Rebuilding After Hurricane Katrina

Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently returned from a trip to the devastated areas. While he was there, he wrote about searching for salvation in Biloxi, revealing the oft-ignored poorest residents in New Orleans, and doubting that this White House is up to the job of reconstruction.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was online Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss his recent columns on Hurricane Katrina and how the aftermath exposes problems of poverty and government failure.

Read recent columns: It's the Feds' Job.

No Longer Invisible.

Hard Path to Salvation.

The transcript follows.

____________________

Eugene Robinson: Hi, folks. I'll be here for the next hour to chat, mostly about Katrina and the drowning of New Orleans. I spent last week down there, and frankly am still coming to terms with some of the devastation and suffering I saw. One example: Remember those 45 bodies they discovered in the hospital on Monday? Last Thursday, I motored past that hospital several times in a boat. It was abandoned, spooky, ruined. I have to assume that those people had already died by then. But how can I be sure?

_______________________

Oklahoma City, Okla.: Your most recent column ends by claiming that the "ultimate responsibility" for reconstructing the Katrina-hit areas belongs to President Bush. Having been through two fairly major disasters (the 1995 OKC bombing and some pretty big tornadoes in central Oklahoma in 1999) I can tell you that the ultimate responsibility is broadly shared, from federal programs administered by FEMA and the Small Business Adminstration to private insurance, charities and plain old-fashioned sweat . . . people also have to get up and get busy and do some things for themselves. "Oh please we are entirely helpless" is not playing well in the rest of the country, and neither is "it's all George Bush's fault." S--t happens, life is sometimes unfair, and in the end we all need to help, but I will tell you that I know otherwise very generous people who have told me they aren't giving any money to Katrina relief until the whining and blame-laying stops. I'm afraid your columns contribute to that.

Eugene Robinson: There's a difference in this case, however. You're right that the Oklahoma City bombing and the tornadoes were "fairly major disasters," but this is a different order of magnitude. Not even close. An entire major American city is abandoned; most of it is ruined. The only institution big enough to handle a situation of this scale is the federal government. It's nice to think that people will somehow all pull together and fix the place up, but this is just overwhelming.

_______________________

Burnsville, N.C.: Do we really want Bush's government to "help " rebuild the Gulf? Everything else he's helped with has turned to crap. Is there any effort to reclaim building materials? They could block the first floor of N.O. and fill in with all the brick, block, concrete, asphalt and get above sea level.

Eugene Robinson: The thing is, it's our government, not his. And again, I just don't know of any institution big enough to get its arms around the situation other than the federal government. I assume there will be some thought of reclaiming building materials, but a lot of that stuff will be useless. Trying to raise the elevation of some neighborhoods is an idea that will probably be discussed, especially in places like the Lower Ninth Ward that might have to be essentially bulldozed.

_______________________

Fairfax, Va.: Of the many things I can't understand, the most difficult to understand is why did it took several days to get help to Charity Hospital. How can this be?

Eugene Robinson: That's a good question, but I'm afraid there's no good answer. There will be investigations and reviews, and maybe we'll find out. But basically, it seems to me that all systems broke down. At some point, someone probably realized that help should be sent to all the hospitals. But that person probably had no way to communicate with the people who would have actually done the rescues. Even now, there are neighborhoods that haven't been systematically examined for victims; just yesterday, they pulled out a survivor.

_______________________

Maryland: "Farrakahn also endorsed the theory that one of the New Orleans levees was preemptively dynamited to spare wealthy white suburbs at the expense of poorer black neighborhoods."

Is Farrakahn the black Lyndon Larouche? Who writes this guys stuff?

Eugene Robinson: I spoke with a surprising number of black New Orleanians who believed that somehow black neighborhoods had been sacrificed to save the French Quarter and the Garden District. I am convinced that this is not true, but I think the fact that so many people believed this conspiracy theory gives us some sense of the racial divide that existed pre-Katrina.

_______________________

Chapel Hill, N.C.: Hi Eugene:

I also sent this to you via email; apologize for the duplication.

I'm a black person, and have been watching the Katrina disaster with horror and, unfortunately, cynicism. There's been wide reporting about the racial divide in responses to the hurricane relief effort, but Dan Froomkin makes an excellent point. Regarding the latest Gallup poll numbers ( Was Kanye West Right? ):

"But consider the absolute numbers: Three out of four blacks, one out of four whites, and one out of three people across the country regardless of race actually believe that President Bush doesn't care about black people.

Sorry, but the question: "Does the president of the United State care about black people" should be a no-brainer. /Of course he does/ should be the overwhelmingly common answer.

Here's a question for Washington's punditocracy: What percentage of people believing that the president doesn't care about black people should be considered alarming?"

How would you respond to that question?

Eugene Robinson: I was struck by those numbers too. I looked at the poll, and the number of African Americans in the sample was fairly small. I'm not disputing the poll's findings, just suggesting that it would be a good idea to confirm them with a larger sample. That caveat aside, these are hair-on-fire alarming numbers, in my view. If the true picture is anything like what those numbers show, it's just astounding -- three out of four black people in this country believing that the president couldn't care less about them. Wow.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: Have you read the article in the latest issue of Newsweek regarding Bush's seeming indifference for several days to the disaster on the Gulf Coast and his staff's reluctance to bring him bad news or tell him he is wrong? If so, your reaction?

Eugene Robinson: In fairness to the president -- hey, I don't get to write those words very often -- as I read the Newsweek piece, he wasn't so much indifferent as uninformed. But he was uninformed, I think, because he seems to be oddly incurious.

_______________________

Alexandria, Va.: I've heard that the panicked, looted sections of the crisis area were really rather limited, and that there were plenty of other areas from the New Orleans suburbs and stretching across the rest of the coastline where the remaining victims quietly and as effectively as possible pulled each other from the wreckage, pooled their resources, and got to safety without resorting to mayhem. Did you get out to see some of those areas and talk to those people?

Eugene Robinson: Yes, but you should also realize that the situation you describe was also what happened in most of urban New Orleans. There was some genuine violence and looting, certainly. But even though there was some mayhem, there was far more reported mayhem. Take all the "sniping," for example. One of the military relief commanders, an Army general, was openly skeptical of all the sniping reports in a briefing I attended. He suggested, and this was later borne out, that in some cases people were firing shots in an attempt to draw the attention of rescuers. One day, I heard a woman call in to a radio show and report that police officers were pinned down by snipers in and around St Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. I happened to be in front of the cathedral at the time, and nothing of the sort was happening.

_______________________

Winnipeg, Canada: Regarding deliberate dynamiting of levees, I read somewhere that in 1927 poor areas were deliberately flooded to spare wealthier areas. This event would be within living memory of some residents of New Orleans, and known by first-hand accounts by many others. Regardless of the truth of today's accusations, it would not be much of a leap for poor residents to conclude "they're doing it again" when the water started to rise.

Eugene Robinson: You're right -- in the great 1927 flood, the city was saved when officials dynamited some levees, which had the effect of flooding some poor areas. So people might have had a sense of deja vu.

_______________________

Munich, Germany: I keep reading about the toxicity of the flood waters in New Orleans.

Where does this toxicity come from and what will be left of old New Orleans if it's so poisonous?

Eugene Robinson: The flood waters are awful. They are laden with bacteria from raw sewage and decomposing animal and human corpses. That problem will go away, in time, but more persistent are the heavy metals and other toxic substances that have been leached out of the soil or released from businesses such as dry cleaning establishments etc. New Orleans is a center of the petrochemical industry, and thus is hardly pristine. There's even a Superfund site in the heart of the city. I worry about the persistence and long-term health impacts of these substances.

_______________________

Stevensville, Md.: What's your opinion on the State of Louisiana charging individuals with negligent homicide at nursing homes and hospitals? How many counts of negligent homicide? Will the mayor of New Orleans and the La. governor be charged with I wonder? It's incredibly hypocritical of the state to bring criminal charges against citizens who regrettably had as much lack of foresight to heed all the warnings to leave that they did. Wouldn't a mayor who was intimately aware of the unique risk to his city for catastrophic flooding, and who could have organized bused evacuations for groups incapable of leaving be charged for his negligence? An ugly state of affairs.

Eugene Robinson: And it's going to get uglier. I am certain that heinous criminal acts were committed during this flood -- and also certain that sorting out what was a criminal act, and what was an act of survival, will be next to impossible. Some things seem fairly clear -- apparently, the owners of the nursing home were offered the chance to evacuate the patients and refused. Looting a big-screen television set or an armful of jewelry would be clearly criminal, it seems to me. But there are a lot of other situations that will fall into a gray area.

_______________________

Bowie, Md.: Parts of the federal government worked very well during Katrina. The Tropical Prediction Center (National Hurricane Center) gave very accurate warnings two days in advance; the director made phone calls before then to emergency managers and knew the managers well enough for them to take the calls seriously. The Coast Guard did a heroic job of rescuing people and didn't wait for specific requests.

The federal government can do wonders under the right people, right conditions and enough support. My impression is that FEMA worked much better under Clinton.

The federal government also needs to take advantage of people who want to help. From what I've read FEMA actually discouraged some people from helping.

As for bellyaching, "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen". I believe Harry Truman said that. I also believe he had a sign on his desk, "The buck stops here".

Eugene Robinson: Right you are, in my view. The Bush administration put FEMA under the control of one of Bush's most important Texas political operatives (Allbaugh) and then under the control of that operative's college roommate (the disastrous Michael Brown). This at a time when, as the president reminds us, our cities are under threat of terrorist attack, not to mention natural disasters. Also, putting FEMA under Homeland Security seems to have accomplished nothing but add another level of bureaucracy.

_______________________

Wheaton, Md.: What are your thoughts about a truly mandatory evacuation order? Should people be forced to leave to save their lives or do they have a right to stay and possibly die?

Eugene Robinson: A good question. I guess I think that if people have the means to leave under an evacuation order and can't be persuaded to go, then I'd be uncomfortable marching them out at gunpoint. The problem in New Orleans, though, was that a lot of people didn't have any way to leave -- they didn't have cars, bus service had already ended, they didn't have money to stay in hotels, they didn't have friends in other cities who had enough space to accommodate them, they certainly didn't have enough money for air fare, and the planes had stopped flying anyway. They were stuck. They weren't given a genuine option to leave.

_______________________

Louisville, Ky.: I spent a week in New Orleans last December with a non profit group. We stayed on Canal St right by the French Quarter and all that involves, but I also spent an afternoon in the Ninth Ward. I definitely got to see some of the poverty and abject conditions close up.

But New Orleans is hardly an isolated example. In every major city I've lived in, there have been extremely impoverished neighborhoods, very often inhabited by minorities.

This is an excellent opportunity for Americans to have a frank conversation with ourselves as to how to deal with what should be a national embarrassment. Considering the last few election campaigns, I don't think that we're mature enough to have that conversation.

Do you think the President cares? About black people? About poverty? About oppressive conditions American citizens are living in today, and that are getting worse?

Eugene Robinson: I agree that this tragedy compels this nation to have a discussion about race and poverty. Anyone who disagrees, well, I'm sorry but go down to New Orleans and then come back and tell me what you think. If you had money, you left the city with your insurance policies in your pocket; you've lost a lot, but you'll recover. If you had no money, you stayed and endured days of squalor and mayhem at the Superdome or the convention center; maybe you never made it out of your house. The class divide and the racial divide overlap almost precisely. We can't pretend these things aren't true.

_______________________

Washington, D.C. - Different Perspectives: I have guests in my home who were evacuees and they have some radically different perspectives on some of what we saw in the media.

Examples: 1. People were shooting near (not at) the helicopters because all their attempts to otherwise flag them down were ignored.

2. People in the convention center attacked police/authorities because they did not have the perspective that we did on CNN. They had no information at all. And based on the lethal combination of rumor, black history, fear, hunger and abandonment, from their perspective they were being held captive to be killed. It WAS the apocalypse in some people's views, not just similar to it.

What's your thoughts on these different perspectives?

Eugene Robinson: I mentioned in an earlier answer that yes, a lot of people were shooting in an attempt to attract the attention of rescuers. And you bring up a really important point -- people in the Superdome and the convention center had no information about what was going on. None. I'm convinced that if people had been told what was going on, they would have been more cooperative and less agitated -- the same as you or me.

_______________________

Options to leave: Besides not having options.. the government set up the Superdome as a shelter of last resort.. Not only did that not work out, it probably gave people a false sense of well, it can't be that bad if they're housing people in the city.

Eugene Robinson: That's true. Mayor Ray Nagin said last night on Nightline that in retrospect, his basic plan -- get people to relatively high ground at the Superdome and wait for the cavalry -- was not reasonable, and I agree. Everyone knew that if a hurricane of more than Category 3 hit the city, the levees couldn't hold and there would have been flooding. As daunting as the idea of evacuating a whole major city might seem, that was really the only thing to do. That said, 80 percent of the city's residents did find a way out.

_______________________

Wheaton, Md.: Back to my evacuation question where you said that a lot of people didn't have any way to leave. So how do we we safely and quickly move tens of thousands of people if there are no trains or planes and buses hold maybe 60 people tops?

Eugene Robinson: You don't. You have to arrange, in advance, for trains and buses (lots of buses) to be available to get people out of the city in a dire emergency. That's an enormous undertaking, but since New Orleans was living under the threat of a catastrophic flood, and since everyone knew the city was threatened, it would have made sense to have a doomsday plan in place -- a real plan, one that would work. Evacuating New Orleans is too big a job for a city government, or even a state government. The feds should have been involved as well.

_______________________

Silver Spring, Md.: I think government mismanagement, incompetence, New Orleans geography and just the sheer scale of the disaster played much bigger roles than racism ever could. I'm white and donated several hundred (company matched) dollars for hurricane relief. I hope that makes me less of a racist.

Eugene Robinson: I think racism made it worse, but let's disagree -- let's talk about it. And I'm sure your donation will be much appreciated. It's certainly much-needed.

Folks, thanks so much for clicking in, and I'm sorry I couldn't get to all of your questions. I'll try to do this again soon. The impact and lessons of Hurricane Katrina will be with us for a long, long time. I'm planning to head back down to New Orleans within the next couple of weeks, and I'll let you know what I find.

_______________________

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.