National Book Festival: "The Great Deluge"

Historian Douglas Brinkley is the author of "Tour of Duty," "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc" and "Parish Priest." His most recent work is " The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast." He is a professor of history and director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and American Heritage magazines.

Douglas Brinkley was online Friday, Sept. 22 at noon ET to field comments and questions about his books and participation in the National Book Festival.

A transcript follows

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Douglas Brinkley: Hello everyone. As always, I'm glad to be online on washingtonpost.com. I'm looking forward to coming to the National Book Festival. Now, let's get to your questions.

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Alexandria, Va.: Hello, In what ways is the federal and Louisiana governments still lacking in recovery efforts and support to those displaced residents of Katrina? What more can be done to assist because that region needs more than the return of Monday Night Football to get back on its feet?

Douglas Brinkley: You're absolutely right.... The Saints winning the Monday Night Football game really helped the city's morale. The Super Dome is the landmark structure of New Orleans, the fact that it's reopening a year after the Katrina debacle is progress.

But New Orleans is a doomed city if we don't address the duel problems of coastal wetland restoration and rebuilding of the over 300-mile levy system.

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Rockville, Md.: Initial reports from the Super Dome were that all sorts of anarchy were going on and that the Feds refused food to those inside. Later reports painted a different picture. Did this set the tone for all the reporting? Star reporters were telling us of mass murder and rape and Feds starving people while the state/city made the decision to keep food out. Or am I misinformed? I was not there.

Douglas Brinkley: The media greatly exaggerated what was going on insdie the Super Dome. It was bad. A handful of people died. There was one suicide and one drug overdose, but the reason the media reported, at times, hundreds of dead was that the New Orleans Police Department was constantly exaggerating fact and spreading rumors.

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Arlington, Va.: You recently participated in a discussion/press conference with Spike Lee and HBO Films upon the release of Lee's documentary. What kind of things did you learn from his work and talking with him? Does his experience and investigation of the catastrophe mirror yours?

Douglas Brinkley: I encountered Spike Lee in the immediate weeks after Katrina. Where ever I was going to interview somebody for my book, he seemed to have already been there or had an appointment the next day. Instead of competing, we pooled together and developed a united front. He's a man of deep integrity and intelligence and it was a privelege to be part of his film. He plans on creating an ongoing television show for NBC about how New Orleans recovers from the aftermath of Katrina. Stay tuned.

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Fairfax, Va.: Could you tell us what it has been like at Tulane as the new semester begins? Surely the anniversary of Katrina must have been difficult. How has the school recovered? Are many students involved in the city's recovery?

Douglas Brinkley: Great question. The Tulane students have come back in droves. I'm extremely proud of them. On weekends, college groups go and gut houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East, Lakeview and other neighborhoods. There is a real spirit of Good Samaritanism on our campus.

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San Antonio, Tex.: I read a review of "The Great Deluge" in which the reviewer claimed that you savaged Mayor Ray Nagin. That remark made me seek out your nonfiction work at our local bookseller.

I found your accounting of events (including NBC's "Dateline" Stone Phillips's questions asked about Nagin's failure to prepare) to be fair, although they painted Nagin in an extremely poor light. The lack of local response in the face of the hurricane was particularly tragic, especially when contrasted with your storytelling in your book's opening pages, when obviously great care was taken to get stray dogs and cats out of the city before Katrina struck.

Do you think this criticism of how you portrayed Nagin in "The Great Deluge" is fair? Were you surprised that he was re-elected? More importantly, do you think it now wise, from an engineering standpoint, to rebuild those portions of New Orleans that were most devastated by the flooding?

Douglas Brinkley: I dealt with Mayor Nagin fairly in my book. It is not my fault that he spent the first days after the storm hiding on the 27th floor of the Hyatt, refusing to deliver a speech at either the Super Dome or the convention center, where a combined force of 40,000 (approximately 20,000 in the Super Dome and 20,000 in the convention center) were craving leadership. When I asked Mayor Nagin why he didn't address these crowds. His exact response to me was, "I didn't have a bullhorn." My response was "Cup your mouth and shout."

As for the levies, we need a major public works project to be implemented in the Gulf South. We have the technology to build the levies to a Category 5 Hurricane safety requirement. What we don't have right now is the willpower. If the Dutch saved Amsterdam and the Italians saved Venice, can't the United States save New Orleans?

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Washington, D.C.: Mr. Brinkley,

Your book was harrowing in some parts and I couldn't get through every word, however I think it should be required reading for our government leaders.

Isn't it awful how the nation's attention has once again returned to business as usual -- Iraq, etc. -- instead of planning how to help poor Americans and to prevent a repeat of this disaster?

Douglas Brinkley: You're right. It's very sad to learn that our government will abandon a region at the drop of a time, when the price tag for fixing it gets too high. President Bush had promised at his Jackson Square speech that he was a committed to addressing the crisis of poverty in America made vivid by Katrina. He has yet to live up to that promise.

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Pittsburgh, Pa.: What physical evidence is there to disprove (or corroborate) the conspiracy-theorists' claim that the federal government blasted holes in the levees to spare wealthier neighborhoods in New Orleans, while flooding the lower 9th?

Douglas Brinkley: The levees were not dynamited. That did, of course, happen in 1927. Also there is some evidence that when Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in 1965 that the Lower Ninth Ward was purposely flooded as a way to protect the wealthier neighborhoods.

This time around, however, it looks like a rogue barge smashed into the levee along the Industrial Canal, which accounts for the loud boom noise residents swear they heard.

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Austin, Tex.: Just wanted to start off by saying I'm about halfway through your new book, which is excellent. I was born and raised in New Orleans and transplanted to Texas about eight years ago, but my family is still back in NOLA, many who lived in Lakeview and lost everything. Thank you for telling this story.

My question is given the situation in New Orleans now, how long do you feel it will take for the city to get back some semblance of the way things were before and do you think there needs to be a local government "regime change" -- if you will -- for that to happen?

Douglas Brinkley: In a perfect world, Mayor Ray Nagin would be recalled, but, alas, citizens are stuck with his incompetence. I'm afraid the city of New Orleans will never be the same again. The destruction was too great, but there will be a new New Orleans, one greatly influenced by Hispanic workers and a new wave of Central American immigrants.

Right now, there is no clear-headed plan for rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview, New Orleans East or other neighborhoods that were totally wiped out.

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New Haven, Conn.: Your book is sprinkled with lots of quotes and references to contemporary musicians - Dylan, Lucinda Williams, etc. How would you assess the state of the New Orleans music scene today? Have working musicians returned or will events like its annual big festival become the norm?

Douglas Brinkley: Just a few days ago, I co-chaired a benefit for a new, non-profit gorup called Music for Tomorrow. Our goal is to bring back the musicians who were swept out of New Orleans due to the flood waters. We were able to raise $250,000.

We're actually going to be cutting checks and giving it to musicians so that they can find affordable housing in the greater New Orleans area. Meanwhile some of the great bars in town, like the Maple Leaf, Vaughn's and Preservation Hall are back in full operational swing.

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Houston, Tex.: Where do we go from here? It seems to me that even if FEMA were competent, it shouldn't still be "managing" an "emergency" a year later. Where is the long-term federal response? A redevelopment bank or reconstruction corporation to coordinate this effort?

Douglas Brinkley: Unfortunately we are not doing enough to reform FEMA. In a nutshell, FEMA needs to be untangled from Homeland Security. It should have its own Cabinet-level director. FEMA needs to be prioritized, not treated as a post-Great Soicety, feel-good operation. As we learned from Katrina, a poorly managed FEMA can lead to unneccessary deaths.

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Washington, D.C.: Mr. Brinkley,

I am looking forward to reading your book. I've seen you interviewed many times on TV and admire your honest analysis.

I personally place a lot of Katrina blame on Bush. One thing I wonder about is the Coast Guard. Bush often uses the CG as a point of reference to highlight the positive side of the "response." While I agree that the CG was heroic, unwavering and the only hope I saw each day, I wonder what was Bush's role in that response by the CG (logistically speaking)?

Douglas Brinkley: What we always have to remember that the U.S. Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security, just like FEMA is, but the Coast Guard had great leadership in Thad Allen. In Louisiana, a man named Captain Frank Paskewich did a flawless job overseeing both his Air and Boat Desks. I go into the story of the Coast Guard in great depth in "The Great Deluge." They didn't loose a single boater or helicopter and worked around the clock.

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Apres moi le ...: Any estimate on how many people have permanently abandoned New Orleans for new lives outside the area?

Douglas Brinkley: There are still hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians that haven't been able to come home. Many have started new lives in other communities, particularly Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Also, Lousiana cities like Baton Rouge, Hammond and Shreveport are growing in population.

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Cookeville, Tenn.: What is the status of donations from the public. Have they dried up and what charitable organizations are helping the most?

Douglas Brinkley: Faith-based groups have been doing a tremendous job in helping to revitalize the Gulf South. I've been particularly impressed with Catholic Charities and Habitat for Humanity. It's also inspiring to see college students drifting into New Orleans, ready to help people reclaim their homes.

Money is still coming in. What we really need is the private sector dollars, particularly from Fortune 500 companies, to take up more of the rebuild burden.

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San Antonio, Tex.: Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman recently made some inflammatory comments about Katrina victims displaced and now living in Houston. Since Texas is sheltering and becoming home to the greatest number of Katrina victims, do you think that former New Orleans residents -- both here and across the U.S. -- will ever be able to move back? How much of New Orleans will truly be habitable in five, 10 or 20 yers from now, in your opinion?

Douglas Brinkley: Kinky Friedman always brings a smile to my face so I tend not to take his policy initiatives too seriously. He's a comic genius, not a displaced-person specialist.

My guess is that the suburbs of New Orleans will continue to grow. People are coming back. My fear is that not enough will be done to save the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and New Orleans East. You can't tell displaced people to come home when their neighborhoods have no water, electricity, sewage treatment, etc.

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Housing vs. Wetlands: I understand a major city the size of N.O. requires a large amount of housing for the population. Yet it seems like there were built-up areas that were so vulnerable it would seem better to make those off limits to settlements. I believe the same holds true for some of the barrier islands. Is there any chance the government will set up and declare some areas as wilderness areas? Or are we so interested in the almighty dollar we'll go for profit and damn the consequences?

Douglas Brinkley: Excellent question. We clearly need to rebuild the Barrier Islands and replenish the Wetlands. Every hour the Gulf of Mexico is getting closer to the greater New Orleans area. We lose two football fields of land a day. Our two Louisiana Senators, Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, are working hard to start redirecting Federal oil revenues into rebuilding the Wetlands. It is the single most important issue facing Louisiana.

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Louisville, Ky.: Although I live several hundred miles away, I'm still deeply concerned about the future of New Orleans and its people. Are there specific steps that I can take to advocate for restoration of the wetlands, flood control and rebuilding of the city's infrastructure and housing? And, I loved your book!

Douglas Brinkley: Thank you for reading my book. I never worked harder on a project in my life. It may sound corny, but your best bet is to create and organize letter campaigns to both of Louisiana's Senators to make sure they prioritize Wetlands restoration. History will judge their tenure in office, by whether they were able to reclaim the Louisiana coast from the devastation it has suffered due to shipping, dredging and drilling.

I'm afraid I have to go, but I thank you all for your thoughtful questions.

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washingtonpost.com: Thank you all for joining us. Those in the Washington region can hear Mr. Brinkley speak at the National Book Festival at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 30.

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