Kennedy School of Government Case Program C15‐06‐184.docx

Kennedy School of Government
Case Program
C15‐06‐1844.0
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. (0606)
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Hurricane Katrina (B):
Responding to an �Ultra‐Catastrophe� in New Orleans

In the early morning hours of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katri
na�a storm whose size
and ferocity made it an instant legend�slammed into the southe
astern shore of the US, cutting a
wide swath of destruction through the Gulf Coast towns of Miss
issippi and Louisiana. Despite the
enormous damage it inflicted, however, it initially appeared that
the storm had not delivered a
knockout punch to New Orleans, the fabled city of nearly half a
million whose vulnerability to a
major hurricane had long worried officials responsible for emer
gency preparedness and response.
Wedged between the Mississippi River and Lake
Pontchartrain, low‐lying New Orleans was
shielded from floods by an elaborate system of
levees, floodwalls, and pumping stations. Most
experts believed that the storm surge from a hurricane of Katrin
a�s strength would overwhelm
these protections and send the swollen waters of the lake gushin
g into the �bowl� that the city was
said to resemble. But while Katrina did inflict severe flooding i
n the eastern section of the city, it
seemed to have spared the rest the nightmare scenario that many
had predicted.
As the hurricane blew itself out and weakened into a
tropical storm, however, it soon
became apparent to the tens of thousands who had not evacuated
New Orleans that something
was going very wrong: by late Monday, almost every part of the
city had begun to flood, and the
waters were rising with frightening rapidity. It would turn out t
hat the storm surge had opened
three major breaches in the floodwalls, allowing water from Lak
e Pontchartrain to pour unchecked
into the city�s streets. By the next day, roughly 80 percent of N

ew Orleans would be flooded.
The rising floodwaters sent people who had stayed in their home
s during the storm racing
to their attics and rooftops, where they waited anxiously for res
cue, or wading out into the flooded
streets in search of shelter. Thousands flocked to the
Superdome, a state‐owned sports facility,
where as many as 15,000 people had already sought refuge from
the storm. Others gathered on dry
sections of the highway or at a hastily opened convention center
on high ground. With the power
Hurricane Katrina (B)
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out and temperatures soaring into the 90s, the need for food, wa
ter, shelter, and medical care was
acute. Bodies were seen floating in the fetid water, and
looters were reported moving in packs
through the flooded city.
As federal, state, and local emergency officials converged on N
ew Orleans, they faced the
task of responding to what some would later label the
�most destructive natural disaster in
American history.�1 Still, many of the challenges confronting o
fficials had been foreseen and even
tackled
in disaster planning exercises; some had been addressed
in emergency response plans.2
But as the days dragged on, it would become increasingly appar
ent that almost every aspect of the

response was falling far short of what was needed: evacuees lan
guished in squalid shelters or on
highway overpasses waiting for buses that did not come, looting
and more serious crimes were
reported to be rampant, food and water supplies ran low, medici
ne and medical care were scarce.
As public outrage grew, fed by TV footage of distraught
storm victims, emergency response
officials and political leaders�all the way up to President
George W. Bush�found themselves
scrambling to cope with what Secretary of
Homeland Security Michael Chertoff would call the
�ultra‐catastrophe� that Katrina had visited on New Orleans.3
Day One: Monday, August 29
The Bowl Begins to Fill. Within a few hours after Katrina made
landfall, at around 6:00
a.m. on Monday, the Lower Ninth Ward, in the eastern
part of the city, and neighboring St.
Bernard Parish began flooding�the result, it was later
determined, of a major breach in the
Industrial Canal. (See Exhibits 1 and 2.) Later that day, there w
ere reports in The Times‐Picayune,
Louisiana�s major newspaper, of �awful flooding [in the
area]� where for stretches of square
miles only rooftops poked out from beneath the waters. ��4 Th
e rest of the city appeared to be
relatively dry, at least through the morning hours, but at around
11:00 a.m. there was an ominous
report of a breach in the 17th Street Canal�eventually
estimated to be 450‐500 feet wide. The
breach, wrote The Times‐Picayune the following day, �was inst
antly devastating to residents who
had survived the fiercest of Katrina�s winds and storm surge in
tact, only to be taken by surprise by

the sudden deluge.� Starting at mid‐day, residents of
Lakeview neighborhood, close to Lake
Pontchartrain, �watched in horror as the water began to rise.�
Even after the storm passed and
skies cleared, the paper went on, the water �continued to
rise one brick every 20 minutes, �
continuing its ascent well into the night.� A third major breach,
at the London Street Canal, sent
more water flowing into the city.
1 “The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons
Learned,” report to President George W. Bush (hereafter
referred to as White House report), February 23, 2006,
foreword, p. 1.
2 For a detailed account of hurricane planning for New Orleans,
see Part A of this case, “Preparing for the ‘Big One’
in New Orleans.”
3 “Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist,” CNN.com,
September 4, 2005.
4 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, August 29, 2005.
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The surging floodwaters trapped those who had not fled New Or
leans in advance of the
hurricane. While over one million people had evacuated
the metropolitan area, an estimated

70,000 had either stayed by choice or, lacking the means of tran
sportation, by default. Of these,
somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 had taken shelter
in the Superdome, which the city had
designated as a �refuge of last resort� during the storm. There,
they had a harrowing time of it, as
first the power went out�knocking out the air conditioning and
leaving the vast facility dimly lit
by emergency lights�and then a section of the roof tore off in t
he winds, exposing the frightened
occupants to the rain; the plumbing failed as well on all but the
first floor. Conditions were even
more serious for the many thousands who had decided to ride ou
t the storm in their homes. By
early afternoon on Monday, The Times‐Picayune was reporting t
hat people were �waiting on roofs
and clinging to trees. ��
The situation was made more desperate by the almost
complete collapse of the
communications system of the city. Phone lines and cellular tow
ers had been toppled by wind and
floodwaters, as had the towers that supported the radio
system used by police, fire, and other
emergency officials; many 911 emergency call centers went dow
n as well. As a result, victims were
unable to call for help; emergency responders on the
street could not communicate with
dispatchers, and emergency operations centers could not
communicate with either.5 �Police,
firefighters and private citizens,� wrote The
Times‐Picayune, �hampered by a lack of even
rudimentary communications capabilities, continued a
desperate and impromptu boat‐borne
rescue operation across Lakeview well after dark.� The water,
meanwhile, �was still rising in the

city, and nobody was willing to predict when it would stop.�6
Getting Out the Word. Despite what the Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs�which conducted an inquiry into the
response to Katrina�termed a
�communications void,� information about the
increasingly dire situation in New Orleans did
manage to filter up to the state emergency operations center (E
OC) in Baton Rouge, where state
and federal officials had gathered, including Michael
Brown, head of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which would spearhead the
federal government�s response to
Katrina. Reports made their way as well to the Homeland Securi
ty Operations Center (HSOC)�
situated at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarter
s in Washington�which billed
itself as �the nation�s nerve center for information sharing and
domestic incident management.�7
The data coming in was sporadic and sometimes contradictory�
especially early on, when reports
of breaches were difficult to confirm8�but it did indicate
major flooding in the city and the
5 “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared,” report of the
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs (hereafter referred to as Senate
Committee report), May 2006, chapter 18, p. 5.
7 From DHS’s website, as quoted in the Senate Committee
report, chapter 19, p. 1.
8 For example, during a noontime video teleconference on
Monday, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco told

federal and state officials that a report of a levee breach was
“unconfirmed. I think we have not breached the levee
… at this point in time.”
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likelihood of levee breaches. Still, a 6:00 p.m. �situation report
� issued by the HSOC stated that
�[p]reliminary reports indicate the levees in New Orleans have
not been breached,� although, it
added, �an assessment is still pending.� That was, it
would turn out, the last report on New
Orleans that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff read that day.
At about the same time that the HSOC was issuing
its situation report, however, more
definitive information was being gathered on conditions
in New Orleans. Marty Bahamonde, a
FEMA public affairs official�who was then the sole representat
ive of the agency on the ground in
New Orleans�had heard about the 17th Street Canal levee breac
h on Monday morning, while he
was at the city�s emergency operations center in city hall. That
evening, at around 5:00 p.m., he
took two flights over the city in Coast Guard helicopters.
Later, he recounted what he had
witnessed. �[A]s far as the eye could see in either direction was
completely covered with water,�
he said. �There was no dry land. � And as we got back to the c

ity, it became obvious � that there
[were] literally hundreds of people on rooftops, standing in balc
onies in apartments, and that there
was a desperate need for a rescue mission because it was now ge
tting dark.�9
Bahamonde�s observations, more dryly stated, were bundled int
o an HSOC �spot report�
completed at 10:30 that night. The spot report noted,
among other things, that there was a
�quarter‐mile breach� in the 17th Street Canal, that an �estim
ated 2/3 to 75% of the city is under
water,� and that �a few bodies were seen floating in the water.
�� Although the spot report was
�widely distributed by e‐mail,� according to the Senate Commi
ttee report, few DHS officials later
recalled seeing it; Chertoff, who did not use e‐mail, was not app
rised of the contents of the report
that night.10
At the White House. The spot report did not arrive by e‐mail at
the White House Situation
Room until 12:02 a.m., where only a �watch officer� was then
on duty. Late August was a quiet
time at the White House. President Bush was on vacation at his
ranch in Crawford, Texas; Vice
President Richard Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Andrew
Card, and White House Homeland
Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend were all on vacation
as well. That left Ken Rapuano,
Townsend�s deputy, as the most senior official on hand with ho
meland security responsibilities,
and he had left the Situation Room at 10:00 p.m. 11
While it was not clear who at the White House finally
read the spot report, or when,

Bahamonde�s eyewitness account, according to Rapuano, was n
ot viewed as conclusive evidence
of a levee breach, in part because it had not been confirmed by
an earlier report from the Army
Corps of Engineers. It would not be until 6:30 on
Tuesday morning that White House officials
9 As quoted in Senate Committee report, chapter 4, pp.6-7.
10 Senate Committee report, chapter 19, p. 7.
11 “Additional Views Presented by the Select Committee on
Behalf of Rep. Charlie Melancon and Rep. William J.
Jefferson,” February 15, 2006, pp. 27-28.
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considered they had confirmation of breaches in the levee
system, after receiving an �updated
situation report� from HSOC. 12
Other Channels. Bahamonde�s account did, however, make
its way to White House
officials through other channels. After completing his flights ov
er New Orleans, Bahamonde had
called FEMA director Michael Brown in Baton Rouge to relay h
is observations. Brown�s response,
as Bahamonde later recalled, had been to thank him and say that
he would �call the White House.�

Later, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland S
ecurity and Governmental Affairs,
Brown did not �recall specifically� whom he spoke to, but ass
umed that it was Deputy Chief of
Staff Joe Hagin, who was with the president in Crawford. Hagin
, Brown told committee members,
�understands emergency management.� He did not
remember if he also called his immediate
superior, DHS Secretary Chertoff, that evening, but added
pointedly, �I need[ed] to get things
done, and the way I get things done is I request it from
the White House and they happen.�
Calling Chertoff, he said, �would have wasted my time. ��
Brown had been at odds with Chertoff, and with his
predecessor, Tom Ridge, over
FEMA�s role in the new super‐agency, the Department of Hom
eland Security, which was created
in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. As FEMA
was stripped of its responsibilities
for emergency preparedness and, according to Brown, of a large
slice of its operating budget, he
grew increasingly bitter about DHS, which he
characterized as bureaucratic and obstructionist.
Brown had reportedly been at the point of resigning when Hurri
cane Katrina intervened and, as
the disaster unfolded, he made no secret of his disdain
for the department, its leader, and the
National Response Plan that DHS had recently authored�or of h
is wish to circumvent all three.
That had been, Brown testified, his modus operandi in managing
earlier disasters. In 2004, he said,
when a series of hurricanes struck Florida, �I specifically [told]
both [Andrew] Card and Joe Hagin
� that the best thing they could do for me was to keep DHS out
of my hair.� The department

merely added �additional layers,� he told members of the Hous
e Select Committee�which was
also investigating the response to Katrina�and hampered FEMA
officials� ability to act decisively.
Still, Brown insisted, Chertoff and others in DHS were kept full
y apprised of the situation
in New Orleans. The department was represented in the daily vi
deo teleconferences that FEMA
hosted, which gave federal and state officials the
opportunity to update each other on
developments; Chertoff himself or his deputy, Michael
Jackson, had sat in on some of those
sessions. Moreover, Brown added, the Homeland Security Opera
tions Center received �the same
situational reports that I received. �� But Brown made
clear to whom he felt answerable. �In
terms of my responsibility,� he said, �much like I had
operated successfully in Florida, my
obligation was to the White House and to make certain that the
president understood what was
going on and what the situation was, and I did that.�
12 “A Failure of Initiative,” final report of the House Select
Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparations for
and Response to Hurricane Katrina (hereafter referred to as
House Select Committee report), February 15, 2006, p.
142, p. 141.
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Nevertheless, as a number of observers would note, both the Wh
ite House and Secretary
Chertoff seemed slow to �grasp the gravity of the
situation� unfolding in New Orleans, in the
words of the Senate Committee report�possibly lulled by
the HSOC report issued at 6:00 on
Monday night stating that the levees had not been breached. Bus
h would later speak of a �sense of
relaxation� on Monday, after learning that Katrina had
not hit New Orleans directly, and of
having �dodged a bullet.� That day and the following day, he k
ept to his schedule, traveling to
Arizona to celebrate Senator John McCain�s birthday, giving a
speech on the government�s new
Medicare prescription drug benefit, and making an appearance a
t a naval base in San Diego. On
Tuesday, when FEMA convened its video teleconference session
, no one from the White House
was on hand.13
Meanwhile, Chertoff was also on the road, traveling to Atlanta t
o attend a conference on
avian flu. Chertoff, a former prosecutor and federal judge who
was appointed DHS secretary in
February 2005, acknowledged in testimony before the House Sel
ect Committee that he was not, in
the committee�s words, �a hurricane expert,� nor much experi
enced in dealing with disasters.14
Katrina would provide him with a memorable baptism.
Options. In responding to disasters, the federal government had
for decades relied on the
�pull� system as stipulated in the Stafford Act. Under the prov

isions of this law, governors had to
ask the president to declare a state of emergency, in order to op
en the way for federal assistance.
This had already been done in the case of Katrina: at the request
of Louisiana Governor Kathleen
Babineaux Blanco, Bush had declared a state of emergency on S
aturday night, August 27, more
than a day before the hurricane struck; on Monday, after Katrina
made landfall, the president had
declared both Louisiana and Mississippi �major disaster�
areas, which broadened the scope of
federal aid available to them.
Under the National Response Plan (NRP), however,
Chertoff could take matters a step
further, by declaring Katrina an �incident of national significan
ce.� This latter was defined as �an
actual or potential high‐impact event that requires a
coordinated and effective response� at all
levels of government. Once declared, an incident of national sig
nificance would trigger a number
of response mechanisms as detailed in the NRP, with DHS takin
g the lead role in coordinating
them. These included the establishment of an Interagency
Incident Management Group�a
strategic body made up of representatives of relevant
federal agencies and housed at DHS
headquarters in Washington�and the �joint field office� (JFO)
, which was set up near the incident
itself and provided a �central location for coordination of� stat
e, local, and federal organizations
�with primary responsibility for threat response and
incident support.� What�s more, Chertoff
could invoke the NRP�s �Catastrophic Incident Annex,� whic
h applied to disasters that resulted in
�extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage or disruption

severely affecting the population,
13 Senate Committee report, chapter 15, pp. 4-6; chapter 19, p.
2.
14 House Select Committee report, p. 132.
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infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or g
overnment functions.� The annex
assumed that state and local governments were
overwhelmed by the catastrophe and that the
federal government would therefore resort to a �push�
system of response�i.e., provide aid
without waiting to be asked for it.
The NRP was officially adopted by DHS in December
2004. To date, an incident of
national significance had never been formally declared,
nor the Catastrophic Incident Annex
invoked. In fact, the NRP was not entirely clear as to
when and how an incident of national
significance was to be designated, but in the case of
Katrina, Chertoff initially made no
declarations of any kind.15
Day Two: Tuesday, August 30�Things Fall Apart
By Tuesday, New Orleans was, in the words of The New York T

imes, �a shocking sight of
utter demolition,� with �vast stretches� of the city engulfed b
y water, sometimes up to the roofs of
three‐story houses.16 Mayor Ray Nagin estimated that 80 perce
nt of the city was flooded; the only
remaining dry land, according to The Times‐Picayune, was �a n
arrow band from the French Quarter
and parts of uptown, the same small strip that was settled by� t
he city�s founder in 1718. The water
continued to rise into Tuesday night, at the rate of three inches
an hour. �Truth to tell,� said the
city�s director of homeland security, �we�re not too far from
filling in the bowl.�17
The widespread flooding and accompanying loss of communicat
ions were devastating to
the city�s governing and law enforcement capacity. When its he
adquarters were swamped with
water on Monday morning, the police department had lost its cri
me lab, its armory, its jail, and
hundreds of patrol cars, which were either flooded in low
garages or stranded on highway
overpasses, where they had been taken for safekeeping from flo
oding. Six of eight district stations
were flooded as well. Later that day, both police and fire officia
ls lost their radio communications
systems when the backup generators for their radio towers
were engulfed in floodwaters; the
police system would be inoperative for three days.18
Many first responders in the city were
reduced to communicating over a few �mutual aid channels,�
which led to heavy congestion and
frequent delays.19 �People could not communicate,� said one
Louisiana state senator. �It got to the
point that people were literally writing messages on paper, putti
ng them in bottles and dropping

15 The White House report noted that the NRP indicated in one
section that the DHS secretary was responsible for
declaring an incident of national significance, and in another
that all presidentially declared emergencies and
disasters under the Stafford Act were automatically considered
incidents of national significance.
16 Joseph Treaster and N.R. Kleinfield, “New Orleans is
inundated as 2 levees fail,” The New York Times, August 31,
2005, p. A1.
17 Dan Shea, “Under water; levee breach swamps city from lake
to river,” The Times-Picayune, August 31, 2005, p.
1.
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them from helicopters to other people on the ground.�20 Event
ually, some police officers set up a
makeshift headquarters of sorts in the driveway of
Harrah�s Casino, but without cars or an
effective means of communication, there was little that they cou
ld do.21

Meanwhile, the city�s leaders found themselves marooned in a
hotel with almost no way
to talk to the outside world. Mayor Nagin and a group of officia
ls�including Police Chief Edwin
P. Compass III�had decamped to the Hyatt Regency,
leaving others behind to run the city�s
emergency operations center on the ninth floor of city hall. Nagi
n, according to one account, had
concluded that the Hyatt�which was �better served with power
and food than the city command
post��would be �the best place to hunker down and establish
communications for the storm.�22
But when first the phone lines and then the police radio system
went down, the mayor and his
staff found themselves gradually enveloped in �information dar
kness.� So, too, did those who had
remained at the emergency operations center in city hall.
When the electricity went out there,
emergency officials were able to get power from an emergency
diesel generator; but eventually
that ran out of fuel, and in the flooded city, it was impossible to
find more. The city had some
satellite phones to provide back‐up communications, but their b
atteries went dead and, without
any power to recharge them, they became useless. This left city
officials relying on �human chains
of communications,� one told The Wall Street Journal. �It was
like: �Go and tell so‐and‐so if you see
them.��
Eventually, some of the city�s technical experts would resort to
what many citizens had
already begun doing: looting. Under escort of Police
Chief Compass�who fended off other
would‐be looters�they went by Humvee to an Office Depot, whi
ch had already been raided, and

loaded up the equipment they needed to jury‐rig a phone system
of sorts, using a laptop and an
Internet phone account. It would not be until Wednesday that th
e group at the Hyatt was finally
able to make �its first outside call in two days.�23
In the meantime, the lack of communications and the
absence of an organized law
enforcement presence on the streets
led to a growing sense of anarchy in the city. Looting was
reported to be widespread, as many stranded residents broke int
o stores in search of food, water,
diapers, and other necessities. But some looters were more oppo
rtunistic, helping themselves to
televisions, computers, and jewelry, as police stood by helplessl
y or, in some instances, joined in
the looting themselves.24 Col. Terry Ebbert, the city�s director
of homeland security, warned that
�gangs of armed men [were] moving around the city,� but the
police, �cut off from their superiors
by a failure of the communications system,� seemed unable to i
ntervene. �Put this in your paper,�
20 White House report, chapter 4, p. 4.
21 Dan Baum, “Deluged,” The New Yorker, January 9, 2006,
pp. 54-55.
22 Christopher Rhoads, “Cut off: At center of crisis, city
officials faced struggle to keep in touch,” The Wall Street
Journal, September 9, 2005, p. A1.
23 Ibid. The scheme depended on emergency power, which was
available at the Hyatt.
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an officer told one reporter. �They told us nothing. We were un
prepared. We are completely on
our own.�25
Search and Rescue. What police actions were able to be organiz
ed in chaotic New Orleans
were directed to search and rescue efforts, which both Mayor N
agin and Governor Blanco made
their number one post‐storm priority. At the local level, police a
nd firefighters �waded through
water and climbed to roofs� to rescue trapped residents, The Ti
mes‐Picayune reported, aided by �an
armada of Louisiana sportsmen in flat‐bottom boats, who respon
ded to an appeal for help.�26 But
the city had few resources to bring to the search and
rescue effort. According to the Senate
Committee report, the police department owned only five boats,
and the fire department none. To
supplement their tiny fleet, police and fire officials �had
to commandeer and hotwire boats to
improvise rescue missions.�27
Louisiana pitched in with over 200 boats manned by the
Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries (DWF), which was the state�s designated first respon
der for search and rescue operations.
DWF officials, who had regularly trained for this mission, kept
at it day and night in the first days
following the hurricane. �It was just constant work,� said one.

�We�d load a boat with people, run
to the nearest high ground or road, unload them, and go
back out.� Hampered, like other
responders, by a non‐functioning communications system,
DWF agents working at night were
guided by �the cries for help� in the darkened city, illuminated
only by the eerie glow from fires
that firefighters�lacking sufficient water power�were
helpless to extinguish.28 �It wasn�t any
problem to find people,� one DWF official later recalled. �The
re were people everywhere, every
house�people on the porches, people on the roofs, people
shouting from windows. And you
would just go to it and load up the people that you could take, a
nd tell [the others], �We�ll be back
for the rest of you.��29 In all, with the assistance of volunteer
s�many of them game wardens from
about 20 states and Canada�DWF estimated that it rescued over
20,000 people.
The Coast Guard, too, launched a massive search and
rescue effort. Like the DWF, the
Coast Guard had pre‐positioned �personnel and assets� close e
nough to the affected area to be
able to launch a quick response. Within 12 hours of landfall, the
House Select Committee report
noted, the Coast Guard had assigned 29 helicopters, eight fixed‐
wing aircraft, and 29 cutters to the
25 Shea, August 31, 2005.
26 Ibid.
28 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, September 7, 2005.
29 As quoted in the Senate Committee report, chapter 21, p. 1.

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New Orleans area to �support rescue operations.�30 By the tim
e these operations were completed,
the Coast Guard would have rescued over 33,000 people.31
As the lead agency for Emergency Support Function 9�urban se
arch and rescue�under
the National Response Plan, FEMA had contracted with 28 team
s of state and local responders
trained in urban search and rescue techniques, which it could de
ploy anywhere in the country.
But, as one FEMA official later pointed out, these teams were n
ot trained for water rescue and,
when the three that had been pre‐positioned
in Shreveport, Louisiana, in advance of the storm
arrived in New Orleans, they came without boats.32
Altogether, over 60,000 people were rescued from the
floodwaters that engulfed New
Orleans. When he testified before the House Select Committee i
n December 2005, Col. Jeff Smith,
deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness
(LOHSEP), pointed with considerable pride to that figure. �Ho
w quickly,� he asked, �should you
be able to pluck over 62,000 people out of the water, off rooftop
s, and out of attics and move them
to safety? Louisiana did it in five days. This averages 12,000 re
scued per day. This is nothing short

of outstanding.�
The Shelter Crisis. Unfortunately for the tens of thousands of pe
ople heroically rescued by
the DWF or the Coast Guard or other group, however, there pro
ved to be no good place for them
to go. They were unceremoniously dropped off at a number of �
collection points��many of them
highway overpasses�where they waited in vain to be picked up
and taken to shelter.33 At one of
these�an overpass at Interstate 10 sometimes referred to
as the �cloverleaf��a large crowd
gathered, some left there by rescue crews, some arriving on thei
r own power, many bringing only
the clothes they were wearing. �Soon there was a small army of
evacuees,� The New York Times
wrote, �refugees with no place to go who were deposited on the
island of dry land at the edge of I‐
10. � During the long, hot afternoon and into the humid night, t
he crowd swelled to 2,000 hungry,
flood‐weary people � who had been plucked from their roofs an
d attics.�34 Eventually, the crowd
would swell to over 5,000.
31 Michael Chertoff, statement before House Select Committee
on Katrina, October 19, 2005. At the peak of its
operations, according to Chertoff, the Coast Guard had 65
aircraft, 30 cutters, 100 boats, and nearly 5,000
personnel involved in “supporting the Katrina response. …”
32 Senate Committee report, chapter 21, pp. 1-5. Later in the
rescue effort, FEMA was able to assemble eight teams
with training in water rescue to help out in the city. In all, the

FEMA teams were responsible for the rescue of over
6,000 people.
33 According to the Senate Committee report, during the 2005
“Hurricane Pam” planning exercise—sponsored by
FEMA and focused on developing a response to a major
hurricane in the New Orleans area—emergency officials
devised a plan to deliver people who had been rescued to
various highway collection points, or “lily pads.” From
there, the plan called for them to be transported to shelters.
34 Peter Applebome, Christopher Drew, Jere Longman and
Andrew Revkin, “A delicate balance is undone in a flash,
and a battered city waits,” The New York Times, September 4,
2005, section 1, p. 1.
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Others were taken to the Superdome which, as a refuge of last r
esort, had been expected to
be emptied out once the storm had blown over. Instead, the pop
ulation in the facility began to
grow after the hurricane departed, as those already in residence
were joined by people who had
been rescued or who had made their way there on their
own. �All day,� The Times‐Picayune
reported, �a weary army of storm victims trudged through waist
‐deep muddy water toward the
Superdome,� where, before long, the population ballooned to w
ell over 20,000.35 By Tuesday night,

the Superdome was a
house of horrors: the plumbing had failed completely, and the st
ench of
human waste permeated the darkened, sweltering building.
Because not enough supplies had
been stockpiled in advance, food and water ran low. Marty Baha
monde who, along with a four‐
member emergency response team from FEMA, stayed at the Su
perdome for three days, recalled
the ordeal in his Senate testimony. �Each day,� he said, �it wa
s a battle to find enough food and
water and get it to the Superdome. It was a struggle meal‐to‐me
al. �� With help from FEMA staff,
the National Guard, and the Coast Guard, he added, just enough
food was found to provide two
meals a day. Looking back, Bahamonde remarked, �I am most h
aunted by what the Superdome
became. It was a shelter of last resort that cascaded into
a cesspool of human waste and filth.
Imagine no toilet facilities for 25,000 people. � Hallways and c
orridors were used as toilets, trash
was everywhere, and amongst it all, children, thousands of them
. It was sad, it was inhumane, and
it was so wrong.�
As yet, however, there appeared to be no quick way�and no exi
sting plan�to evacuate
the thousands of people at the Superdome or at the highway ove
rpasses or at yet another venue on
high ground�the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center,
which Nagin had ordered opened
sometime on Tuesday to accommodate the rapidly growing
number of people seeking shelter.
Unlike the Superdome, however, there were no police or Nation
al Guard on hand, and no food or
water.36 Despite the complete lack of basic amenities, an

estimated 20,000 people�including
tourists apparently steered there by their hotels�would
eventually gather at the convention
center. �All these poor people who had just been through hell a
nd barely escaped with their lives,�
one DWF official lamented, �were now sitting on the
interstate or at the Superdome or at the
convention center in 95 degree heat, no water, no food, no medi
cine. It was awful. It was the worst
kind of human suffering you could imagine.�37
Meanwhile, efforts to plug one of the worst levee breaches�in t
he 17th Street Canal�had
thus far failed. The Army Corps of Engineers had tried
dropping sandbags into the canal and
lowering large concrete barriers, but had been unable to close th
e yawning gap in the floodwall.
35 Shea, August 31, 2005.
36 House Select Committee report, p. 118. In a prepared
statement quoted in the report, Nagin said that the growing
demand for shelter “required us to open the Convention Center
as another refuge.” Elsewhere in its report,
however, the House Select Committee maintained that evacuees
themselves went to the convention center seeking
dry ground and broke into the locked facility.
37 The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, September 7, 2005.
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As a result, said one Army Corps engineer on Tuesday night, wa
ter would �continue to flow down
into the center of town.�38
A Second Evacuation. In his testimony before the House Select
Committee in December
2005, Col. Jeff Smith of LOHSEP noted that the state had �mad
e a conscious choice that life‐saving
was, by far, the most critical activity during the first days. Savi
ng lives [was] more important than
the evacuation of those who, while miserable, had food,
water, medical care and shelter.�39
Similarly, when Nagin, at the suggestion of Marty Bahamonde,
submitted a list of �critical needs�
to FEMA on Tuesday, he included, according to the Senate Com
mittee report, �search and rescue
assets, resources for the Superdome, law and order on the
street, and communications
capabilities,� but not �evacuation resources.�40
By Tuesday evening, however, it became clear that
evacuation resources were urgently
needed. After touring the Superdome that afternoon, Blanco app
eared disturbed by what she had
witnessed. �It�s a very, very desperate situation,� she told rep
orters. �It�s imperative that we get
[the people in the Superdome] out.�41 But neither the city�s n
or the state�s hurricane emergency
plans included strategies for getting residents out of the
city after a storm had struck. �The
prestorm evacuation,� The New York Times later observed, �a
s chaotic as it seemed to anyone stuck
on the road, was still part of a plan. Now, a whole new ad hoc st

age began.�42
This new stage started with a search for buses to transport many
thousands of people out
of the city. Sometime on Tuesday, Nagin�apparently convinced
as well of the need for evacuation
resources�called the governor�s chief of staff to say that his �
No. 1 priority� for help from the
state was buses. New Orleans itself did not appear to
have any buses of its own available to
evacuate residents from its flooded streets and fetid
shelters. The city�s school buses had been
parked in an area that flooded during the storm, rendering them
useless. The same was believed to
be true for Regional Transit Authority (RTA) buses, which the c
ity tried to obtain for evacuation
purposes; it would later emerge that 200 of them had been safel
y parked on high ground, but RTA
officials did not convey this information to the city.43
The state began its own effort on Tuesday to line up buses from
other school districts and
churches to help with its evacuation effort, but that ran into a ro
adblock the following day when
38 Robert Travis Scott, “Late Blanco statement,” The Times-
Picayune, Web Edition, August 30, 2005.
39 Chertoff, according to a DHS spokesman, took a similar
view. While the situation in the Superdome was
“nightmarish,” he said, “it was not a life-and-death situation,
and we had to focus our priorities where we could.”
[Eric Lichtblau, “Chertoff draws fire on briefing,” The New
York Times, September 8, 2005, p. A24.]

40 Senate Committee report, chapter 22, p. 4. In an interview
with The New York Times on September 15, 2005,
however, Brown said that Nagin had given him “a detailed list
of priorities, starting with help to evacuate the
Superdome.”
41 Scott, August 30, 2005.
42 Applebome et al., September 4, 2005.
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some school systems, troubled by reports of lawlessness in New
Orleans, began to balk. Finally, on
Wednesday, Blanco, exercising her emergency powers, signed a
n order commandeering the school
buses, but they would not begin to arrive in New Orleans until T
hursday.44 At the same time, the
governor sought help from the federal government in rounding u
p enough buses to meet the huge
need. According to Blanco, as early as Monday, she had asked
Michael Brown for 500 buses.45 He
had agreed, she later reported, but no buses arrived on Tuesday
or the next day, although Blanco
had repeated her request to Brown and, eventually, to White Ho
use Chief of Staff Andrew Card. It
would not be until the early morning hours of Wednesday
that FEMA officially requested the
buses from the US Department of Transportation.46 Once the or
der for buses was received, one

FEMA official noted, a multi‐agency effort was mounted
to charter over 1,000 buses to help
evacuate residents. �In 96 hours,� he said, �we built a transpo
rtation system equal to the capability
of the Greyhound Bus Company.�47 For many, however, the ag
ency�s failure to provide buses in
the first 48 hours after landfall was the more noteworthy, and de
plorable, event.
A Shaky Command. FEMA�s slowness to act on the request for
buses was never entirely
explained, although difficulties in communications between
agency officials at the beleaguered
Superdome and in the state EOC in Baton Rouge were
believed to have contributed to the
problem. But perhaps equally important was the growing sense
of disarray among those who were
expected to lead the disaster response. In Michael Brown�s vie
w, much of the blame for this lay
with the state of Louisiana. In his September 27
testimony before the House Select Committee,
Brown would maintain that his �biggest mistake� in the respon
se to Katrina was �not recognizing
by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional.� Governor
Blanco, he later told the Senate
Homeland Security Committee, �was overwhelmed, and
the governor didn�t have a good
decision‐making process set up around her where she could mak
e decisions, bless her heart.�48
The state�s disorganization, Brown maintained, made it
impossible to set up a unified
command at the EOC
in Baton Rouge. As early as Monday night, he said, he was repo
rting to
Chertoff and to White House officials that he could not �get a u

nified command established.�49 He
was dismayed by the �lack of coordinated response,� as The N
ew York Times put it, from Blanco
and Major General Bennett Landreneau, the adjutant general of t
he Louisiana National Guard and
44 Ibid., chapter 22, p. 6.
45 According to the House Select Committee report, Blanco
maintained that Brown had told her that 500 buses were
standing by, but the committee “found no evidence” that the
buses “were, in fact, ‘standing by’ or that Brown had
made such a statement to Blanco.”
46 Senate Committee report, chapter 22, p. 5. FEMA, the Senate
Committee report noted, asked for 455 buses, not the
500 requested by Blanco.
47 William Lokey, testimony before the House Select
Committee, December 14, 2005.
48 As quoted in the Senate Committee report, chapter 26, p. 57.
49 David Kirkpatrick and Scott Shane, “Ex-FEMA chief tells of
frustration and chaos,” The New York Times,
September 15, 2005, p. A1. As Brown later explained in his
House testimony, under FEMA’s long established
procedures for disasters, a “state coordinating officer” and a
“federal coordinating officer,” designated by FEMA,
were supposed to be “joined at the hip in a unified command
structure. … They are the nerve center of the
operation.”
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head of LOHSEP. Brown asked them, he told the Times, �What
do you need? Help me help you,�
but their response �was like, �Let us find out,� and
then I never received specific requests for
specific things that needed doing.� Blanco angrily disputed Bro
wn�s charges, and members of her
staff complained about FEMA�s insistence on receiving itemize
d requests from the state. �It was
like walking into an emergency room bleeding profusely,�
said one, �and being expected to
instruct the doctors how to treat you.�50
Making a Declaration. As the growing distress of New
Orleans began to be reported
extensively in the media, the White House took action. It
was announced that President Bush
would cut short his vacation by two days and return to Washingt
on on Wednesday. In addition,
on Tuesday night, Chertoff formally designated the
hurricane an �incident of national
significance��the first declaration of its kind. The
turning point for Chertoff, as he related it
during a September 4 appearance on NBC�s Meet the Press, ha
d come the day after Katrina struck.
On Tuesday morning, he recalled, �I opened newspapers
and saw headlines that said, �New
Orleans Dodged the Bullet.�� The city, it appeared, had
suffered �considerable damage, but
nothing worse,� Chertoff continued. �It was on Tuesday
that the levee�[it] may have been
overnight Monday to Tuesday�that the levee started to break. A
nd it was mid‐day Tuesday that I

became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of pluggi
ng the gap [in the levee] and that
essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city.�
The declaration of an incident of national significance set
in motion a number of
mechanisms laid out in the National Response Plan. For one, it
activated the Interagency Incident
Management Group, made up of �senior‐level officials� from r
elevant federal agencies to act as an
�advisory body� to the DHS secretary. For another, it necessit
ated the appointment of a �principal
federal official� (PFO), whose role was to �facilitate
Federal support to the unified command
structure,� in the words of the White House report, and
�coordinate overall Federal incident
management.� The PFO was also expected to provide �a prima
ry point of contact and situational
awareness locally� for the DHS secretary.
To the surprise of many�including the appointee�Chertoff nam
ed Brown as his PFO for
Hurricane Katrina. For one thing, the PFO was supposed to rece
ive special training for the post,
which Brown had not had. But more crucially, the PFO, under th
e provisions of the NRP, did not
have �directive authority� over other federal and state officials
on the scene, including the �federal
coordinating officer� (FCO), who was appointed by FEMA (and
therefore ultimately answerable to
Brown) to oversee the agency�s response to a specific disaster.
Chertoff later testified that he had named Brown as PFO becaus
e he was his �battlefield
commander.� This led the House Select Committee to conclude

that Chertoff �was confused about
the role and authority of the PFO.�51 The appointment,
in the words of the committee report,
50 Ibid.
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elicited a �confused and concerned reaction from
Brown,� but e‐mails from his staff indicated
more outrage than puzzlement. �Demote the Under Sec [i.e., Br
own, who was also undersecretary
for emergency preparedness and response at DHS] to
PFO?� wrote FEMA�s press secretary
indignantly. �What about the precedent being set? What
does this say about executive
management and leadership in the Agency.� �Exactly,� Brown
wrote back.52
Brown regarded his appointment as PFO with dismay. It
added �another layer of
bureaucracy,� he maintained in his House testimony, and worse
still, tethered him to Chertoff. The
main task of the PFO, he pointed out, was to provide �informati
on to the [DHS] secretary, which
then takes away from my operational responsibilities[.]� Brown
had been accustomed to bypassing
Chertoff, but the White House had begun to make it clear that th
is practice would have to stop.

During a conversation with Andrew Card about a Katrina‐relate
d request, he was told, ��Mike, we
are going to have to follow the protocol. We are going to have t
o follow the chain of command.� �
And I took that to mean � if you really need something, you nee
d to go back to Chertoff. ��53
Chertoff, Brown maintained in his House testimony,
displayed a penchant for
micromanagement, �calling about some of the most minute deta
ils of operations [so] that I literally
could not get my job done sometimes because there were so man
y phone calls from the secretary.
�� In addition, in naming him PFO, Chertoff had essentially gr
ounded Brown. �I was being told
specifically by Chertoff to get into Baton Rouge and stay in Bat
on Rouge and don�t leave there.�
This ran contrary to Brown�s approach to disaster management,
which was, he explained, to be
�out in the field knowing what is going on. � I can�t sit in a st
upid office and try to run a disaster
that covers 90,000 square miles and run it like a blasted bureauc
rat.�
For his part, the DHS secretary indicated a growing impatience
with Brown�s elusiveness.
Starting late Tuesday morning, Chertoff told the House Select C
ommittee, and �rising in crescendo
through the afternoon and late afternoon, I made it very clear to
the people I was speaking to and
communicating through [at FEMA] that I expected Mr. Brown t
o get in touch with me because I
insisted on speaking to him.� While some questioned Chertoff
�s subsequent decision that night to
name Brown as PFO, it was possible that the move reflected not
so much confusion about the job

as a wish to put his freewheeling undersecretary on a tighter lea
sh.
Depending on how the NRP was interpreted, Chertoff�s
declaration was considered
belated or redundant or inadequate�it stopped short of invoking
the NRP�s Catastrophic Incident
Annex�but in any event it seemed to promise, along with Bush
�s return to the White House, a
more coordinated and intensive response to Katrina�s
victims from the federal government. �I
52 Spencer Hsu, “Messages depict disarray in federal Katrina
response,” The Washington Post, October 18, 2005, p.
A11. FEMA staff e-mails also revealed a dismissive attitude
toward the Interagency Incident Management Group.
“Let them play their raindeer [sic] games,” wrote Brown’s
deputy chief of staff, “as long as they are not turning
around and tasking us with their stupid questions. None of them
have a clue about emergency management.”
53 Michael Brown, deposition before the House Select
Committee, February 11, 2006.
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anticipate this is going to be a very, very substantial effort,� C
hertoff said at a news conference the

following day. �� We have a substantial challenge, but � we�
re going to do what it takes.�54
Days 3 & 4: Wednesday and Thursday, August 31‐September 1
�Descent into Hell
Despite reports that President Bush was mobilizing �one
of the biggest relief efforts in
history,�55 the miserable conditions facing stranded residents i
n New Orleans continued largely
unmitigated throughout Wednesday and most of Thursday, with
neither the promised supplies of
food and water nor the buses needed for evacuation showing up
in sufficient numbers. Thousands
of people trapped in their homes still waited for rescue, while te
ns of thousands sweltered in hot,
squalid shelters or broiled in the sun on highway overpasses.
As wretched as life was for those in the Superdome and even at
the I‐10 cloverleaf�where
there were some supplies of food, water, and medicine, albeit gr
ossly inadequate�the plight of
those who had gathered at the Ernest Morial Convention
Center was far worse. Nagin had
apparently neglected to tell state officials that he had
opened the facility for evacuees,56 and
although a huge crowd of roughly 20,000 had massed there, no
one appeared to notice them. They
continued to languish there through Wednesday and into the foll
owing day without food or water,
and with only news reporters and television cameras to witness t
heir growing desperation.
By Thursday, TV news shows were beaming grim footage from t
he convention center: the
image of an elderly woman, for example, dead in her wheelchair

outside the facility, with a note
on her lap giving her name�one of �a half‐dozen corpses � slu
mped in lawn chairs or covered
with makeshift shrouds�; a day later, The New York
Times reported, her body still lay there,
exposed to the harsh sun.57 Television viewers tuning into CNN
were treated to the spectacle of
�hundreds of disheveled residents,� in the words of one accoun
t, �huddled around the convention
center, including a visibly frightened group chanting,
�Help, help, help.� �� Soon after, Nagin
chimed in with his own plea. �This is a desperate SOS,� he sai
d in a statement to CNN. �Right
now we are out of resources at the convention center and don�t
anticipate enough buses. We need
buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe.
��58
Lawlessness in the City. As Nagin�s statement indicated,
evacuees in the convention
center faced not only hunger and thirst, but an anarchic environ
ment in the absence of police or
54 Josh White, “Bush mobilizes a huge recovery effort,” The
Washington Post, September 1, 2005, p. A20.
55 Peter Baker, “Vacation ends, and crisis management begins,”
The Washington Post, September 1, 2005, p. A1.
57 James Dao, Joseph Treaster, and Felicity Barringer, “New
Orleans is awaiting deliverance,” The New York Times,
September 2, 2005, p. 15; Joseph Treaster, “First steps to
alleviate squalor and suffering at convention center,” The
New York Times, September 3, 2005, p. 16.

58 Marc Sandalow, “Anarchy, anger, desperation; sharp
criticism of US reaction and failure to prevent disaster,” The
San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2005, p. A1.
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National Guard troops. Reports of violence were chilling. No le
ss than the chief of police, Edwin
Compass, warned that �armed thugs,� in the words of The New
York Times, had �taken control of�
the convention center and were preying on the people there�inc
luding �stranded tourists��and
on neighboring streets. �We have individuals who are getting ra
ped,� he said during an interview.
�We have individuals who are getting beaten.�59
Tales of violent crime were not limited to the convention center,
however. Nagin talked of
people who �have been in that frickin� Superdome for five day
s watching dead bodies, watching
hooligans killing people, raping people.�60 There were also dis
turbing stories of sniper fire aimed
at helicopters airlifting patients out of hospitals, of attacks on N
ational Guard troops patrolling the
Superdome, and,
later, of the body of a seven‐year‐old girl whose throat had been
slit. Danger
lurked outside the shelters as well. Two evacuees told of �pirat
es� seizing boats used to rescue
residents, threatening them with firearms and forcing them into

the floodwaters.61
The reports of the most lurid crimes, including Nagin�s
and Compass� allegations,
ultimately proved either untrue or unconfirmed�while there wer
e some deaths at the convention
center and the Superdome, for example, none of them were mur
ders�and the press was roundly
criticized later for passing them along uncritically. But there wa
s enough evidence of looting, and
either the absence or the collusion of the police, to convey a sen
se of peril and vulnerability to the
city�s traumatized population�and to scare off some of
the people who were rushing to their
rescue. �They are looting houses and businesses,� said
the president of the New Orleans City
Council. �Gangs are sticking people up in their homes.
They are looting gun stores; they are
stealing guns out of Wal‐Marts.�62
The stories of violence in New Orleans set some of the city�s n
eighbors on edge. When a
group of about 200 people�many of them tourists�tried to cros
s a bridge over the Mississippi
River into the town of Gretna, they were turned back by police,
who fired warning shots into the
air. �They told us,� said one of the group, �that there would
be no Superdomes in their city.�63
59 Joseph Treaster and Deborah Sontag, “Despair and
lawlessness grip New Orleans as thousands remain stranded in
squalor,” The New York Times, September 2, 2005, p. A1; Dao
et al., September 2, 2005. Compass maintained that
thugs had repelled eight squads of police officers sent to secure

the convention center.
60 David Carr, “More horrible than truth: news reports,” The
New York Times, p. C1. In a September 6 appearance on
the Oprah Winfrey show, Compass said, “We had little babies in
[the Superdome], some of the little babies getting
raped.”
61 Dao et al., September 2, 2005.
62 Ed Anderson, Michael Perlstein and Robert Travis Scott,
“We will do what it takes to restore law and order,” The
Times-Picayune, September 1, 2005, p. 5.
63 Chip Johnson, “Police made their storm misery worse,” The
San Francisco Chronicle, September 9, 2005, p. B1.
Later, the mayor of Gretna, population 17,500, defended his
police, arguing that the town did not have food or
water for the evacuees, and that reports, both “word of mouth”
and in the news media, led town officials to fear
that “its residents were in danger.” [Robert Pierre and Ann
Gerhart, “News of pandemonium may have slowed
aid,” The Washington Post, October 5, 2005, p. A8.]
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By Wednesday, Nagin had ordered the city�s 1,500 police offic
ers to turn from search and
rescue to �stopping the looting,�64 but by then it was apparent
that the police force itself was in

disarray. Many officers had lost their own homes in the flooding
, and many were overwhelmed by
the chaos enveloping the city. �Dozens of officers turned in the
ir badges or fled without a word,�
The Times‐Picayune reported. �Some joined in with
looters and marauders, plunging an already
jittery situation into moments of complete societal breakdown.�
65
Reports of rampant looting also spurred a change of heart
in Blanco, who had initially
made search and rescue her number one priority, followed by le
vee repairs. �We are going to try
to bring law and order back into the streets,� she said during an
August 31 appearance on NBC�s
Today show, �but first of all we�ve got to continue our search
and rescue mission. We�ve got to try
to stop the breach. � We don�t like looters one bit, but one of
our fears is that if we don�t stop the
breach, � we�ll put good people�s lives in jeopardy. �� Late
r that day, however, she announced
that 200 state police troopers and 350 additional
Louisiana National Guardsmen would be
deployed to New Orleans. �We will do what it takes,� she decl
ared, �to restore law and order.�66
But some of those already assigned to help keep the
peace sounded weary and
discouraged as time passed without much evidence of
relief for New Orleans� beleaguered
evacuees. �This is mass chaos,� said one National
Guardsman who had been on duty at the
Superdome since Monday. �To tell you the truth, I�d rather be
in Iraq [where he had previously
been deployed]. You got your constant danger [there], but
I had something to protect myself.

[And] three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they h
ad no plan.�67
The Medical Emergency. While TV cameras were trained on the
distraught denizens of the
convention center, news of another distressed population
began filtering into the press: the
patients and staff of the city�s hospitals. Most of New Orleans
� hospitals, and nursing homes, had
not evacuated their patients ahead of Katrina�s onslaught. As el
sewhere in the city, they had lost
power early, and their backup generators had either flooded or r
un out of fuel; many facilities
were surrounded by water and approachable only by helicopter
or boat. While limited supplies of
food and water had been delivered by helicopter, these were run
ning low, and there were reports
that some hungry hospital workers were �feeding
themselves intravenous sugar solutions.�
Doctors were �working by flashlight,� using manual
ventilators on patients, and �waiting
64 Robert McFadden and Ralph Blumenthal, “Bush sees long
recovery for New Orleans,” The New York Times,
August 31, 2005, p. A1.
65 Michael Perlstein, “‘I told them the worst is yet to come’;
most officers working on adrenaline, little else,” The
Times-Picayune, September 4, 2005, p. A2. According to a
September 28 report in The New York Times, an
estimated 15 percent of the police force—250 officers—would
later face investigation for “absences without
permission.”

66 Anderson et al., September 1, 2005.
67 Ann Gerhart, “And now we are in hell,” The Washington
Post, September 1, 2005, p. A1.
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helplessly for news from outside.�68 Early efforts to come to t
he assistance of hospitals had been
hampered by reports of gunfire aimed at helicopters
attempting to drop off supplies or airlift
patients. The head of one private ambulance service told
reporter that medics trying to reach
hospitals by boat had been shot at as well.69
By Thursday, the situation grew desperate. �Beside himself afte
r failing to get through to
city and state officials,� The Times‐Picayune reported, �the ch
ief of trauma at Charity Hospital [a
public facility] called a news conference � to beg for help. Cha
rity was nearly out of food and
power for its generators and had been forced to move patients to
higher floors to escape looters
prowling the hospital. ��70 A doctor at Pendleton Memorial M
ethodist Hospital reported similarly
perilous conditions in an e‐mail: 130 patients in need of care; o
ver 500 �non‐patient refugees� who
were �very close to rioting for the balance� of food and
water available in the facility;
�dehydrating� staff; �snakes in hospital�; temperature at 110
degrees.71

The same doctor also accused FEMA of diverting support sent b
y the for‐profit hospital�s
owners and commandeering supplies intended for its patients an
d staff. While these charges were
apparently not verified, there were reports that both state and F
EMA teams sent to help evacuate
the hospitals had been, in the words of the House Select
Committee, �intercepted by people
trapped in the floodwaters and on rooftops.�72 The transportati
on needed to remove patients from
hospitals was, as the Senate Committee report noted,
already �tied up in search and rescue
efforts,� and there was not enough to go around. The
director of the Louisiana Department of
Health and Hospitals, Dr. Jimmy Guidry, described being
besieged with calls from hospitals,
�saying, � �We�ve got to get them [i.e., patients] out of here.
We�ve got to get them out of here.
We�ve got to get them out of here. � [A]nd I�m beating my he
ad to try to get the help. And you�ve
got search and rescue that�s trying to get people out of water a
nd rooftops and out of hospitals.
And that�s all � competing needs for the limited assets.73
Although efforts to evacuate hospitals had begun on Thursday�
some of them privately
arranged by their corporate owners�the process proved slow an
d halting, and some turned to the
press to vent their frustration. �It�s like we�ve been forgotten
,� a Charity Hospital administrator
told ABC‐TV�s Good Morning America. �I don�t
understand why the federal government has
68 Felicity Barringer and Donald McNeil, Jr., “Grim triage for

ailing and dying at a makeshift hospital,” The New
York Times, September 3, 2005, p. A13.
69 Sam Coates and Dan Eggen, “A city of despair and
lawlessness,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2005, p. A1.
The reports of gunfire later came into question. While one man
was arrested for shooting at a helicopter on
September 5, many officials, The Washington Post reported on
October 5, came to believe that at least some of the
gunfire was most likely intended to alert rescuers to the
presence of people needing help.
70 Jed Horne, “Help us, please; after the disaster, chaos and
lawlessness rule the streets,” The Times-Picayune,
September 2, 2005, p. A1.
71 House Select Committee report, pp. 286-287.
72 Ibid., p. 284.
19
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dragged its feet.� Outside the hospital building, the show
reported, a banner had been hung
reading, �Stop the lying and get us the hell out of here.�74
Anger Grows. By midweek, state and local leaders in
Louisiana appeared at times
exhausted and discouraged. �The whole situation,� Blanco

said on Good Morning America on
Wednesday, �is totally overwhelming.�75 That morning, accor
ding to The Wall Street Journal, she
led a prayer service at the state EOC. �We need a higher power
right now,� she declared, �to make
it come together for us.�76 In his testimony before the House S
elect Committee in December, Nagin
described a low moment in the post‐storm ordeal. �Little help h
ad arrived as the day [Wednesday]
turned to night,� he recalled, �and you could feel the
heaviness of the aftermath. Imagine the
nights�pitch black, no power, intense heat and people crying fo
r help. It was a horrible situation,
and Wednesday night was touch and go for the city.�
But by Thursday, as the Charity Hospital banner eloquently illu
strated, cries for help in
New Orleans were turning to cries of outrage. Many of
them were aimed at the federal
government, FEMA in particular, and quite a few of them were
delivered by irate local officials.
�This is a national disgrace,� Terry Ebbert, director of
homeland security in New Orleans,
declared. �FEMA has been here for three days, yet there is no c
ommand and control. We can send
massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims [in Asia], but
we can�t bail out the city of New
Orleans.�77
There was a sense of betrayal that the federal government had n
ot come to the city�s aid.
The �Hurricane Pam� exercise of 2004�which brought state, l
ocal, and federal emergency officials
together to devise a plan specifically to respond to a major hurri
cane in New Orleans�appeared to
have created the expectation of a rapid, though not

immediate, influx of federal assistance.
Hurricane Pam had �predicted a massive federal response withi
n two days,� according to Ebbert,
and, consequently, the city�s plan, he told The Washington Pos
t, was to �hang in there for 48 hours
and wait for the cavalry.�78 Walter Maestri, director of emerge
ncy management for neighboring
Jefferson Parish, argued the same point. The Hurricane Pam exe
rcise was a �contract� stipulating
what the various parties would do
in a hurricane‐generated disaster. FEMA might not provide
assistance for 48‐72 hours, according to Maestri, but after that p
eriod, he �expected help� in the
74 ABC News, Good Morning America, September 2, 2005.
75 Dan Balz, “A defining moment for state leaders,” The
Washington Post, September 1, 2005, p. A13.
76 Ann Carrns, Chad Terhune, Kris Hudson and Gary Fields,
“Overwhelmed: As US mobilizes aid, Katrina exposes
flaws in preparation,” The Wall Street Journal, September 1,
2005, p. A1.
77 Josh White and Peter Whoriskey, “Planning, response are
faulted,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2005, p.
A1.
78 Susan Glasser and Michael Grunwald, “Steady buildup to a
city’s chaos,” The Washington Post, September 11,
2005, p. A1.
20

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form specified in the Hurricane Pam planning documents. FEM
A, Maestri asserted, had failed to
keep its part of the bargain.79
Some observers also noted the contrast between the
response to Katrina and earlier
hurricanes. �The scene [in Louisiana and Mississippi] was stark
ly different in Florida a year ago,�
wrote The Wall Street Journal, �after Hurricanes Charley
and Frances roared in. Then, federal
agencies pulled off a tour‐de‐force rescue, quickly pouring in bi
llions of dollars to help distressed
residents,� supplementing that aid when two more storms follo
wed. �President Bush visited the
scene within 48 hours,� the Journal continued�at that
point, Bush had not yet gone to New
Orleans�and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, �took per
sonal responsibility for managing
the relief effort.� While there were �delays and
frustrations, FEMA generally received high
marks.�80
The failure to muster a similar show of federal responsiveness p
rompted bitter remarks
from New Orleans area leaders. �We have been
abandoned by our own country,� declared
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard during an appearanc
e on Meet the Press on September
4. The �aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as
one of the worst abandonments of
Americans on American soil ever in US history.� Nagin resorte
d to ruder language when he spoke

on a local radio talk show on Thursday afternoon.
Referring to the president�s recent �flyover
inspection� of the devastated Gulf Coast, he said, �They don�
t have a clue what�s going on down
here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone
event was over, with all kinds of
goddamn excuses. Excuse my French, everybody in
America, but I am pissed.� There was
�nothing happening,� he continued. ��They�re feeding the p
ublic a line of bull, � and people are
dying down here.� Contrasting the response to another notable
disaster, Nagin declared, �After
9/11 we gave the president unprecedented powers, lickety‐quick
, to take care of New York and
other places.� Nagin brushed aside promises of troops
and supplies. �They�re not here,� he
declared. �It�s too doggone late. Get off your asses, and let�s
do something and let�s fix the biggest
goddamn crisis in the history of this country.�81
A Struggling FEMA. Nagin�s remarks, which were replayed acr
oss the country, focused
attention on FEMA and its apparent inability either to provide e
vacuees with adequate supplies of
food, water, and medicine or to assemble enough
transportation to remove them from squalid
shelters and hospitals. At one level, the reason for the
agency�s faltering response was a
straightforward one. �Despite all of our efforts and despite the
fact that we pre‐positioned more
commodities and staged more rescue and medical teams than ev
er in our history,� said William
Lokey, FEMA�s federal coordinating officer for Louisiana,
in testimony before the House Select

79 House Select Committee report, p. 83. As the report noted,
however, the consultant who designed the Hurricane
Pam exercise described the resulting plan—which was
incomplete—more as a “bridging document” or roadmap
than an operational plan.
80 Carrns et al., September 1, 2005.
81 As quoted in The Times-Picayune, Web Edition, September
2, 2005.
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Committee, �as a result of the catastrophic size and
scope of Katrina, our initial response was
overwhelmed.� The chaos on the ground in New Orleans, more
over, seemed to throw the agency
off balance. �Everything is being done by the seat of the pants,
� one FEMA official told the Los
Angeles Times. �� We�re starting from scratch as though no p
lanning had ever been done before.�82
Defenders of the federal response pointed out that, with commu
nications in New Orleans
destroyed and many roads into the city in poor condition, it was
not easy to keep supplies moving
and reaching those in need. The �difficulty wasn�t lack of sup
plies,� Chertoff maintained on Meet
the Press. �The difficult was that when the levee broke, it was
very, very hard to get the supplies to

the people.� But it did not escape the notice of critics that Wal‐
Mart, for example, did not appear to
be experiencing this difficulty. �On Thursday morning,� The T
imes‐Picayune pointed out, a crew of
journalists�who had also figured out how to haul themselves an
d their equipment into the city�
�saw a caravan of 13 Wal‐Mart tractor trailers head into town t
o bring food, water and supplies to
a dying city.�83
FEMA�s failure to match Wal‐Mart�s performance was attribut
ed to a number of problems.
For one, its logistics system worked poorly. �FEMA has
a logistics problem,� Brown later
acknowledged. �� I can point out where the stuff is, and I can
point out where it�s supposed to go
to; I can�t always tell you that it actually got there.�84 FEMA
was plagued as well by a shortage of
drivers to transport supplies and people, and a shortage of suppl
ies themselves; although it had
pre‐positioned an unprecedented volume of supplies, it was not
�robust� enough, as Lokey put it,
�for the catastrophe at hand.�85 The bureaucracy of
FEMA also seemed to interfere with the
smooth delivery of supplies. Despite Brown�s urging FEMA sta
ff to �push the envelope� and cut
red tape in pre‐storm meetings, there were numerous tales of tru
cks being halted or diverted or
refused entry by agency officials. The problem, Brown explaine
d in his House testimony, lay with
�disaster assistance employees��a �cadre� of part‐time
workers the agency hired to provide
�surge capacity� in times of disaster. They tended to be stickle
rs for detail, he said, and too far
removed from the leadership of the agency to �understand that t
he guy at the top�at the time,

me�doesn�t care.�
In his later testimony, Brown described himself as constantly pr
odding the system to move
supplies along. �I continued to do operations as best I could all
along,� he said. �� And I would
continually ask questions: Are things happening? Are things hap
pening? Are things happening?�
But, he acknowledged to the House Select Committee in
February, �I remained frustrated
throughout the entire process that the requests that we
were working on were not being filled
82 Nicole Gaouette, Alan Miller, Mark Mazzetti, Doyle
McManus, Josh Meyer and Kevin Sack, “Put to Katrina’s
test,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2005, p. A1.
83 The Times-Picayune, “An open letter to the president,”
September 4, 2005, p. A15. The editorial declared that
“[e]very official at [FEMA] should be fired, Director Michael
Brown especially.”
85 White House report, chapter 4, p. 7.
22
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timely.� In a rueful nod to his earlier criticism of Blanco and L
ouisiana state government, Brown

said, �We were dysfunctional, too. � I couldn�t make things h
appen.�
Disconnect. FEMA�s perceived shortcomings in responding to
Katrina were exacerbated in
the public eye by an apparent lack of awareness of some of the
most shocking scenes coming out of
New Orleans. On Thursday, at a time when images of thirsty, hu
ngry, and distraught evacuees
were dominating the nation�s TV screens, Chertoff remarked th
at �it is a source of tremendous
pride to me to work with people who have pulled off this really
exceptional response.�86 More
embarrassing perhaps was his reply to repeated questions that d
ay on NPR�s All Things Considered
about the plight of evacuees at the convention center. Asked abo
ut �thousands of people at the
convention center in New Orleans with no food, zero,� Chertoff
responded that �we are getting
food and water to areas where people are staging.� Then he rem
arked, �The one thing about an
episode like this is if you talk to someone and you get a rumor o
r you get someone�s anecdotal
version of something, I think it�s dangerous to
extrapolate it all over the place.� When the
interviewer, Robert Siegel, pressed the issue, pointing out
that experienced reporters had
witnessed the scene in person, Chertoff answered, �Well, � act
ually I have not heard a report of
thousands of people in the convention center who don�t have fo
od and water.�
That night, Michael Brown made more or less the same admissi
on, telling both Paula Zahn
on CNN and Ted Koppel on ABC‐TV�s Nightline that �we firs
t learned of the convention center�

we being the federal government�today,� prompting an incredu
lous Koppel to ask, �Don�t you
guys watch television? Don�t you guys listen to the radio? Our
reporters have been reporting about
it for more than just today.� Later, Brown insisted, in
his Senate testimony, that he had
�misspoken,� after �being up for 24 hours.� He had in fact le
arned of the crowd at the convention
center on Wednesday night, he said, and �immediately started d
emanding � resources to take
care of that.� When a senator pointed out that records indicated
that FEMA had not ordered food
and water for the convention center until Friday morning,
Brown replied, �I can tell you
unequivocally, senator, under oath, that the minute I
learned that there were people in the
convention center, I turned to [FCO] Bill Lokey, � my operatio
ns person on the ground, and said,
�Get MREs [meals ready to eat], get stuff moving in there.��
By this time, however, Brown had already concluded that FEMA
was overmatched by the
tasks it faced, and that it was time to call in �the Army.�
FEMA Turns to DOD. As Brown recalled in
his February House testimony, as early as
Tuesday, August 30, he began talking to White House officials
�primarily Deputy Chief of Staff
Joe Hagin�about asking the Department of Defense (DOD) to a
ssume responsibility for FEMA�s
logistics mission. �I was asking for a hostile takeover,� he sai
d. �I wanted them to come in and run
logistics, to run distribution � because we knew it was beyond
our capacity to do that.� William

86 Amanda Ripley, “How did this happen?” Time, September
12, 2005, p. 52.
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Lokey, the FCO for Louisiana, came to much the same conclusi
on on Wednesday. In his Senate
testimony, Lokey remembered �going to Michael Brown
and saying, this is beyond me, this is
beyond FEMA, this is beyond the state. We need � to federalize
this or get a massive military
invasion in here to get some help.� He did not technically know
what �federalize� meant, Lokey
explained, but �what I was talking about was turning
this over to somebody that can manage
something this size. I�ve never done something like this. I was
trying my best. I wasn�t very good
at it.�87
While Brown may have spoken to the White House of his wish t
o hand over logistics to the
DOD, however, there was, according to the Senate Committee re
port, �scant evidence� that he or
anyone from FEMA discussed this with Pentagon officials until
Thursday, September 1. That day,
FEMA�s acting director of the response division spoke
with the agency�s acting director of
operations about the need for DOD�s help with
�commodities, supplies, and logistics.�
Floodwaters and concerns about reports of civil disorder on TV

were making delivery of supplies
difficult. DOD, it was reasoned, was �very well equipped to not
only deliver things in difficult
situations, but also to provide the security that is
commensurate to delivering that kind of
service.�88 After discussions between FEMA and DOD,
and within DOD�in which Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld participated�the Pentagon
agreed to take on the job. The logistics
�mission assignment� was written up on Friday, September 2,
and approved the following day.
FEMA was not the only entity seeking to tap the resources of th
e military. The state of
Louisiana�overwhelmed by the challenges of caring for
and evacuating tens of thousands of
people in the New Orleans area�began an urgent quest
for troops from fellow states and the
federal government. It would take the better part of a week, how
ever, to muster enough troops to
meet the huge need in New Orleans.
Calling in the Military
By long tradition in the US, it was the National Guard, not feder
al forces, that states first
called on to help out in times of disaster. Unlike
active‐duty troops, which were, with certain
exceptions, forbidden by statute to engage in domestic
law enforcement activities, National
Guardsmen could take on policing duties as well as provide man
power for an array of tasks, from
rescue operations to distribution of supplies. In advance of Katr
ina, Louisiana had activated 4,000
National Guard troops; by Tuesday, August 30, that number had
risen to about 5,800. The state�s

National Guard ranks at home had been depleted by the war in I
raq�3,200 Louisiana guardsmen
were stationed there at the time Katrina struck, along with such
equipment as �high‐water trucks,
fuel trucks and satellite phones,� The New York Times reporte
d. It was a matter of some dispute
24
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whether the local response to Katrina was hampered by a
lack of National Guard troops and
equipment�Louisiana Guard commanders and local officials sai
d yes, the Pentagon said no.89
Whatever the case, the Louisiana National Guard got off to a ro
cky start when its barracks,
in the eastern part of New Orleans, were flooded, forcing the Gu
ard to evacuate hurriedly and re‐
establish headquarters in a parking lot at the Superdome�which
would itself soon be surrounded
by floodwaters. The loss of communications added to the Nation
al Guard�s woes. �With land lines,
cellphones and many satellite phones out of action,� the Times
reported, �the frequencies used by
the radios still functioning were often so jammed that
they were useless.� Some Guard

commanders were reduced, in the words of one, to using �runne
rs, like in World War I.�90
As the crisis in New Orleans deepened, it quickly became
evident that the Louisiana
National Guard was spread too thin to maintain law and
order, assist with search and rescue
efforts, and�what soon became a high priority�help evacuate t
he huge crowds at the Superdome
and the convention center. On Tuesday afternoon, after visiting
the Superdome and concluding
that the people there needed to be removed �as soon as
possible,� Blanco told Major General
Bennett Landreneau�adjutant general of the Louisiana National
Guard�to �ask for all available
assistance from the National Guard and the United States
Government, specifically federal
military assistance.�91
As Blanco�s instructions indicated, there were two
avenues the state could pursue to
supplement its own National Guard forces: it could ask other sta
tes to send their National Guard
troops, and it could ask the federal government to send its activ
e‐duty troops. The state sought
both kinds of help, although later there were disputes about whe
n this was done, what was said to
whom, and what specifically was asked for. Early on,
Blanco, in conversation with Bush on
Monday afternoon, had made a sweeping request for assistance.
�We need your help,� she told the
president, by her own account. �We need everything
you�ve got.� Blanco came away from the
conversation convinced that Bush intended to �send all of the r
esources and assistance within the
power of the federal government� to her stricken state. When th

e hoped‐for, though unspecified,
help was not forthcoming, Blanco eventually put a figure on wh
at she wanted: 40,000 troops. �She
was using the number 40,000,� Landreneau later recalled,
�and she was saying she needed
soldiers, she needed boots on the ground.� However, he added,
�I don�t recall her ever defining or
differentiating between active or National Guard. She wanted th
e help.�92
89 Scott Shane and Thom Shanker, “When storm hit, National
Guard was deluged too,” The New York Times,
September 28, 2005, p. A1.
90 Ibid.
92 Ibid., chapter 26, p. 46, p. 59. Later, Blanco acknowledged
that she had not specified the type of soldier she wanted
sent. “Nobody told me I had to request that,” she said. “I
thought I had requested everything they had. We were
living in a war zone by then.” [Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt and
Thom Shanker, “Political issues snarled plans for
troop aid,” The New York Times, September 9, 2005, p. A1.]
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National Guard Troops. Negotiations over National Guard
troops were relatively

straightforward, although here, too, there were some disagreeme
nts over the timing of the state�s
request. Under the provisions of the Emergency Management As
sistance Compact (EMAC), which
Congress approved in 1996, Louisiana could ask states to
send National Guard resources�
equipment as well as troops. In advance of Katrina,
it had requested helicopters and crews for
search and rescue efforts, but not ground troops. A couple of hu
ndred troops from three states
trickled in on Tuesday, but the EMAC process�a
state‐to‐state transaction�proved too
cumbersome to handle the huge volume of requests for help com
ing from Mississippi as well as
Louisiana
in Katrina�s devastating wake. Eventually, both states sought h
elp from the National
Guard Bureau in Washington, a Department of Defense unit �re
sponsible for advising the Army
and Air Force on National Guard matters and communicating wi
th state governments including
state National Guards,� headed by Lieutenant General H. Steve
n Blum.93 As Blum later related it,
Landreneau called him on Wednesday morning to ask for help in
expediting the EMAC process.
�[H]e said he needed 5,000 soldiers to help, � and it
was clear in his voice that it was pretty
imminent need,� Blum recalled. ��[H]e communicated
some emotion over the phone that he
needed it, and he needed it now.�94
Blum immediately began calling and e‐mailing state adjutants g
eneral across the country,
according to the Senate Committee report, asking in particular f
or �National Guard military police,
engineers, and high water trucks.� The results were

impressive: within 96 hours, over 30,000
National Guard troops were deployed to Louisiana and Mississi
ppi from all 50 states plus two
territories and the District of Columbia. But it took awhile for t
he troops to appear in sufficient
numbers for the distressed people of New Orleans to feel their p
resence. (See Exhibit 3.) It was not
until Thursday night, September 1, that, with the help of fresh N
ational Guard reinforcements, the
evacuation of the Superdome could finally begin.
Federal Troops. The effort to obtain active‐duty troops proved f
ar more challenging and
time‐consuming, in part because it was an inherently complex pr
ocess�taking, according to the
White House report, 21 steps from the time the request was mad
e to actual delivery of military
forces�and in part because of confusion and disagreements that
dogged the quest for troops. The
formal process called for the request for active‐duty troops to b
e made through FEMA, but state
officials largely bypassed this channel95 and made their request
s directly either to the White House
or to the military commander in the field�Lieutenant General R
ussel Honoré, who, on Tuesday
night, August 30, was appointed commander of Joint Task
Force Katrina, in Camp Shelby,
Mississippi. The task force, according to the Senate Committee
report, consisted of �all the active‐
94 Ibid., chapter 26, pp. 52-53. According to the Senate
Committee report, Landreneau maintained that he asked
Blum for help on Tuesday, but Blum recalled that the request

did not come until Wednesday.
95 The Senate Committee report noted that FEMA “issued 93
requests for specific federal military assets and
capabilities” to the DOD, but these did not involve “large
numbers of ground troops.”
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duty military forces in the Gulf Coast region responding to Katr
ina,� but it would be days before
they would make an appearance in New Orleans.
On Tuesday morning, Landreneau had spoken by phone with Ho
noré and, by his own
account, �conveyed the Governor�s desire for federal
troops, in particular an Army division
headquarters to plan, coordinate, and execute the evacuation of
New Orleans.� Honoré, however,
maintained that the request for military forces did not come unti
l the following day. Whenever the
request was made, it did not yield results. Although Honoré him
self visited the stricken city on
Wednesday, he did not bring any troops with him. He did meet
with Blanco, who repeated her
request for help with the evacuation.96
That day, Blanco also made an �urgent call� to the White Hous
e, according to a timeline
she submitted to the Senate Committee, �in an effort to reach P

resident Bush and express the need
for significant resources.� She was unable to reach Bush, but e
ventually spoke with both Chief of
Staff Andrew Card and Homeland Security Advisor
Frances Townsend. These conversations,
however, also proved unsuccessful, in part, the Senate
Committee report maintained, because
�White House officials did not understand what the
governor was requesting.� Later, Blanco
acknowledged that, initially at least, �I didn�t give
[Bush] a checklist or anything.� She was
criticized for the lack of specificity of her requests for help. Oth
ers asked her, she recalled, �Did
you ask for this; did you ask for that? It got to be a very difficul
t little game.�97
But, as the Senate Committee report pointed out, even after Bla
nco clarified her request, a
major sticking point remained: under what terms the active‐duty
and the National Guard troops
would serve. Some officials�including Michael Brown�were ar
guing for the �federalization� of
National Guard troops in Louisiana by invoking the Insurrection
Act. Normally, National Guard
forces were under the command of the governor, but the
Insurrection Act would allow the
president to place them�along with active‐duty forces�under hi
s command; moreover, under the
provisions of the act, both National Guard and active‐duty
troops could participate in law
enforcement missions. Brown maintained that he was a
�strong advocate� of federalization
because of reports of violent crime that were rife in New
Orleans at the time, and �I want[ed]
active‐duty troops that are ready, willing and able to kill in that
area, because we can�t do search

and rescue with that kind of stuff going on.�98 Blanco, howeve
r, resisted federalization.
Talks between Louisiana and White House officials about
federalization dragged on
inconclusively.99 Meanwhile, some Department of Defense
officials argued against deploying
96 Senate Committee report, chapter 26, p. 51, p. 59.
97 Karen Tumulty with Brian Bennett, “The Governor: Did
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco make every effort to get
federal help?” Time, September 19, 2005, p. 38; House Select
Committee report, p. 222. According to Time, on
Thursday, September 1, Blanco did come up with a checklist,
which included, among other things, 40,000 troops;
urban search and rescue teams; buses; mobile morgues; and
trailers of water, ice, and food.
98 Senate Committee report, chapter 26, p. 49, p. 58.
99 Mississippi did not seek active-duty federal troops, so the
issue of federalization concerned Louisiana only.
27
_____________________________________________________
___ C15‐04‐1844.0
active‐duty troops at all, maintaining that enough National Guar
d forces were flowing into the
region to satisfy the demand for military assistance. But Blanco
disagreed, and continued to press
for federal troops to help make up the full complement of 40,00

0 troops which she felt was needed.
On Friday, September 2, President Bush made his first appearan
ce in New Orleans and met with
Blanco, Nagin, and others aboard Air Force One to discuss the i
ssue. Nagin recommended that
Honoré be placed in charge of all troops, both Guard and active‐
duty. The mayor also chided Bush
and Blanco for haggling over command issues while New
Orleans suffered. �� I stopped
everyone and basically said, �Mr. President, Madame
Governor, if the two of you don�t get
together on this issue, more people are going to die in
this city, and you need to resolve this
immediately.100
Nagin�s plea notwithstanding, the president and the governor,
who continued to refuse to
give up her authority over the National Guard, did not come to a
n agreement at the meeting on
Air Force One. That night, at 1l:30 p.m., the White House faxed
Blanco a new proposal: Honoré
would take command of both National Guard and
active‐duty forces, but in a �dual‐hat�
capacity�i.e., he would report to Blanco for the National Guard
forces under his command, and to
Bush for the active‐duty forces under this command. The follow
ing morning, Blanco, in a phone
conversation with Andrew Card, rejected the proposal. �The bo
ttom line of it is,� said Lt. Gen.
Blum of the National Guard Bureau�who supported Blanco�s p
osition��there were many offers
and overtures made to the Governor on command and control, b
ut they all centered on a Federal
officer being in charge of the Governor�s National Guard, and t
hat was rejected.�101

Sending in the Troops. Although some US active‐duty forces ha
d been put on high alert as
early as Wednesday, August 31, the call to deploy did not come
for several more days. According
to a report in the Los Angeles Times, it was not until
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld overruled
military officials in the Northern Command on Saturday,
September 3�amid mounting public
criticism of the federal response to Katrina�that the way was cl
eared for deployment.102 At 11:00
that morning, President Bush announced that 7,200 Army
and Marine troops would be sent to
Louisiana. By that time, there were over 17,000 National Guard
smen in the state, with thousands
more arriving every day, and the evacuation of the Superdome a
nd convention center was well
underway.
Days 5‐8: Friday, September 2‐Monday, September 5�Relief
With both National Guard troops and buses converging on
New Orleans, the first
concerted effort to evacuate the Superdome began on Thursday.
It did not go smoothly. �When the
first dozen buses finally arrived,� The Times‐Picayune reported
, �� shoving and fights broke out
102 Gaouette et al., September 11, 2005.
28

_____________________________________________________
___ C15‐04‐1844.0
and trash cans were set ablaze as people jockeyed to get out of t
he fetid, stinking stadium in which
they had been captive since entering the city�s shelter of last re
sort four days earlier.�103 But by
Friday, September 2, there were enough buses�a total of
822, by Landreneau�s account�and
manpower on hand to begin to make a dent in the huge
crowd of 23,000 evacuees. By the
following day, the now‐dilapidated sports facility was empty.
Meanwhile, troops and buses had also begun to appear at
the convention center.
According to Landreneau�s Senate testimony, the site was �sec
ured� shortly after noon on Friday,
and food, water, and medical help arrived soon thereafter. The e
vacuation of the convention center
began the next morning and was completed by 6:00 that
evening.104 The population of the I‐10
cloverleaf began to diminish as well, as buses came by to pick u
p evacuees who had been dropped
off there by rescuers; their numbers dwindled from roughly 5,00
0 to 2,500 by mid‐day Saturday,
though more evacuees continued to show up there�as well as at
the Superdome and convention
center�in hopes of finding a way out of the ruined city. By the
end of the Saturday, September 3,
according to the testimony of FEMA official Philip Parr,
a total of 66,825 people had been
�transported� out of New Orleans. They left not just on buses,
but on planes and Amtrak trains,
headed for Houston and more distant destinations, as part of wh
at The Times‐Picayune called �a

historic diaspora of New Orleans residents. ��105
Hospitals began emptying out as well. �With hundreds of
National Guard troops
spreading out in the city streets,� The New York Times
reported, �it was finally easier for small
boats to approach embattled hospitals, some of which were surr
ounded by six feet of floodwater.
�� The �fleet of helicopters evacuating patients from rooftops
� expanded as well, from a �handful
of single‐patient civilian ambulances� to �about 100 military
medevac choppers.�106 But hospital
patients faced a further ordeal: roughly 3,000 of them were tran
sported to a makeshift hospital at
Louis Armstrong Airport where, on early Friday morning,
conditions were described as
�extremely desperate.� Later that morning, however, military t
ransports and chartered commercial
jets began arriving to move the patients out; by Friday afternoo
n, only a few hundred remained at
the airport.
The influx of National Guard troops also helped improve securit
y in the city. �It was a
relief,� The Times‐Picayune reported on Friday, �to see so ma
ny uniformed men bearing machine
guns, patrolling expressways and major intersections.�
When the active‐duty troops began
arriving on Monday, they could not, by law, take on policing du
ties, but �their mere presence,� the
103 Horne, September 2, 2005.
104 In Landreneau’s account, the evacuation was coordinated
by the National Guard, but the Senate Committee report

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