake that presumibly residents use somehow.

Ann Gerhart: Great question. I'm not a water expert, but local officials did have great worries about the environmental impact to the lake, where much effort and expense had just finally yielded some better results.

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Freeport, N.Y.: Thank you so much for taking questions. If the AM signal is working, didn't/doesn't that present an opportunity for some coordination, albeit perhaps limited, between emergency officials? Is the station being used to help coordinate the relief effort between different agencies?

Ann Gerhart: In short, no. And, officials need secure communication. They do broadcast info to the public. I'll say it again: Communication was the great failing. It's stunning that four years after Sept. 11, and with the knowledge that communication at Ground Zero was one of the major problems there, we don't have a better system. I asked the top FEMA pro on the ground--by that I mean a career disaster relief person, not political appointee Brown--how that could be, and he said, pointedly, but carefully, that if the taxpayers decide that is important, they can decide to fund it. I'm paraphrasing here.

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Washington, D.C.: There is nothing irrational about disliking alligators. We've heard about the contamination of the water flooding New Orleans. As the water is pumped back into the lake is there any attempt to filter or clean it? If not isn't this going to create a bigger problem for the lake?

Ann Gerhart: I don't know the answer to this. My instinct is that they're getting the water out as fast as possible, and if it's way complicated to get any filters working, that will happen later.

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Los Angeles, Calif.: Thank you so much for some excellent and compelling reportage on this catastrophe. I cannot imagine why any New Orleans residents insist on staying, even if they are hearing stories of misery about the shelters. Do they not realize how much peril they are exposing themselves to by staying? I worry for their safety.

Ann Gerhart: Thank you. As I said at the outset, I came away grateful to have been a witness. I was shocked when rescuers told me sometimes up to half the people they contacted refused to go. And I worry that keeping children in those conditions is pretty damn close to endangerment. Yet there is a flinty resilience to New Orleans people--all people, of course--that is creative and adaptive. We humans do prize control over our own lives. We are most reluctant to give it up.

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Geneva, Switzerland: What is the quickest way to hold people, from the president on down, accountable for the failed response to the hurricane and the levees breaking? Reports down the road won't do. People are wondering what all the funding for Homeland Security has been for, if this is the result. New Orleans was one of the country's largest ports, through which lots of oil flowed. A terrorist couldn't have done a better job.

Ann Gerhart: Your last sentence is an important one. I have heard federal officials repeatedly trying to distinguish between a terrorist attack and a natural disaster. I haven't gotten the difference. No matter the cause, what we have here is a catastrophic aftermath. I heard over and over much anger from all sorts of citizens---the displaced, the volunteers, the fortunate---that America is supposesed to be a can-do nation. And dozens of references to the war---how can we take over another country so quickly and not get to our own? how can we drop pamphlets translated into Farsi onto Muslims apprehensive about us but not bottles of water on parched people stranded on highways? ---and I haven't come up with an answer.

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Minneapolis, Minn.: Have there been any coordinated door-to-door search operations by boat? Are they only now starting with the 82nd Airborne's arrival?

If so, why the delay when there are (or were) likely many people trapped in attics or in rooms without access to the roof?

Ann Gerhart: It is coordinated, but it's cumbersome. A Coast Guard told me his unit was called up and when they arrived, the 36 guys used their six or eight boats to just start grabbing people. They found some Army truck and together they got out hundreds that first day. Then the FEMA convoy started, with a morning briefing and staging area, and 40 or 50 vehicles in it, and fits and starts about where to go, how to get there. Essentially, they could no longer be nimble.

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Newark, Del.: Ann, is this the most difficult story you've had to report? And if not, what trumped it? Your reporting has been remarkably detailed and well-written -- it was refreshing, if a little uncomfortable at times, to get such a clear picture of what's really going on down there.

Ann Gerhart: Yes. Most difficult.

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Fairfax, Va.: Ann, how were companion animals being treated? I keep thinking about all those people who stayed with their pets only to be told that they must leave them behind to die when they were evaculated. Was there evidence that the humane groups were being allowed to help the animals?

Ann Gerhart: A story I would have written if I were still there: My observation is that people who got out with their pets were in much better shape than most--emotionally, physically. You would see them in shelters petting them and giving them water, and the dogs would give comfort to others.

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Arlington, Va.: I have heard reports that there was no one left to be in charge at the Superdome. In one of your articles you mentioned that there were long lines for food and water in the Superdome. If there was no one in charge, who was passing out food and water?

Ann Gerhart: Again, communication: People were most restive because no one stood in the center of the dome each day, with a batter-powered mike, and said, "Here's what we know, and what we are trying to do." Yes, there were volunteers passing out food and water.

Thanks for writing in today. And thanks for reading and keeping the city and its residents in your thoughts.

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