What went wrong in hurricane crisis?

When Katrina came ashore, Mississippi took a direct hit and communities all along the Gulf Coast were wiped out. But it seemed New Orleans had been spared the worst. The city was not under water. It looked as if the levees had held.

On August 29, Monday night, NBC’s Carl Quintanilla was reporting that onlookers were back in the French Quareter. “In the words of one, the fact that the damage wasn’t worse was 'pure New Orleans luck,'” quoted Quintanilla.

But that night everything changed. The storm surge had breeched the levees and floodwalls.

Hurricane expert Ivor van Heerden got a frightening phone call.

Van Heerden: At eight o’clock, the hammer dropped. Somebody came to us at the LSU desk and said that there’s a nursing home and they’ve just phoned in. The water was rising half a foot an hour at the nursing home.

Phillips: When you realized the levees had failed, what did you think?

Van Heerden: My God, it’s night time. The water’s going to rise slowly, quietly and the next thing, they’re going to climb out of their beds and step in water. And the panic’s gonna go in. So what do a lot of them do? They were possible forced up the attic. You know, I just had the worst chill.

Phillips: A slow, quiet—

Van Heerden: Filling at night.

Phillips: Killer.

Van Heerden:  Imagine the chill that went through those people.

The following morning it became the city was rapidly filling with water.

The next morning, on NBC’s "Today" show, Brian Williams called it a disaster. It was dry the night before, he said.

Not just a couple of feet of water where Brian Williams was standing in the historic French Quarter, but up to 20 feet of water in other parts of the city, submerging entire neighborhoods, and threatening the survival of the city.

Warnings about leeves
What hasn’t been widely known until now is that over the years many local state and federal government officials had been warned over and over again about this very scenario.

This week, Walter Maestri, Director of Emergency Management in Jefferson Parish just outside the city of New Orleans, told us he couldn’t help but remember the meeting he and other Louisiana officials had four years ago with the then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Maestri: And he told us, he said, “Look, you guys are the number one community in the United States to be adversely affected by a land-falling hurricane.”

Phillips: Number one?

Maestri: Number one.  And he knew it.

Others say it was common knowledge among emergency planners that the levees built to protect the city might not even do what they were designed to do 40 years ago. That is, protect the city from a Category Three hurricane.

Schleifstein: The levee systems were built to withstand a Category Three hurricane.  And the federal officials, at all levels, have become nervous about the levee system that exists today because it no longer will withstand a three and they know that. 

Phillips: Wait—wait a minute. I mean, generally we’ve been hearing that this levee system could withstand a Category Three hurricane. You’re saying officials knew that it might not?

Schleifstein: Yeah.

Phillips: A three, even a two could have been a problem?

Schleifstein: Even a two would be a problem for certain areas.

That's partly because, over the years, New Orleans has sunk even further, and the wetlands that serve as a natural protective buffer have been diminished by commercial development and rising water levels. And what about those aging levees and floodwalls?

So if the levees were so deficient, why you might wonder didn’t the federal government do more to improve them. 

In fact, over the last few years, the Army Corps of Engineers - which repairs and inspects the levees - asked for millions of dollars to improve flood protection, but Congress gave the Corps much less than it asked for.

Al Naomi of the Army Corps of Engineers oversees the levees.  He says it would actually require billions to build levees strong enough to withstand a storm like Katrina. And he says there wasn’t time anyway.

Al Naomi, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: It would have taken a good 20 years of preparation and construction to make this city stormproof  for a Category 5 storm. It would have been too late.

So officials knew that some day the levees might fail.  And it turns out they were warned just last year how catastrophic a levee failure would be.

'Hurricane Pam' drill
In July of 2004, FEMA sponsored what amounted to a hurricane "war game." It anticipated what could happen if a hypothetical category three storm named Pam hit New Orleans. LSU hurricane expert Ivor van Heerden was one of the organizers.

Van Heerden: It showed that there was going to be potentially 300,000 people to be rescued, some pretty serious public health issues. And that we were going to have to find alternative housing for about 800,000 people.

Phillips: So a huge public health and safety crisis on your hands?

Van Heerden:  Exactly.

Despite the dire predictions, Van Heerden says some federal officials didn’t seem to take the drill seriously.

Van Heerden:  I definitely felt that some of them thought I was an academic geek. And, you know, they scoffed at us. 

There were some folks from the Corps of Engineers who were actually kind of laughing at this.

Phillips: Laughing at—at—

Van Heerden:  “This is an impossibility. This is not gonna happen.”

Phillips: Dismissing it?

Vanheerden:  That’s right.

And he says, a representative from FEMA even objected when Van Heerden, who was born in South Africa, recommended buying tents to shelter the hundreds of thousands of evacuees expected in a real future hurricane.

Van Heerden:  And her response to me was -- Americans don’t live in tents.

Phillips: This was a FEMA official?

Vanheerden: That’s right.

Phillips: Americans don’t live in tents.

Van Heerden: Yeah, obviously because I have an accent, she thought I didn’t understand the American way of life. It hurts. You know, I should have grabbed her, shook her by the shoulders, you know? Showed her some video of other refugee situations.

Phillips: Think she regrets those words today?

Vanheerden: I bet she does. 

Vanheerden told us he gave a CD containing his Hurricane Pam presentation warning of a potential catastrophe to local, state and federal officials -- from FEMA, the U.S. military, and the White House.

Emergency Management Director Walter Maestri participated in the same drill.

Phillips:  Federal officials have suggested that this storm and all of this—all that’s happened, just could not have been anticipated. What do you say to that?

Maestri: I tell them to read the report that they paid for from the exercise that they financed and managed.  And tell me that they couldn’t anticipate it. Because Stone, I can tell you right now, everything that’s happened is in that report.  Every detail is in that report. 

Katrina & Rita resources Reconnect "Hurricane Greg" exercise FEMA "catastrophic hurricane" plan La. officials' request for levee funds "Hurricane Pam" exercise "Hurricane Pam" after-action report (PPT) DHS, FEMA exercises; mostly terrorism DHS, FEMA plans; few hurricane DHS National Disaster Planning Scenarios (DOC) New Orleans Emergency Plan - Hurricanes New Orleans Plan for Disabled Citizens Hurricane resources from Biloxi, Miss. Documents require Adobe Acrobat except: PPT - requires MS PowerPoint to view DOC - requires MS Word to view

But the Hurricane Pam Report was not widely distributed to the public and few citizens heard about the catastrophic losses it foretold.

Louisiana officials did make an effort to teach citizens what to do if the city ever flooded. The state funded a video, obtained by Dateline. But it never got to the citizens of New Orleans. In a cruel irony, the tape was supposed to be released this month.

Had New Orleans residents actually seen it prior to Katrina, they would have heard their mayor, Ray Nagin say:

"The main thing is everyone needs to make their own plans. Check with your neighbors. Check with your relatives. Car pool. And make sure that you have a way to go out," he said on the tape.

But when the storm hit, thousands of people had no plans and no way out.

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