Words Whispered in Water. Sandy Rosenthal
neighborhoods in water between four and six feet deep.17 Storm surge overtopped and melted levees that should have protected the primarily residential northeastern portion of New Orleans (locally called New Orleans East) and put that entire area underwater.
Farther to the west, between six and seven in the morning, a monolith on the east side of the London Avenue Canal failed and allowed water over ten feet deep into the mostly black Fillmore Gardens neighborhood.18 At about six thirty, on the western edge of the city, several monoliths failed on the 17th Street Canal.19 A torrent of water blasted into the mainly white Lakeview neighborhood of homeowners. Several firefighters, who had sheltered in the upper floors of the Mariner’s Cove condominium complex, watched in shock as water flowed through the breach to a depth of over ten feet.20
The final breach of the flooding catastrophe took place between seven and eight in the morning when the west side of the London Avenue Canal breached—in addition to the east side—and flooded the mixed-race neighborhood of Lake Vista.21 This second breach is a startling testament to the walls’ weakness.
***
Harvey and Renee Miller did not hear this final breach just two city blocks away from them, but Renee was the first to notice dark spots on the wall-to-wall carpeting. Water was coming up through the floorboards. They rushed to the window and watched in disbelief as water surged down the street like river rapids. They stood stunned and watched as—in a matter of seconds—a Cadillac was picked up, carried down the road, and deposited in a tree.
But there was no time to watch because cold water was already a foot deep in the house, and they had to get upstairs! Monet balked at first because she had never seen steps inside of a house, but they managed to coax her up. They brought everything they could up to the second floor—the food, fresh water, and the television set—as floodwater rose shockingly fast inside the house. Fifteen minutes later, on Harvey’s last trip downstairs, he found that the water came up to his chest. At that moment, he understood that their own home must be underwater. Exactly one month earlier, Harvey and Renee had made the final payment on their home.
***
As we ate breakfast in blissful ignorance at the Days Inn, the City of New Orleans was going underwater. The catastrophic breaches of the Industrial Canal, the 17th Street Canal, and the London Avenue Canal immediately killed hundreds and destroyed homes, commercial buildings, and infrastructure.22 Breaches of levees and floodwalls on two other navigation canals—the Mississippi River–Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) Canal and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW)—were also releasing floodwater that would inundate the rest of New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard Parish. Police stations began flooding as storm surge sliced up the communications webs on which emergency managers in Baton Rouge and Washington, DC, relied. Landlines and switching stations were being submerged, and the 911 system went down. One by one, police, city, state, and federal agencies were blinded.23
***
Still oblivious at our mid-state Mississippi motel, we passed some of the time with Grandma Rose doing a crossword puzzle. We wandered through the motel, making friends and tending to our pets. We checked on Charles and Zelda but found out that they had departed at sunrise. They left a note, explaining that they had decided to drive to Zelda’s sister’s home in Birmingham, Alabama.
Jackson was a reasonable choice as an evacuation destination. But, in the case of this particular hurricane, the motel was now partially in the storm’s path. Around noon, the hurricane’s outer bands had begun sweeping through Jackson, bringing winds over fifty miles per hour and accompanying rain. The storm veered eastward and eventually lost strength. But that evening, the winds knocked out our motel’s power. Only the fire escapes were lit.
The managers of a nearby Baskin-Robbins restaurant brought all their ice cream to the motel to be enjoyed rather than watch it spoil. While we ate our melting ice cream, FEMA director Michael Brown painted a grim picture of a ruined city on CNN’s Larry King Live. But he was coy about discussing levee breaches: “We have some, I’m not going to call them breaches, but we have some areas where the lake and the rivers are continuing to spill over.”24
At the Homeland Security Operations Center, Matthew Broderick, the marine brigadier general in command, received reports that levees were breaching, but there was also a televised image of people in the French Quarter toasting their survival on high, dry land. Broderick concluded that he needed to have more specific detailed information in hand before reporting to the president of the United States. And he went home to bed.25
***
With nothing to do but fret in the dark, we decided to go to bed too. Normally, a Mississippi night in late August with no electricity would be insufferable, but the wind and rain had cooled the outdoor temperature to a reasonable seventy-two degrees. We fell into an uneasy sleep along with hundreds of thousands of other evacuees.
The next morning, amid downed trees and power lines, it looked like electricity would not be restored for days. The whole point of evacuating to Jackson was so that my husband could continue operating his workers’ compensation company. This meant that we, along with his other employees at the motel, needed to pack up and relocate. We decided on Lafayette, Louisiana, which had not lost power and had a large, dog-friendly hotel: the Drury Inn, just off Interstate 10 (I-10).
So, for the second time in two days, our extended family evacuated. For the entire ride, our ears were tuned to Garland Robinette on WWL (AM) radio, trying to learn what was happening in New Orleans. We knew that power was knocked out, but other strange reports were trickling in. We heard that thousands were still in the city at the Superdome and that no help was in sight.
***
At 7:08 p.m. EST, the Army Corps issued its first press release, stating that the agency believed the 17th Street Canal had overtopped, which caused its collapse—a claim immediately proven false by eyewitnesses and later by multiple levee investigation teams. The press release ended with this statement: “The New Orleans District’s 350 miles of hurricane levee were built to withstand a fast-moving Category 3 storm. The fact that Katrina, a Category 4-plus hurricane, didn’t cause more damage is a testament to the structural integrity of the hurricane levee protection system.”26
It is possible that this initial information was off-base due to the environment of sheer chaos caused by land-based and cellular phones having become useless in Greater New Orleans proper.
***
Renee and Harvey Miller were initially panic stricken, but by Tuesday afternoon (August 30), they realized that they were safe where they were. They had food, water, and a couch. There was no water for the toilet, but they had a bucket and plenty of floodwater—all the comforts of home except for just one thing: the dog had to go out! For this challenge, they managed to get their very accommodating Monet to use the roof for her business. Off and on throughout the day, they heard helicopters flying overhead. Each time, they went to the windows and waved frantically, but no one paid attention.
***
Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security, saw no reason to interrupt his trip from Washington, DC, to Atlanta to discuss the threat of avian flu with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. But, at the meeting’s conclusion at noon on Tuesday, August 30, he was dismayed to learn that things in New Orleans were spinning out of control. He decided that the situation needed his full attention and, upon returning to Washington, he drafted language that invoked the National Response Plan.27
Meanwhile, engineers from the Army Corps and staffers with the Orleans Levee District and state Department of Transportation and Development all met at the 17th Street Canal breach site. They realized that none of the agencies had an emergency contingency plan for sealing levee breaches.28 Such an absence of planning for breaches spoke to the fact that, in 2005, the Army Corps was considered the gold standard in levee-building.
***
We arrived in Lafayette at about four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon (August 30), at the jam-packed, four-story hotel. The mood at the Drury Inn was far different