Inside Hurricane Katrina Page #5

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tore off.

It came down suddenly.

All of a sudden it just...

Scared everybody.

It scared me.

I didn't know it was going...

It just came suddenly, bam.

Unexpectedly.

[Crack]

Oh, again!

Look at that. Again.

At that point nobody knew

if the building

was going to hold.

Narrator:
7:45 A.M.

By now, in the lower ninth ward,

the storm surge has begun

to erode the earthen levees.

Along the eastern side

of the industrial canal

the levees now suffer

an explosive break.

The lower ninth ward

and New Orleans east

flood rapidly.

The floodwaters reach

to 12 feet above sea level,

completely submerging

many homes.

The flooding in east New Orleans

accelerates,

as the storm surge begins

to overtop the levees

on lake pontchartrain.

The city is going under.

At this moment,

storm chaser Doug Keisling

is driving through

downtown New Orleans.

He meets a man who knows more

about the flood

consuming the city

than the reporters on the scene.

Narrator:
Back on the conference

call in Baton Rouge,

the emergency director

for St. Bernard Parish

asks the state official,

Jeff Smith,

for emergency supplies.

Narrator:
10:00 A.M.

Katrina now whirls north

and slightly east,

and delivers a direct strike

near the Louisiana-Mississippi

border.

She decimates towns

including slidell, Louisiana,

as well as waveland,

bay St. Louis, pass Christian,

gulfport,

and biloxi, Mississippi.

Narrator:
Other storm chasers

here describe the scene.

Narrator:
It comes in

wherever he turns.

Man:
Oh, yeah.

Storm surge.

Narrator:
These men

help an elderly woman.

Escape the rapidly rising water.

Narrator:
The enormous surge

lifts up this car.

And rams it

into the lobby doors.

Man:
Jim, look at this

over here.

Narrator:
It's time to head

to higher ground.

Narrator:
The surge

chases people up the stairs.

Man:
Whoa!

Narrator:
The Mayor of gulfport,

Mississippi, Brent Warr,

is at his mother's house.

On his two-way radio,

he monitors police dispatch.

Warr:
And you can hear

the anguish in their voice,

and all I could do was sit there

and listen to it

hour after hour.

And then finally the lady said,

you know,

they were swimming for it.

And I don't know whether they...

I don't know whether they

survived or not, you know.

Narrator:
Biloxi, Mississippi.

Mayor a.J. Holloway is

in city hall with his family.

He watches Katrina's

merciless assault on his city.

And then we looked

down towards the beach,

and all of a sudden we see

these big waves coming.

And they were just coming

one right behind the other one.

And then we started seeing

debris washing up.

And we started seeing

parts of buildings,

and I could recognize

the buildings.

I knew where they were,

i knew what they looked like.

Then we see furniture

floating all around.

And then we started seeing

cars floating by.

And of course tin

off the buildings, and shingles,

just sort of like

the wizard of oz, you know?

Narrator:
Heading further east,

Katrina swallows

mobile, Alabama,

submerging some parts

of the city

in as much as ten feet of water.

Back in New Orleans,

Katrina is keeping

her worst nightmare for last,

as her winds

push the storm surge

against the levees

on lake pontchartrain.

And yet, at the very moment

that New Orleans is drowning,

journalists here are unaware

of the catastrophe unfolding

elsewhere in the city.

Unwittingly, their live reports

give the rest of the country

a false sense of comfort.

Man:
They dodged the bullet,

but they still got

a sound bruising.

Narrator:
New Orleans.

Monday, August 29th, 10:00 A.M.

The Jackson barracks, downriver

from the French Quarter.

Katrina's floodwaters surround

337 national guard troops.

It was 14, 15 feet high

in the armory

in just in,

in less than an hour.

You could physically

just sit there

and watch it inch by inch going

up the walls of the armory.

You could hear pieces

of the roof ripping off,

glass breaking.

We have huge brick walls

around our armory,

and, you know, as the water

came up with the hurricane,

you could just see them

toppling.

Narrator:

In homes across the city,

the water forces people

to move to higher floors.

Angela green and Chris erskine

are in their home

in the mid city neighborhood.

We were in a single-story

duplex, you know.

It came up to our steps

probably within the first hour

and then, uh, it probably

came up further into the house

within the next two hours.

I had to axe through

into our neighbors.

Through our wall.

Right, and then get

whatever perishables we could,

because ours were running out.

Then we had to swim

about 40 feet

and get into

another neighbor's house

to get upstairs

to the second floor.

If the waters rose high enough

in your home,

the potential is you drowned

in your attic

if you couldn't

break your way out.

Narrator:
Baton Rouge.

FEMA director Michael Brown

contacts homeland security chief

Michael Chertoff in Washington.

Brown wants 1,000

temporary relief workers

moved into the hurricane zone

within 48 hours.

FEMA has about 3,000 employees.

Because it's not

a first responder,

it doesn't have ambulances,

fire trucks,

or helicopters of its own.

The agency relies

on state workers,

the national guard,

private contractors,

the U.S. military,

and other federal agencies.

Brown orders emergency workers

to wait

until federal, state

and local officials

establish a unified

command structure...

Standard FEMA protocol.

Man:
Sorting through that

in the fog of war.

Can be very difficult.

Because it's the very time when

it's the hardest to do that,

to be able to say,

"hey, whoa! Slow down here.

Let's work through this."

But they don't want

to hear that.

You know, the state's left

with the difficult task

of trying to figure out,

well, what is it that we can do

to meet that need

versus what we're going to go

and ask the federal government

to provide.

Narrator:
Katrina knocks out

most communications systems.

Phones are out.

TV and radio stations

cannot broadcast.

Even satellite communication

is unreliable.

It made the first responders

victims.

Narrator:
A three-star

army general, Russel Honore,

will receive orders later today

to oversee the military response

to Hurricane Katrina.

And when the first responders

become victims,

they have a challenge in

communicating and coordinating.

Narrator:
The worst blow

from Hurricane Katrina.

Is about to hit New Orleans.

Her eye is now

northeast of the city.

As her winds swirl

counterclockwise,

she pushes

a colossal storm surge

up and over the levees

here on the south side

of lake pontchartrain.

The storm turns this way,

it pushed all that water

back in this direction,

forcing it into these canals

into the intracoastal waterway.

Narrator:
Floodwaters race.

Into both the 17th street

and London Avenue canals.

The levee walls here

along the London Avenue canal

start to creak and bend outward.

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