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Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time - Season 1 Episode 3 - A Desperate Place - Full Movie
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Communities, homes, and lives all along the Gulf Coast have been shattered and destroyed.
00:17The mayor of New Orleans said that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people in the city are dead.
00:22Bodies are being left floating in the floodwaters. The emphasis is all on rescuing the stranded.
00:30We're told that about 100,000 people are still in this city with no way to get out.
00:34Leaving residents to hold up desperate messages for whoever might be watching from above.
00:48After all the panic in the attic, we found an old cell phone that still had some power.
00:56I was like, oh my God.
01:02I called 911.
01:04They said, we're going to send someone over to rescue you guys.
01:08And maybe about five hours after that, a boat came.
01:14To the interstate, offload, I'll come right back. Won't take me long.
01:18So, he drove us toward interstate 10.
01:24And on the way to the bridge, there was a baby, hair freshly combed, that was in the water.
01:36And she was deceased, but I so wanted to get this baby out the water.
01:44And I told the guy that was driving the boat, I said, there's a baby right there.
01:50So, let me get the baby.
01:53And I'll take her to someone on the bridge and maybe we can find out who her parents is.
01:59You know, he said, that baby's gone.
02:02She's deceased.
02:03And I was like, anyway, just let me get her, you know, out the water.
02:07And I'll take her to the bridge.
02:09And maybe, you know, the ambulance or something up there is waiting.
02:12And they can take her and they can identify her.
02:15And he took a stick or some kind of board he had in the boat and he pushed the baby away.
02:31He was like, ma'am, we're worried about the living, not the dead right now.
02:36We have to, we have to get the living.
02:45We have to get the living.
03:15We have to get the rest of our needs, but there was still no cavalry, no help.
03:21And so we felt as if FEMA was maybe not the right organization for what we were dealing
03:29with throughout the city of New Orleans, because we knew that the deterioration was quickly getting
03:35worse and people needed to get out today.
03:45The Superdome, which was the shelter of last resort, has become the last place anyone wants
03:53to be.
03:54Inside, the toilets and air conditioning are broken.
03:57She just passed out.
03:58They got a disease in there.
04:02They got dead bodies.
04:04The bathrooms, we haven't used it since like Tuesday.
04:08And then when you have to really use it, you have to use it almost anywhere.
04:11It was unbearable.
04:23So a lot of us started going around gate to gate and talking to the different National
04:29Guard members and, you know, trying to see if they'd let us out.
04:32And they would say, we'll go down to that gate, and he wouldn't let us out.
04:35We'll go down to the next gate, and they wouldn't let us out.
04:37We'll go to another gate, and they wouldn't let us out.
04:41But then all of a sudden, somebody that was with my group just started checking the gate
04:46like, yeah, man, let us out here.
04:47We're getting, you know, such and such and this.
04:49And he just started saying a whole bunch of stuff, and that's when the National Guard
04:52pulled the M-16 out.
04:55And he said, y'all better go down that way.
04:58Go, go, go.
05:04It's kind of like they didn't really work with us.
05:08They was rotating different groups of National Guard members, but nobody still would say
05:14who was in charge.
05:15In a disaster, the First Army collaborates with the National Guard.
05:23But Louisiana was not my assigned area when Katrina hit.
05:28The general that was actually in charge of Louisiana, he was still in his headquarters
05:32in San Antonio.
05:34So when he told the Pentagon I was in Mississippi, they said, get that general in New Orleans.
05:40And that's how I ended up designated by the president to be the commander of Joint Task
05:47Force Katrina, which put me in charge of coordinating the response with FEMA.
05:52When I arrived at the Superdome, it was like thousands of eyes who were looking at me.
06:01And my first thought, we got to get these people out of here.
06:05All right, good to see you, man.
06:07So General Honore comes in, where the mayor and I were.
06:12Good morning, General.
06:13Good morning.
06:13How are you doing?
06:14Good morning, General.
06:15How are you doing?
06:16We had FEMA, the city, and emergency personnel represented.
06:21And everyone is sharing with him what we need.
06:26But the FEMA representative interjects to say, we can't do this.
06:31We will do that.
06:33This we have to do by the book.
06:35We're going to do that, but it takes time.
06:38General Honore at this point had had enough.
06:41And he says, excuse me, FEMA.
06:44Before you speak, you need some fucking success.
06:50So I said, all right.
06:51What is the priority?
06:54The mayor said, we need to get food and water.
06:57We need to save these people.
06:59Okay?
07:00And we've got to evacuate the city.
07:02Same thought I had.
07:05By this point, we had already asked federal and state officials for buses to transport people out of the city.
07:15They knew buses were one of our top priorities.
07:18So we expected that the buses would be arriving later that day.
07:25So after that meeting with the mayor, I said, well, I need to go check in with the governor.
07:33And Baton Rouge, because they had trouble talking to each other.
07:37Not only politically, but the lines were down.
07:40There is no comms.
07:45And since the loudspeaker system didn't work, I walked around the 30,000 people in the Superdome to let them know we're working on it.
07:54I think it's going to be buses and we're going to bring it.
07:56I don't know how it's all going to work, but buses are coming.
07:59It did uplift our spirits.
08:04And so I was watching people settle beefs and shaking hands, you know what I mean?
08:10The place started getting real trashy.
08:13So a lot of the teenagers, they started coming together and they started cleaning up.
08:18There was a young man pushing around one of those hotel luggage carts with a person laying on it.
08:28And he said, hey, this lady just passed out.
08:31What do you want me to do with her?
08:32And she was okay, and she was conscious, but she was clearly overheated.
08:37And I said, can you roll her to the medical center?
08:41It's right down there.
08:41And so he took it, and he came back about 10 minutes later.
08:45He's like, you want me to keep doing this if I see stuff or I need people?
08:48And I was like, please do.
08:50He loved that he had a role.
08:54The risk of allowing that young man to help push people to the medical arena was this much.
09:02The impact of other people seeing how he was helping was colossal.
09:11The National Guard chaplain would talk to us, and he'll say, what are your concerns right now?
09:27What are you thinking?
09:28And people just, you know, would say, my loved ones.
09:31I know, well, look what, look, one of the things we want to focus in on is, as bad as it is, we can rebuild the house.
09:41I have no home to go to either.
09:43Everything I have has been destroyed.
09:45I'm wearing what I have.
09:47So we're all in the same boat.
09:50But you know what?
09:51All of my family is okay.
09:53And that is important.
09:55And that's why we need to pray.
09:57Again.
09:58New Orleans is a city that pray.
10:01And I thought he did a great job.
10:03And he, as a man of God, stood up there and he spoke to us and he made us feel better.
10:08Even though we are uncomfortable, we give faith that God sent this angel down to comfort us.
10:14Thank you, guys.
10:16Thank you, guys.
10:16Thank you, guys.
10:18A lot of people started feeling like, you know, now we're chosen at this point in time.
10:25Amen.
10:25We're in this thing together.
10:29And before we get it even worse, we're going to get out of here.
10:33I've called for the president.
10:44I'm expecting him to call me back anytime soon.
10:46But I've asked the president to give us all the resource possible today.
10:53We need his help today.
10:56Time is of the essence.
10:58It's critical that we move quickly and begin to stabilize our situation.
11:03We are live on top of the Causeway Bridge over Interstate 10, where the scene behind me here is just unbelievable.
11:14It is a massive refugee camp filled with thousands and thousands of people waiting for a ride out of the city.
11:23They have been rescued from...
11:24We went up onto the Interstate Bridge on Wednesday.
11:26My sister and the people we were with decided we were going to go as far down as we could go.
11:32So we walked miles away from my house, hoping to cross into Algiers because it wasn't wet over on the West Bank.
11:41We got to where we could look at the Superdump and the National Guard was driving past us.
11:50And it became very apparent that they weren't going to worry about us until the last minute.
11:57It was really stressful because there were a lot of seniors and kids.
12:02And we were almost in 100 degree temperatures on concrete.
12:06But there was no access to water.
12:09That's the thing that really gets me, because you can survive without food for a couple of days, but you have to have the water.
12:17You got a governor.
12:19What the fuck is they doing?
12:22Look at the people right here, bro.
12:25This ain't no game.
12:27This is serious, bro.
12:28People's life is on stage.
12:33So it was unbearable.
12:35But then we noticed that some guys went down under the bridge to the Kentwood Water Company, and they took trucks, and they came up on the bridge with water.
12:45And this is the part that I was amazed at.
12:49When they started distributing, the only thing they said was, drink it, don't waste it, because we don't know how long this will last or how long it will be before we get out.
13:02So that's when I started noticing that you have to be very careful about media and what you read and what you see.
13:13I've watched all day long the stories of the people who are causing trouble, who are, you know, screaming and yelling about things and just being thugs.
13:22These are supposed to be the thugs that they talk about.
13:29They were the ones who went to the Circle Food Store, which is about a half a mile from where we were to get us dry food, dry clothing, because they had a clothing store inside of there, too.
13:41No, you're not supposed to do that.
13:43I know we don't, but if we're barefoot and we're walking in the water, our feces want to get cut.
13:47Most of the networks, live setups, weren't in those areas that were heavily flooded.
13:55They were generally in downtown, tethered on Canal Street, broadcasting live from satellite trucks.
14:01So if there's a shooting on Canal Street and there's looting, you just got to turn the camera there.
14:05That's easy sleazy.
14:06Hey, come back to the house, come over there.
14:08And you're done, you know, and that can lead your broadcast.
14:12The unrest is so bad that his boss ordered him to leave the city.
14:15He said the looting was starting to get so out of control, our general manager is fearing for our lives.
14:22As if emptying the store shelves wasn't enough, some decided to go one step further and take the shelves themselves.
14:30They're so busy with hauling out big racks full of food, they're not concerned about anybody else.
14:35They're just, I mean, they're...
14:36Everybody for themselves.
14:37Everybody for themselves.
14:38I was dismayed watching the news, the way they depicted black folks who were living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
14:51It's like they didn't see us as regular people, law-abiding, church-going, hard-working people.
15:01It's just hard to believe this is reality.
15:05And, you know, people living in these conditions turn to, you know, in some cases, turn to animals.
15:11It's much more difficult to get the full story and not just the headline.
15:23My news director always said, people come first, property comes second.
15:28And that's what we kept the focus on.
15:30We're starving now, too.
15:31Look, we ain't got nothing over here.
15:32Can't get no food cooked, you hear me?
15:34So we had to go break in one dish and do what we had to do.
15:37Look, you had some stupid stuff that was going on.
15:42But the majority of this community was not people in chaos wanting to go out and just loot everything.
15:51There was people trying to survive as things got worse all over the city.
16:07So I flew to Baton Rouge, saw Governor Blanco, and she said, we've asked FEMA for buses.
16:18We don't know when they're going to come, General.
16:21But I'd appreciate it if you do what you can to help New Orleans get evacuated.
16:25I said, I got it, ma'am.
16:30Shortly after that, I got a note that the FEMA director, Michael Brown, wanted to see me.
16:36General Honoré has been working incredibly closely with FEMA and doing all the civil support stuff that we've asked him to do.
16:45So I went to his office.
16:46He was in a big, fancy mobile command headquarters in Baton Rouge.
16:51And he said, that's your desk right there.
16:53I want you right next to me.
16:55I said, I don't think so.
16:58I said, I'll put somebody in that desk, but the problem's in New Orleans.
17:02I can't solve it here.
17:04And he insisted, said, we have to have unity of command.
17:10I said, well, we can have that, but it won't be me.
17:15I've seen the eyes of those people in New Orleans.
17:16That's where I need to be.
17:19So I left.
17:20The situation in the Superdome was getting worse and worse and worse.
17:28So I sent a lot more emails to FEMA headquarters to alert them just how bad it was.
17:35Wednesday, August 31st, an email to Mike Brown.
17:40Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical.
17:45Here are some things you might not know.
17:48Hotels are kicking people out.
17:50Thousands gathering in the streets.
17:52Hundreds still being rescued from homes.
17:55The dying patients at the disaster medical assistance team tent are being medevaced.
18:00Estimates are that many will die within hours.
18:03Plans developing for dome evacuation, but hotel situation is adding to the problem.
18:10Phone connectivity is impossible.
18:13More later.
18:13The tone of the entire building changed dramatically.
18:20And I found myself wondering how many unanswered questions is this group of people who are here,
18:27how much longer can they take this environment?
18:30That we're asking them just to hang in there with us.
18:32Hang in there, hang in there, hang in there.
18:33And I felt that, boy, if we make one false promise, we would lose their trust.
18:40Like, if I say to them, buses are going to be there today, and then the buses don't come,
18:46I think it'll all tip over.
18:48I felt that.
18:50So, it was very, very important to me that I didn't overcommit or overpromise anything.
18:55Because, again, it was a razor-thin level of trust between me and, probably, thousands of people who I talk to every day.
19:10From where we was at on the bridge, all the people that were looking for somewhere to go,
19:16they were saying, don't go by the Superdome, because, you know, the Superdome trashed out.
19:22There's nowhere to go in there.
19:23You know, so they were like, well, go to the convention center, because that's where, you know,
19:27that's where the shelter's supposed to be, and that's where the bus is supposed to pick people up.
19:32My main focus was to get the kids to safety, and the little bitty babies, they can't really walk.
19:40So, I had one baby, and my brother had the other baby, and we got the other two little children, and we walked for miles.
19:48Because of the conditions in the Superdome and the Interstate 10 bridge,
19:52we started hearing that people were now spilling over into the convention center.
19:56So, we just worked straight through.
20:00I don't remember sleeping much at all.
20:03For days now, people have been rationing what little food and water they have, waiting for help.
20:07They say they feel like they've been abandoned by humanity.
20:10What's it been like here?
20:12It's been like hell.
20:14It's been like hell.
20:15We have people here, sick people, haven't had medicine in four days.
20:19We're just worried about medication for my mom, because she's almost out of insulin.
20:22My sister is going through a suicide attack right now.
20:24We're trying to see what we can do to get some IV fluids to her.
20:28We're trying to keep the babies hydrated.
20:30And my little baby getting sick, he just keeps crying in diarrhea, and he don't have no more milk or nothing.
20:36I've been crying for two days, and I try not to let him see me cry.
20:43What do you do as a reporter?
20:45People are asking you for water, and I had a few bottles, and I gave it away, but I can't help them.
20:50And that was a sobering time for me, because I realized that all the stuff that I wanted to do as a reporter,
20:58like, let's get the story, let's get great pictures, like, at that point, none of that mattered.
21:02When you're dealing with people's lives, like, they want to let their family know that they're alive.
21:06My, my grandma, one of y'all, if y'all out there, you heard me, and y'all hear you, son, just let me know y'all living, you heard me?
21:17Because I ain't seen y'all since Katrina hit, and I really miss him, y'all, you feel me?
21:21And I'm hurting, I'm hurting.
21:23See this body right here?
21:25That woman been dead since Tuesday.
21:27There are six bodies upstairs on the third floor, and another lady laying on the floor by the lady's bathroom dead.
21:35It's just terrible. It's an awful situation to have to live in.
21:41We went inside the convention center, and the only way that I can describe it, and I don't want to get into detail,
21:47is that it is the smell of human suffering.
21:50I couldn't stand the smell that's on myself, you know what I'm saying?
21:55I'm nasty, my shoes wet, everything wet, I don't have nothing.
22:01I felt embarrassed, you know, like I couldn't talk to nobody.
22:06And even though, you know, all the people out there, they was in the same predicament.
22:09So, you know, we all was like, you know, people who used to having stuff and, and, and, and having things and taking care of themselves,
22:16and they couldn't, you know, they felt the same way.
22:20I was totally, like, out of myself already.
22:24I just felt like I was just going to pass out and die at any time.
22:29But also, the kids didn't have no more food, and they was dehydrated, you know, their lips was turning white.
22:38So, through the shame and embarrassment and the guilt, the only thing I could do is just use the little strength I got to try to get these children some help.
22:47So, when the media came out there with their cameras and all that, you know, I had my two little babies in my hand, and I just went to hollering on the camera.
22:55We didn't have no water, we didn't have no food, we don't have nothing here.
22:59If the police taken it out the stores, we didn't expect these people.
23:02If you care, our children been out here for days, they don't have nothing to eat, we don't have no cold water.
23:06We don't have no water, we don't have no water, we don't have no water, we don't have no water, we don't have no water.
23:08We got babies that's hungry.
23:10Send people to get the folks out of here, folks.
23:12We're hungry, we're starving, we need help.
23:15We need medical attention, they got old people that's sick, they got people dying.
23:19I felt neglected.
23:20I felt like the city that we masked in all these years and paraded in with the second lines and, you know, worked in and built these regular houses and, you know, that they just let us down.
23:34Like, at this time, to them, it was like we wasn't even human no more.
23:38People still in New Orleans, if they looked to the sky, saw Air Force One, the president flying over for a personal look at the devastation.
23:48His plane was low, just over the city skyline.
23:52I basically told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.
24:00And I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources.
24:05A lot of people suffered, and a lot of people suffered needlessly.
24:12If we had had the leader of the free world show up in New Orleans on Monday, instead of just flying over the city two days after the storm, we would have had a much different situation after Katrina.
24:27Powerful country as we are, and we can't take care of these people, they're out here all this time, doesn't make sense.
24:34And I'm pissed.
24:35When I joined the police department, my aspirations were high.
24:49Then in 2002, I became superintendent of police.
24:52And in that position, I wanted to be, always accessible to the media.
24:59And from a communication standpoint, the mayor told me any kind of cover-up wouldn't be tolerated.
25:07That stuck in my mind.
25:10I think I overthought it.
25:11I didn't want to hide anything from the people.
25:15And I was so dead set on not covering anything up that things that were reported to me, I reported them quickly without getting verification the way it would have been under normal circumstances.
25:27So when my tactical guys said that a sniper was shooting at our officers, I reported that a sniper was shooting at our police officers.
25:40And my captain and I were fighting for the snipers.
25:44We went from rescue to tactical almost instantaneous.
25:48They were shooting at us in a helicopter.
25:50They were shooting at my SWAT team.
25:51I mean, it was crazy.
25:52Well, that whole thing of people shooting at helicopters is a reflection of people who watch too much TV.
26:00They thought if they shot up, the helicopter would hear them or see them and come get them.
26:07I spoke to the police chief and I said, chief, where did you get this notion that there's snipers in the city?
26:13He said, I was in the helicopter general and they shot at us.
26:17Did they hit the helicopter, chief?
26:19No.
26:19I said, why did you use the word sniper?
26:22Maybe from the military, the jargon and parlance for a sniper is different than the jargon and the parlance that we use.
26:28But when an unidentified person that we can't spot randomly shoots at police officers, in my opinion, I was a sniper.
26:36Maybe I shouldn't have used those words.
26:38In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have used those words.
26:41It was getting reported over and over again.
26:44And it took a life of its own.
26:45About the sniper fire.
26:48They were actually taking a sniper fire as they were trying to evacuate patients.
26:52I was there just about an hour and a half, two hours after that, looking at that same area.
26:56In fact, I didn't see any snipers myself.
26:59Big searchlights looking all around to make sure that there were no snipers that were going to attack us.
27:06Things became so much more difficult for us to do because of this fear.
27:11As simple as, where's the truck that's bringing all the new food?
27:17And the National Guard would go out and we'd find the truck that had been abandoned by the delivery driver who was told there were snipers all around the Superdome.
27:24They were shooting and killing all the delivery drivers.
27:27And all of that completely made up, but just made our jobs infinitely worse and more difficult.
27:34I over-reported things I should have verified.
27:38And I'm sorry I did that.
27:40Sir, a lot of respect to you tonight for what you have been going through.
27:44Seeing your men and women go through so much.
27:48When Katrina came, there was no school you could go to to deal with the worldwide media on a 24-7 basis.
27:57I was working off a one and a half to two hours sleep a day.
28:01I wasn't eating well.
28:03I had migraine headaches almost the entire time.
28:06And I had gotten to the point where I was around the media so much.
28:09It had so many cameras pointed on me.
28:11I actually forgot the cameras were around me.
28:16With communications being fragmented, some people were getting reports that a young lady was raped.
28:22And it was in proximity to me where my daughter was at.
28:25So by the time it got to me, it went from a young lady being raped to my daughter was raped.
28:34And when I thought my daughter was raped, it just, it tore me up.
28:39I need somebody to get me a cruise boat or some type of boat, a cruise ship, or some kind of ship, so I can put my people in some comfort, so I can help the people.
28:49We have people in this police boat who have lost their families and they have not gotten out of this fight.
28:54I didn't know where my daughter was at for two days and we endured.
28:56I'm so tired of this, but it's finally almost over.
29:00That's it.
29:00I don't talk no more.
29:03During Katrina, the first responders were also victims.
29:07Their homes are gone.
29:08Their families were moving from place to place to try to survive.
29:12So when your first responders are also victims, it changed the character of the response.
29:19I made tremendous sacrifices during Katrina.
29:24My family wanted me to stop being a chief and go get my elderly aunt and uncle.
29:29Unfortunately, my aunt and uncle died.
29:32And it haunts me every day that I could have saved them and I didn't.
29:37So people that was not privy to the circumstances at ground zero where I was at for an entire time, they had no idea of the challenges that we faced.
29:48All they saw was a microcosm of what the media wanted them to see.
30:00We are live in front of the convention center, which has not been emptied of people at all.
30:05Chief, what do you figure?
30:07How many people here?
30:08We have at least 30,000 people here around.
30:1030,000?
30:11At least 30,000.
30:12And none have been taken out?
30:13None have been taken out.
30:14The buses were promised.
30:15The buses are not here.
30:16They built these people's spirits up.
30:18We need to get these people out of here now.
30:25So, unfortunately, we discovered that while FEMA had put in requests for buses,
30:30whatever reason, that didn't get moving as fast as it should have.
30:35So people are going to have to stay there another day.
30:40We knew that these people were getting to a desperate place in terms of their ability to withstand the environments that they were in.
30:49And we were really worried whether we could survive another day like this Wednesday.
30:55Good afternoon, everyone.
31:01I first want to express my thanks to President Bush for the confidence that he has shown in me.
31:07I also want to speak to the civil unrest and some of the disturbances that we have seen.
31:12It's just not acceptable.
31:15And I understand that the National Guard, troops, local law enforcement, all of those will do everything in their power to minimize that.
31:25We had National Guard elements from every state come here in Louisiana.
31:33And some people who deployed to Louisiana had already been to Iraq.
31:36And now, sprinkle on that, you know, all those rumors of lawlessness and snipers and shootings and all of that was like, oh, we're going to need weapons.
31:46So, as the deputy public affairs officer, I was really just trying to stomp out a lot of the myths that were becoming so problematic because they were just creating fear.
31:56After I came back from Baton Rouge, I had to see to marry him.
32:08I said, let's walk through the crowd at the Superdome.
32:12My National Guard buddies told me, I said, well, we need more guards for protection.
32:16I said, no, we don't need any more guards.
32:17We're all right.
32:19So, I had two of them with me.
32:20I said, put your guns on your back.
32:22Don't be pointing guns at nobody.
32:24That's when people noticed me and they noticed my name and they would say, hey, brah, you're going to get us out of here?
32:31I said, yeah, we're going to get you out of here.
32:34So, how do you recommend we handle this?
32:37I think we try to get a public message out on the radio.
32:40Okay.
32:41And you tell the governor the bus need to be there early in the morning.
32:45We need her to get on the television and tell people.
32:48I saw the mayor and discussed the evacuation plan for the next thing that was being coordinated with staff down in Baton Rouge and with FEMA Director Brown.
32:57In all sincerity, my heart goes out to those people and I am determined, absolutely determined, to speed this thing up, make this thing work, and get the aid to those people.
33:12Bullshit.
33:17Later that day, I called Administrator Brown.
33:20They said he's not available.
33:21I said, well, where is he?
33:22So, Cindy Taylor, who worked in the Office of External Affairs, received an email from Sharon Worthy, who was the handler for Undersecretary Brown.
33:35It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.
33:40Given that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy.
33:45He needs much more than 20 or 30 minutes.
33:48We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choice.
33:52Followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc.
33:58And so, Cindy Taylor then forwarded that email from Sharon Worthy to me.
34:03And she said, let me preface by saying, I know he needs downtime.
34:08But, um, how much time do each of you need for dinner?
34:13Including travel time to the restaurants of your choice?
34:17Question mark.
34:18I'm trying to coordinate where the buses are so I can answer the mayor's questions and deal with the press.
34:27But 72 miles away in Baton Rouge, this son of a bitch is waiting in lines to go in the restaurant.
34:33I mean, there was some stupid shit happening.
34:36Just plain stupid.
34:37So, after I got that email, I immediately responded to Cindy.
34:43Oh, my God.
34:45With eight exclamation points.
34:48I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends.
34:56So, I understand her concern about busy restaurants.
35:00Maybe tonight, I will have time to move the pebbles on the parking garage floor so they don't stab me in the back while I try to sleep.
35:08But instead, I will hope her wait at Ruth's Crisp is short.
35:12This email exchange was really starting to show the disconnect, the tone deafness.
35:27I just don't think they understood my urgency.
35:30At the Superdome, almost everything they needed, any kind of satellite or a tower, still didn't work.
35:45But what did work, and we became aware, was that a lot of people had brought radios to the Superdome.
35:52And that was how they were getting their news, which was problematic because there was a lot of mistruths and a lot of the exaggerated stories were being perpetuated by the radio.
36:06The situation is getting really chaotic.
36:09There's fights breaking out.
36:11There's a lot of murders that have occurred, raves.
36:15Look, you name it.
36:16All of a sudden, walking around, we heard that some little girls was raped and killed in the bathroom.
36:29Now, the chick said a woman.
36:31It was a little girl.
36:33Oh, a little girl?
36:33It was a little girl.
36:34They slow here?
36:35A little girl, they said.
36:36Where are you?
36:38I don't know where it happened.
36:39Because up where we had, there's no bathroom.
36:41Yeah, they said it was a little girl in the bathroom.
36:43They killed and raped or something.
36:44I just heard the same thing.
36:46That's what I'm saying.
36:47So I'm putting it in.
36:48I know what it is.
36:49No, we can't do it.
36:52I really was looking for somebody to be screaming at the top of their lungs, murder, somebody did this.
37:01But I never seen anybody come forward.
37:04And it's fascinating because some people are asking me, did I have video on that?
37:10I was like, are you serious?
37:11Like, I would have video on somebody getting raped and killed, for real.
37:14We had already heard from the security team inside the Superdome about what was actually transpiring.
37:25So we knew that that wasn't actually the case.
37:28But still, the rumor took a hold.
37:33Then it started spreading like wildfire.
37:36You see how people do raping here?
37:38You know, you're killing here?
37:39I mean, a lot of people, yeah, rape, all type of violence.
37:43You don't know who's here.
37:45You got people that's druggies.
37:46You got people that's raping and doing everything they can do and breaking in and looting and everything.
37:52You understand?
37:55The media was irritating.
37:57You're not allowed.
37:58They just wanted to be in everybody's face and getting all these interviews.
38:01And they wanted people to be scared.
38:03I would get people who would call me and they would ask me to confirm facts.
38:07And then I would say, well, that's not the facts at all.
38:09And they would write their story anyway.
38:12And it could not have spun more out of control.
38:15At the Superdome, there have been rapes, a murder, and various shootings.
38:19There was a lot of misinformation all over the police.
38:25And it wasn't just the media.
38:27It was within our organization.
38:31What one of the police officers told me was it is a war zone out there.
38:35People are fighting.
38:37He said, in his words, people are losing their minds.
38:41Some things were completely exaggerated.
38:44Some things were completely made up.
38:46Some things were said that just literally did not happen.
38:49And you had all of this going on in the middle of a disaster.
38:54There was chaos.
38:55There was no communication.
38:57But I saw cops on the street firing back at thugs that were on rooftops, etc.
39:02I've never seen the breakdown of American society like this.
39:06But there's certainly a lot of...
39:07The media wanted to lead the American people to focus on chaos.
39:11Yeah, that's what happened in a disaster.
39:13If you don't have chaos, then it's not a fucking disaster.
39:16It's an inconvenience.
39:18But there are people who wanted to exacerbate it as a crime problem in the city of New Orleans.
39:24It wasn't a crime problem.
39:26It was an evacuation problem.
39:27It is now shortly before dawn, about 5.30 in the morning.
39:44For the last four hours, we have seen no buses here.
39:48Meanwhile, the size of the crowd has been growing.
39:51And so has its level of frustration.
39:54We've been out here since 9 o'clock yesterday morning, just like this.
40:00It's about 6 in the morning, listening to the news.
40:10A lot of people lost everything, man.
40:14Getting to the last sleep and to find out if they could go home.
40:16By this time, we were supposed to be out of here.
40:22But they never had anybody to say that they was about to evacuate the Superdome.
40:29So I was like, oh, man, I just don't believe some of this.
40:32I don't know what's going to happen.
40:34Eventually, it's getting worse.
40:35We have to move these families out of here.
40:37But from you, I would like to know, are there buses coming for these people to get out?
40:43They keep saying that, but who can believe them anymore?
40:46Exactly.
40:48I tell these people, believe what you see, not what you hear.
40:57If you're going to the Superdome, what is the plan for them?
41:00They are going to start to be moved right after we get all the medical patients out.
41:04We're going to move them. They're our first priority.
41:07Then after that, we will have 350 buses that are staged,
41:11and they're going to start to move people out of the Superdome.
41:16The buses started to show up, and we came up with a route that would bring them in
41:20and a way to walk the people out to the buses.
41:25And at the air medevac site of the Superdome,
41:29I had them knock down the power poles so we could bring large helicopters in
41:34and take out the elderly.
41:37Everything seemed to be going well,
41:39but then a call came over the radio that a pilot reported being shot at.
41:48When that went out, all the helicopters in route, diverted.
41:51And that just turned this situation on his head.
41:58Desperate situation in the city of New Orleans as we speak.
42:02The effort to move those evacuees from the Superdome to the Astrodome
42:05now halted after shots were fired.
42:08Rescue helicopters came under fire,
42:10and violence spilled out into the streets right outside.
42:13The largest ambulance service says it will have to severely cut back its rescue efforts
42:18if security doesn't improve.
42:20We were told that the buses were stopped
42:23because things inside the city of New Orleans were so dangerous.
42:27The drivers of those buses and ambulances,
42:29they said, I'm not going in there.
42:31I've told my wife, I'm not going in there.
42:33There's still a sense this is a riot zone, and it's not.
42:37It was just a story that got out of hand.
42:41And eventually, people tried to draw us into being more focused on security
42:46than we are on the mission of saving lives.
42:49Some of the things like security, you look at and you think,
42:51the time has come to empower our law enforcement officials,
42:54our military officials, to say, let's adopt a zero-tolerance attitude.
42:58Let's take these people off the street so they can't be causing this danger.
43:01When we realized that the looting was getting out of control,
43:05we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets.
43:09They were dead tired from saving people,
43:12but we redirected all of our resources.
43:15All of a sudden, I just got inundated with people coming to me.
43:20They were confused.
43:21They said, Chief, are they going to evacuate us?
43:25Well, we got to go. Who's going to feed us?
43:27We were asking the Louisiana authorities to hunt down those looters.
43:31They must make sure those rapists, looters, and assailants get what they deserve.
43:35With the exposure to the national media,
43:39all of a sudden now, at police headquarters,
43:42the message was to stop the looting.
43:45That was the message.
43:48And what came next was a complete mess.
43:53The message was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop the looting was to stop
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