864 Chapter 32 Shocks and Responses: 1992–Present
Then the levees at Lake Pontchartrain broke, flooding
much of New Orleans.
Rural areas were hit equally hard. Waters rose so
rapidly that thousands sought refuge on their roofs;
many drowned when rising waters trapped them in
attics. At St. Rita’s Nursing Home in St. Bernard
Parish, water rose to the ceiling of the one-story
building in twenty minutes. Frantic workers attempted
to float bed-ridden elderly out of windows on mat-
tresses; within an hour thirty-five were dead.
By that evening, much of New Orleans was
underwater. Some 25,000 people crowded into the
Superdome. Food and water grew scarce. Fights
broke out. When officials locked the Superdome’s
doors, the thousands left outside went to the nearby
Convention Center, surged past security guards, and
took possession of the complex.
At first, no one comprehended the dimensions of
the catastrophe. Communication systems failed. The
winds knocked out power and phone lines and cell
phone towers; those cell phone towers that remained
standing were overloaded. Over the next three days,
the situation worsened. Over a million people had
been displaced from their homes. In the heat and
humidity, dead bodies, sewage, rotting food and
plants, and factory effluents combined to form a fetid
and toxic inland sea. The Convention Center, which
now housed 20,000, descended into anarchy. There
were reports of rape and murder. Throughout the
storm-devastated region, looting became widespread;
public order collapsed.
“Mr. President, we need your help,” declared
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. But TV crews
arrived on the scene long before assistance from the
Federal Emergency and Management Agency
(FEMA). Television viewers were outraged to see
footage of the dead floating in pools of filth or aban-
doned in wheelchairs.
Yet Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland
Security (which oversaw FEMA), expressed satisfaction
with its efforts. “Considering the dire circumstances
that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has
been destroyed—things are going relatively well,” he
declared. By then, more than 1,300 were dead.
Many shared in the blame. For decades, engineers
had warned that the levees and canals in New Orleans
could fail, but little was done to strengthen them.
Environmentalists had complained of the overdevel-
opment and erosion of the coastal marshes and wet-
lands whose vegetation sponged up excess water, but
their warnings, too, had been mostly ignored.
Officials in New Orleans had neglected to devise an
evacuation plan for those without cars; worse, one-
sixth of the police force abandoned the city before the
storm struck. Mayor C. Ray Nagin inexplicably took
refuge in the twenty-seven-story Hyatt; when he ven-
tured down the stairs—the elevators ceased working
when power failed—his statements were emotional
and confused. In Washington, FEMA director
Michael Brown was so worried about making a mis-
take that he failed to do much at all—the worse mis-
take possible. Bush erred in publicly complimenting
the beleaguered FEMA director: “Brownie, you’re
doing a heck of a job,” a statement so obviously at
variance with public perception that it became an
instant joke. Within a week Brown was demoted; soon
afterward he resigned.
Katrina was not the worst natural disaster in the
nation’s history. In 1900 a hurricane destroyed
Galveston, then the largest city in Texas, killing
10,000. In 1906 an earthquake hit San Francisco,
ignited hundreds of fires that burned 500 blocks of
the city, and killed 700—a larger proportion of the
population than perished in Katrina. But apart from
Katrina’s terrible human toll, the hurricane pointed
up the nation’s vulnerability. If Homeland Security
could not get buses or water to New Orleans in a
timely fashion, how could it protect the nation from
determined terrorists or respond effectively should
they mount another attack?Iraq Insurgency and Bush’s “Surge”
Bush faltered during Katrina partly because he was
distracted by Iraq. Ironically, the chaos left in the
wake of Katrina in many ways paralleled the collapse
of civil society in Iraq after Saddam. (A further irony:
Half of the Louisiana National Guard was missing
during Katrina because it had been sent to restore
order in Iraq.) Iraq certainly needed all the help it
could get. Insurgents blew up police stations and
marketplaces; saboteurs destroyed power facilities
and cut oil pipelines; and rival religious sects, tribes,
warlords, and criminal gangs pushed the country
toward anarchy.
While coalition forces attempted to halt the vio-
lence, political officials laid the foundations for a new
Iraqi government. On June 28, 2004, the coalition
transferred nominal authority to an Iraqi Governing
Council whose chief task was to organize the election
of a National Assembly to draft a constitution. On
January 30, 2005, nearly 8 million Iraqis went to the
polls, almost two-thirds of the eligible voters.
The election, though fraught with irregularities,
offered a glimpse of the democratic Iraq that Bush
hoped would initiate a broader transformation of the
Middle East. But the election also underscored the
divisions within Iraq. In the north, the Kurdish