Hurricane Katrina: Breach of Faith
Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans

Jed Horne
Author and Metro Editor of the Times-Picayune
Tuesday, August 29, 2006 12:00 PM

Jed Horne, author of "Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast," and metro editor of the Times-Picayune, was online Tuesday, August 29, at Noon ET, to discuss the future of New Orleans after Katrina.

The transcript follows.

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Denver, Colo.: Hi Jed. Thanks for taking questions. Comment and a question: The more I read about the lack of resources being dedicated to bring New Orleans back to it's pre-Katrina state, including bringing back residents who want to come home, the more ashamed I am to be an American. Question: We've clearly seen a lack of willpower on the part of the white house to do what needs to be done. Have any congressional leaders (other than senators or representatives from the gulf states) been calling for the use of more federal resources? Any potential presidential candidates making this an issue? And I don't mean just whining for the cameras . . .I mean actually pushing for a greater federal role. Thanks.

Jed Horne: Slowly, and in part thanks to the effort of local citizens who have physically dragged them down here, members of Congress are starting to get the message.

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Philadelphia, Pa.: Is it true that a doctor who had operated on a family member of Al Gore's called for assistance and that Al Gore arranged for a helicopter to assist the doctor at his hospital? Should we find some irony that Gore could get a helicopter to New Orleans while Bush dawdled?

Jed Horne: I haven't heard that story, but it's an intriguing one. There are ironies aplenty at every turn. How about the doctor who was administering CPR on a dying patient at the New Orleans airport when he was pulled away because he didn't have FEMA certification?

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PhilaU 3: A year after Hurricane Katrina hit, not much progress has been made in the New Orleans. There has been speculation that the reason the regions in the South haven't been helped as much is because of the heavy black population. Do you think that race played a role in the action taken to rescue and rebuild the South?

Jed Horne: I think the failed federal response -- the terrible and deadly delay before getting help here -- was a mix of several things. Fundamentally, New Orleans is not a city where a Republican administration feels at home. It is a black city; it's Democratic; it's in a state with one of the few Democrat governors in the South. The Republican Senators who reviewed the federal failure spoke of a "failure of initiative." That's not a bad way to put it. I have spoken of an "inhibited" response. Blacks did not figure prominently in the constituency that elected Bush. I think he knows that. Perhaps he even regrets it. Is that racism? Politics as usual? I leave that to you.

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Maryland : How responsible is Mayor Ray Nagin for the lack of progress in the New Orleans clean-up? Is he as incompetent as FEMA officials?

Jed Horne: Nagin is not a bad mayor. Be for the storm, he was doing a good job in allowing the US Attorney to attack corruption at City Hall -- a longtime problem down here. But he's not been very effective sine the storm. He believes in letting market forces take the place of government-directed planning. Maybe he's right, or will be proved right by history. But a lot of people down here yearn for leadership. It has definitely slowed the planning process. Debris removal has been more FEMA's failure.

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St Louis, Mo.: I am so sick of hearing about the Katrina "refugees" who were given housing, food, clothes and toys yet can't get off their rears to get a job. That one white lady that was profiled on Dateline with her almost "dead" son was given everything and couldn't AFTER ONE YEAR find a job in North Carolina. She was overweight -- obviously ate well - the son was adorable and well fed -- but she couldn't find a job. And she was a waitress. Gimme a break. North Carolina is economically sound and waitress jobs are available. She just chose to sit on her rear and take hand-outs. And she is just one example of thousands.

When will these people take personal responsibility for their situations???

Jed Horne: I would not see her as representative of all evacuees. When you're talking hundreds of thousands of people, you're going to get some slugs, some hard workers, some thieves and then a whole lot of people who are just plain traumatized. Think about it: your house, your family and everything you've ever known has been swept away. You find yourself in totally unfamiliar circumstances. It may take a time to find your way back to that waitress job.

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Jed Horne: Welcome y'all. Keep the questions coming. I'll get to as many as I can - Jed

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Lyon, France: If another hurricane was to hit that region, do you believe the residents would evacuate or ignore the danger and stay as they did with Katrina?

Jed Horne: More would evacuate. But not as many as should.

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Virginia: Mayor Nagin refused to let hundreds of school buses to evacuate his people. And he get away from criticism because he is black.

Jed Horne: He has been roundly criticized for that -- most recently by you.

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Rockville, Md.: Excluding this week, when was the last time President Bush made a trip to the region?

Jed Horne: I believe he's made a total of eleven trips. I forget when the last one was. His presence here is welcome, but doesn't do much more than tie up traffic. Fortunately, other parts of the federal government are working more consistently.

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City planning question: I was curious if there are any plans to limit development in hazardous areas (say along the coast or in the lowest lying regions)? Also, do you know if the urban and regional planning will be significantly changed for the area? I would guess there is an unusual opportunity to remake the city from the ground up, and perhaps solve some of it's problems. Finally, my best wishes to all Katrina survivors in this challenging time.

Jed Horne: Your question cuts to the heart of continuing controversy. Mayor Nagin scuttled a planning process that recommended a moratorium on rebuilding certain parts of the city until safety and "viability" could be assessed. Because he faced a re-election vote and feared alienating anyone, Nagin began handing out rebuilding permits to all who asked. The danger is that we will wind up with scattered redevelopment amid a sea of abandoned houses -- lacking density sufficient to support an urban infrastructure of sewerage, police, electricity schools etc etc. Let's hope not, but that's what happened outside Tokyo, for example, after the bombing in WW II.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello. Is it ok to travel to New Orleans for vacation? Will there be a Mardi Gras?

Jed Horne: Yes indeed. The New Orleans of interest to tourists -- the French Quarter, the Garden District etc -- was largely undamaged in the storm and flooding. And we had a pretty lively Mardi Gras earlier this year. Come on down!!

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Austin, Tex.: I think most everyone agrees that city, state, and federal authorities failed horribly in their response to Katrina. Very broadly, and trying not to think in terms of Republicans versus Democrats, what portion of the blame would you assign to each level of government?

Jed Horne: In my view, the mayor's office was a let-down, for reasons discussed already. The state has stepped up, however. Go. Blanco was criticized in September for not seeming strong on TV, but to me that was more a matter of style than substance. Since then Baton Rouge has been the guiding hand, mediating between the confusion in the city and the out-to-lunch aspects of the federal response. That said, I would reserve a compliment for Bush's liaison to the Gulf South, Don Powell. He has come to take his responsibilities seriously and has been an effective advocate for Louisiana after a somewhat shaky start.

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Gaiters, Md.: "Nagin is not a bad mayor."

That has got to be one of the funniest comments I've read on TWP chat in quite some time. Do you actually believe that? It's pretty clear from the evidence that he is as or even more culpable than federal and state governments in creating a disaster that was avoidable. Did we forget the images of hundred of school busses left to flood in parking lots that could have evacuated victims, Mr. Nagin stumping and whining expecting the federal government to come to the aid of a city that refused to help its own citizens, or the lawlessness that resulted from the inept police force under Mr. Nagin's control?

I find it amazing that Mr. Nagin is still in office, and has somehow forged himself a lucrative speaking career out of his pathetic incompetence!

Jed Horne: Nagin's failures have occurred in the aftermath of the storm under circumstances that no mayor has ever had to endure. The mayor has no control over the school system or its buses in this town. That does not make me a fan of Nagin at this juncture. I see a shocking lack of leadership just now. I fear that re-election -- which was as much due to the shortcomings of his opponent as to anything Nagin said or did -- has convinced him he's some kind of rock star. He's beginning to make a fool of himself.

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Crystal City, Va.: Hello and thanks for taking questions. I have to know, who has more authority over the city, the Governor or the Mayor?

Jed Horne: The mayor has quite a lot of power under the New Orleans city charter. The mayor brings certain status with her, but on most matters would have to defer to the mayor

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Columbus, Ohio: Hi. I'm a former New Orleans resident with family and friends still there. What bothers me is the "visual disconnect" between what people often see on TV (the seemingly normal French Quarter) and the enormous totality of destruction everywhere else. Except for this week's anniversary news shows, outside of New Orleans people just don't see pictures of the many neighborhoods that are just gone. I drove through Gentilly and Lakeview and Mid-town. It's ghostly. Why aren't the media outlets doing more to showcase what's still destroyed? That might help speed up Congressional response and other types of aid.

Jed Horne: You're right, and we can only hope that anniversary media attention will set the record straight.

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Arlington, Va.: I've heard that of all the municipalities that were affected by Katrina, New Orleans is the only one to not have signed off on a reconstruction/redevelopment plan. Is this true? If so, why do you think this is the case? Is the nature of the destruction in New Orleans so different than St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, etc.?

Jed Horne: New Orleans is much the biggest planning challenge because it was much the biggest entity to have been destroyed. The state has intervened to put together the planning blueprint that Nagin couldn't seem to produce at the city level.

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Winnipeg, Canada: I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone, but do you think that maybe the slow rebuilding process might be because the New Orleans area cannot withstand another Katrina, and authorities don't want to rebuild a city that might be under water again in a few weeks? In a separate but related question, I understand that a lot of the overcrowding at the Superdome and convention center happened because the mayor and police in neighboring suburbs stopped people from fleeing on foot through their areas at gunpoint. Will the national guard prevent this from happening again?

Jed Horne: I'm sure there are agencies of government taking a wait-and-see attitude on rebuilding New Orleans. It's a foolish posture: you can't NOT have a city at the mouth of the continent's most important waterway, the Mississippi/Missouri/Ohio system. (Ask the Dutch) Your second question is rooted in an incident that happened (folks turned back from a suburb as they tried to cross a river bridge on foot) but that was some days after the Superdome and Convention Center filled up.

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Arlington, Va.: A year later, reading stories, watching retrospectives, and simply thinking about Katrina still haunts me, bringing back memories of staying up all night watching TV - including WW from NO LA - feeling so helpless, for those along the Gulf Coast who were helpless at that time. Our government's response continues to infuriate me, with the lack of respect and compassion for fellow humans, fellow Americans. What can we - people who are hundreds or thousands of miles from NOLA, but people who care - do to help? How can we make a difference? How can we help others wake up to the problems that still exist? Thanks for your thoughts.

Jed Horne: There has been a wonderful outpouring of support for New Orleans from people all over the country: volunteers trouping down here to gut houses, church groups sponsoring needy families, cash donations to philanthropies and continuing outrage in the political sphere -- of the type you express -- that has forced the attention of congress. I don't want to steer you to any philanthropy in particular, but there are plenty out there fighting the good fight. I believe the figure is $577 million in donations to the Katrina disaster recovery in the past year (a figure that is certain to trail off drastically in the next year, alas.)

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Alexandria, Va.: First, kudos to the Times-Picayune on its excellent coverage of the city over the last year (and for bringing us Chris Rose's superb columns).

Second, as a New Orleans native, I am continually saddened by the failure of leadership going on at all levels, but not surprised given historical politics. It seems to me that rather than seize on this as a opportunity to really make things happen -- to change the way things are done in the city for the better and to reframe the debate, politicians at the local and national level have fallen into the same tired debates and the same way of doing things (everything is about race, we fight about who is more a victim, politics and image matter more than actual reality, everything must get mired by competing interests until everyone is paid off somehow).

What I see is a complete failure of government to respond to people's needs but also a complete failure of people to recognize the limitations of government. Where is the pressure from the people on their leaders to be more efficient and to seek solutions by tapping into private resources? You can't just sit back and wait for market forces to work -- you have to help the market exist first. What happened to leaders who take charge? Do the elected officials have any idea how bad their dithering looks to the rest of the country? And how demoralizing it is to those who want nothing more than the city they love to get back on its feet? I thought that one year out people would be moving back. Instead more and more of my friends and relatives are making the painful decision that they have to leave to survive. Meanwhile, various local and federal officials simply keep pointing blaming fingers at each other rather than getting to work. What a waste.

Jed Horne: Thanks for the kind words. I'll share them with Chris. There have been some real reforms of government attempted since the storm, things that wouldn't have been possible without the crisis. For these we can mainly thank the state-level Louisiana Recovery Authority. It was their agenda, and Blanco's people got a lot of it enacted: consolidation of the levee boards; a take-over of the school system; propositions to present to voters that would streamling New Orleans government, in particular by consolidating sheriffs departments and assessorships. And, yes: you're right: you have to help the market exist, to rig it. But that's implicitly what's going on with the tax incentives offered through the Gulf Opportunity Zone programs for development, also through the housing rehab and buyout programs that give homeowners a choice on whether to stay or go.

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Cincinnati, Ohio: How can Mr. Bush keep his public image as tough on terrorism when Home Land Security and FEMA, the HLS first responder, are broken? Has not the public connected the dotes and realize that the politicians are bragging about agencies who can not respond to terrorism and disasters whether man made or nature made.

Jed Horne: In my book, I try to connect the dots. Basically, the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Iraq War will be the two most important creations of the Bush presidency. In Katrina, DHS got its first test run. The results were shocking. And a hurricane is a slow-moving force of nature with which we are all very familiar down here on the Gulf. How will DHS do when it's something really new and freaky: a dirty bomb in the Washington subway or in the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River?

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Leesburg, Va.: As a former resident of Slidell, Louisiana, and a taxpayer, I'm appalled that billions are being spent to resurrect a city that was known to be at risk decades before the disaster hit. Has anyone floated the idea of moving most of New Orleans across Lake Ponchatrain where it might actually be on land above water? And -- One of the biggest reasons there were thousands of people along the gulf coast and in eastern New Orleans , as well as Slidell was the tireless efforts of senator John Stennis to pump up the local economy with federal dollars (e.g. Michaud and the Stennis Spaceflight Center). Stennis should take part of the blame for people being where they should have never been in the first place.

Jed Horne: The older parts of New Orleans, which are where most of the commercial and industrial infrastructure is located -- as well as the things of interest to tourism -- is above sea level, just like parts of Slidell. New Orleans also has the Mississippi River and one of the nation's major junctions of freight rail lines. I don't think you're going to see that moving to the suburbs any time soon.

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New Orleans, La.: Perhaps an example will help those not from here understand the slow progress in rebuilding? Suppose you lived in a flooded neighborhood. You may or may not have received your insurance money by now. If you have, you do not know whether to rebuild your house because you do not know whether the City will run services (electricity, water, sewer, etc.)to your neighborhood. Rather than have a plan, the mayor said he will wait to see which neighborhoods are "viable". So, you ask your neighbors, who are also undecided, what they are going to do. The result is paralysis as you wait for some decision.

Jed Horne: you have hit the nail on the head

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Alexandria, Va.: - just returned: I just returned from 5 days in NO on business and if anything I think the news reports are overstating how good things are there. There was one area we saw that was looking OK, the rest looked, honestly, like the hurricane had hit last week. I spoke to a couple members of the New Orleans Saints staff who felt like they were being pressured into a staying in a city that infrastructuraly can't support the team at this point in time. It was really bad. Do you think there is an attempt to overstate how things are going so as to escape criticism of the people/govt of NO?

Jed Horne: As I travel around the country, I meet people who think everything is fine in New Orleans so why are we bellyaching about something that happened a year ago. Then I meet people who think New Orleans is dead. The truth, as usual, is more complex. Parts of New Orleans are vibrant; parts are moribund. We could be wiped out in the next storm -- if we are so unlucky as to get a Katrina-like event back to back with Katrina -- but more probably we are going to see a very strong economic boom down here as the federal money ($10 billion or so) finally hits the streets. That begins this week. Entrepreneurs take note: there's a lot of money to be made in New Orleans!

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Seattle, Wash.: I was watching the NBC news special on Katrina last night, and was finally able to see the pictures of dead bodies that were present in the media in other nations. But I've noticed a lot of people seem to have watched the filtered media, and seem to blame people in New Orleans for being black, and think the anniversary is an excuse for racism. Why do you think this is happening? Are they in denial or is this so they can justify their own inactions in their minds?

Jed Horne: There's a lot of denial out there, and also a lot of racism. Watch out for both kinds of stupidity

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Washington, D.C.: Why are we encouraging redevelopment of an area heavily prone to massive natural disasters? Why not just move the people of New Orleans to a town at the foot of Mount St. Helens? What a waste of money! The support and aid of this country should be in the relocation of the citizens of the Gulf Coast region, not throwing them back into the toilet bowl the New Orleans will inevitably become within another 20 years.

Jed Horne: Because New Orleans is the city that commands the mouth of the continent's most important waterway and adjacent areas are the base for 40 percent of America's domestic production of oil and natural gas. Want to pay $5 a gallon for gas? Get rid of Louisiana. Then of course there's the issue of culture -- the food, the jazz, the heritage. Whatever happened to the can-do spirit of American enterprise? The idea that we can retreat from the mouth of the Mississippi is purely and simply decadent. What you do is you build a modern flood-defense around the infrastructure that's needed. If we've forgotten how, the Dutch would be happy to show us.

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Alexandria, Va.: Does New Orleans have any civic pride? I have seen so much aid and assistance go to a city that was nearly destroyed because of poor planning, but have yet to see a heartfelt thank you from anyone. All I see is complaining about not have enough handouts for an already impoverished region or that the handouts did not come fast enough.

The impression I see from media coverage, and it's not being spun this way, is that the rest of the country can not give enough fast enough to get the city back on its feet, and not a single person of authority is grateful for what they have received.

Jed Horne: There is a huge sense of gratitude for what's being done -- also a sense of how appallingly large the task is.

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Franklin, Ohio: I applaud the media's extraordinary reporting on the Katrina tragedy and the failure of Mr. Bush and politicians response. The images on the NBC and Brian Williams commentary on the "Thursday" (9/1/05) breakdown of law and order was horrific. Can this happen again? I do not see anyone addressing the root problems and causes.

Jed Horne: It can happen again, but I think Katrina has also engendered some reforms and progress. FEMA and the Army Corps really are trying to do better. New Orleans has at least committed to deal more responsibly with the evacuation of folks without cars. See earlier answer about government reforms.

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And I: am so sick of hearing self-righteous harpies like St. Louis make obnoxious judgments about the efforts and motivations of tens of thousands of people based on a ten minute profile of one person. Many of these people were poor to begin with, and then had everything familiar swept away by a disaster of epic proportions. I agree that personal responsibility is important, but ONLY those people who actually lived there have any idea what it's like to go through such a unique trauma. How long would it take any of us to recover? To obtain reproductions of our essential identifying documents necessary for work? To acclimate ourselves with a new city, a new public transportation system? And it's not like one individual's house was flooded....the entire infrastructure of a city was destroyed. And seriously, the overweight crack is just ignorant and ugly. I won't even get into the obvious fact that in modern America, many poor people are overweight precisely because they rely on cheap processed foods.

Jed Horne: good points

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PhilaU-1: All of my family lives in Mississippi where Katrina hit. They were directly affected by Katrina and are still living with damage. My brother recently visited N.O. and said that the smell was unbearable. When are the destroyed areas going to be back to normal and what are the plans to prevent this from happening again?

Jed Horne: One thing to remember is that by definition, a catastrophe is something that overwhelms out normal abilities to cope. I went to Kobe Japan last fall to see a city of roughly New Orleans' size that had been disaster-struck (an earthquake, in 1995) to roughly the same degree. Kobe today is a glistening rebuilt city -- but it took them 10 years and required some tough decisions.

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Arlington, Va.: My sympathies to your wonderful city. All the retrospectives in recent days have really brought back the sadness and anger I felt watching last year's events. Are any of the memorial commemorations scheduled for tomorrow? It seems to me that the hurricane caused did damage and loss of life than the levee breaks, which happened Sept 30.

Jed Horne: Thanks. The spirit of commemoration has been present here for more than a week and will continue, I'm sure for several more days. Actually the levees broke on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, one year ago today and they were commemorated this morning. (The flooding from those breaches is what took a day to reveal it's full scope.)

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Mason, Ohio: Thank you for your frankness and honest answers to the Katrina Disaster. What role has Karl Rove played in the funding of the recovery of the areas devastated by this hurricane?

Jed Horne: From what I know about Karl Rove, he doesn't have as much of a hand in funding decisions as in political spin-meistering. He is credited with Bush's mistaken effort to try to take control of the Louisiana National Guard as a way of making it look like Louisiana had screwed up the rescue effort and needed the big boys to come down and show them how to do it right. Blanco refused and the Republican senators reviewing the whole rescue mess concluded that she was right to do so. The rescue was not slowed by her action and had the Guard been taken into the US Army, as the Bush people were proposing, it would not longer have been available for police work (under the rules of posse comitatus) The partisanship that Rove embodies is unwelcome as we try to get all hands on deck to rebuild. This weeks version, as Bush tours the region, is to try to pretend that Republican Mississippi is doing ever so much better than Democratic Louisiana. In fact, Mississippi, though far less severely impacted by the storm, is still a disaster zone and the federal money has yet to reach the streets.

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Washington, D.C.: "the Dutch would be happy to show us." The last time I checked, the North Sea is not susceptible to category 4 hurricanes. Nature will have its way eventually. Anything man can build, nature can wipe out in an instant. I'm not suggesting the shuttering of an entire city, and I understand New Orleans' economic importance, but it doesn't take a city of over 1 million people to operate freight lines and gas refineries, most of which are 20-30 miles up the Mississippi from New Orleans.

I was in the city twice in the months before Katrina, and I saw a city that was in need of an evacuation then because of the crime and filth. I can only image how bad it is now. So why buoy up a city that was already sinking?

Jed Horne: New Orleans was a city of a half-million, not a million, and probably will come back as a city of 300,000. So in that sense, nature is working her way on us.

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Washington, D.C.: How many people did the Coast Guard rescue over the course of the storm? Wasn't that operation a success story?

Jed Horne: The Coast Guard did wonderful work. I don't have the number of recuses at my fingertips

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Charleston, S.C.: Why is New Orleans different than Charleston after Hurricane Hugo?

Jed Horne: Much bigger area of devastation but the real problem was this: the flood water sat in New Orleans for the better part of a month. Charleston got whipped and then the water went down. You have no idea what it does to a house to be submerged for a month.

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Fairfax, Va.: Has Fats Domino moved back to New Orleans?

Jed Horne: he's living across the river in Gretna. But he'll be back -- as will New Orleans!!

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Bethesda, Md.: A few months after Katrina we started hearing about companies connected with the Bush Administration that were getting bloated contracts for rebuilding/recovery. I haven't heard anything about it since. Was any of the corruption shamed into curtailment, or are they still making out well on the suffering of the region?

Jed Horne: Thanks for tuning in, folks. I'm told my time's up. Now for all my sloppy typing, your part is to say thank you by going out to buy "Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City." It reads like a novel, a tangle of lives that I follow through the storm and for many months afterward. Some are poor -- trapped on roof tops -- some are rich; black, white, politicians. There's the story of a jazz singer down here, Chairman Neville, who finds refuge on a rooftop, only to get raped by some freak who stalks her up there. There are very personal accounts from looters and from heroes, some famous, many unknown. The only requirement I placed on them is that they let me all the way into their heads so that I could let readers know exactly what it was like to be here through this extraordinary year. Their stories are incredible; likewise, their resolve to rebuild this city. You owe it to them to learn the lessons that we all have been taught by this disaster called Katrina. Thanks - Jed Horne

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