Behind the Scenes of Hurricane Rita; FEMA Politics
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Wants to home and will. But he will go home changed some from the experience of this month, changed by the people who took him in.</s>GERALD MONTGOMERY, NEW ORLEANS EVACUEE: When I get straight, or get my home redone. I'm going to pay a surprise visit. I always say when the leaves turn green and the flowers bloom, I'll make an appearance in Sulfur, Louisiana.</s>ANNOUNCER: You're watching</s>HURRICANE KATRINA: STATE OF EMERGENCY with Anderson Cooper and Aaron Brown.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to this special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT I'm Anderson Cooper in New Orleans joined by Aaron Brown in New York -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: Thank you Anderson. We've heard a lot about how lucky everybody was that Rita made landfall as just a Category 3, but as you look at the pictures and you hear from the people who suffered you that like Katrina, Rita has left a mark, will continue to do so for sometime to come and we'll spend much of the hour chronicling that mark -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Aaron, and even those who are lucky to have survived the storms like Rita and Katrina find themselves with lives that are literally turned upside down. We're on Stafford Street in New Orleans in the Lake View section, very close to the 17th Street Canal, it's literally just about a block away. Just want to show you some of the devastation that we are seeing all around us still one month after Katrina. This is a car which has been tossed up into a tree which has fallen over. You can see, in the car, I'm going to shine the light, there's a -- still a little child's car seat, I think it is, in there. And then over here, there's a lady's purse. I don't know if you can still see that. Just the kind -- these are the kind of scenes we are seeing block after block after block in this part of New Orleans. I want to have a little bit -- we're going to take you on a tour around Stafford Street a little bit later on this special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT, but first, let's get you up to date what's happening right now at this moment. Here's what's happening. In southwest Louisiana's Vermillion Parish, the sheriff has blasted FEMA for not responding quick enough to resident's needs after Hurricane Rita. At least 200 people were rescued from flood waters in the parish. The sheriff says he wishes FEMA would cut all the red tape and get supplies and services to the people who've lost their homes. We've heard that before, haven't we? No deaths from Rita are reported in Louisiana. At least six people died in Texas and one in Mississippi. As for the price tag fro Rita, the pulmonary estimate in Texas $8 billion, they've seen double punch from Rita and Katrina. The state plans to ask Congress for $31 billion to rebuild and approve levees and major roadways. And a sign the region is already rebounding after Rita. The Coast Guard has opened -- reopened, I should say, Houston's ship channel, most of the other coastal waterways to daylight traffic. Vermillion Parish, Louisiana's sheriff has blasted FEMA as we told you. And there has been a lot of attention out of Washington right now with what is going on with the former FEMA director, Mike Brown. Mike Brown who resigned his post from FEMA several weeks ago. There's some new developments about a new job he's gotten. For that we got to CNN's Ed Henry in Washington. Ed, what do you know?</s>ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening Anderson. That's right, CNN first reported last week that having -- despite having to resign under fire, Michael Brown was still on the federal payroll for another month for what the Department of Homeland Security vaguely called "transitional purposes" at the time. Well, we've learned tonight as Brown met behind closed doors today with congressional investigators and revealed what he's doing for that money, he said he's helping FEMA assess what went wrong in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As you can imagine this raising some eyebrows on Capitol Hill where Brown is scheduled to be the star witness tomorrow before congressional committee probing the governmental response to Katrina. Given the questions about Brown's own conduct in the aftermath of Katrina, coupled with the allegations about the head -- the former head of the Arabian Horse Association was ever really qualified to run FEMA -- they are going to be some very sharp questions about whether taxpayers should be paying Brown to help get to the bottom of all of this -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: And he's going to be testifying. Any word on what he's going to be saying?</s>HENRY: Yeah, in fact, we've also learned that he told congressional investigators today, in a little bit of a preview, that he wishes federal officials had pushed more forcefully and earlier to get federal troops brought in to restore order in New Orleans after Katrina. That's in contrast to the fact that allies of the bush administration had been suggesting the blame lies more with state and local officials in Louisiana for not pushing harder for the military to get in. The significance, of course, is that when Brown testified about all this tomorrow, it's going reignite this debate about the blame game. The White House has been feeling pretty good over the last day or so about the fact that the image coming out of this weekend was the president as a hands-on commander in chief who was all over Hurricane Rita, but Brown's testimony tomorrow is going to put the microscope again -- once again on the federal government's response to Katrina, not Rita, and the fact that in the early days of this storm, of course, the president referred to Michael Brown as "Brownie" and said he was doing a heck of a job -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Yes, and said he was working 24 hours a day. Just bottom line is, he's being paid by FEMA for -- to be part of this study?</s>HENRY: Yes, he's still on the payroll of FEMA and their -- the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security that oversees FEMA. He's continued on the payroll since he left. He's basically serving as a consultant among the chief thing he's doing, basically, is to handle -- help handle this review of what went wrong. There are undoubtedly going to be some people who he's in the best possible position to help figure out went wrong. There others, obviously, are going to raise their eyebrows and say, with some outrage, why in the world is the person who's in the middle of this storm -- the middle of all these problems the one who's now trying to figure out and assess what went wrong -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Well, we should also see, is he going to point the finger at himself if he's pointing the finger at other people, as well. That of course remains to be seen. Ed, thanks for following up. We'll continue to investigate that in the days to come. Aaron, I should also point out that we tried to contact Mike Brown for comment, or to get him on the program. He did not get back to us at this time -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: Well, it will be interesting to see how he says what he says and what role he takes on himself. It was obviously his job. He was running the show. He can't duck at all. I suspect he won't try and duck at all, we'll see tomorrow. Now, on to southwest Louisiana and a place called Cameron Parish. Rita landed a direct hit there. The storm basically swallowed up the region. Keep that in mind when you hear that they dodged a bullet. It destroyed 90 percent of the homes there -- 90 percent. Ground zero for Rita. Here's CNN's Randi Kaye.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We boarded our airboat and headed straight for the town of Creole in Cameron Parish. This is where Hurricane Rita made landfall. More than 70 percent of the homes were destroyed here. Our driver, Ben Welch is hoping his wasn't one of them.</s>KAYE (on camera): We haven't seen your home yet. How worried are you about whether your...</s>BEN WELCH, CAMERON PARISH RESIDENT: Oh, I know it's not there. It's not there. They -- my home's another -- see those group of trees down at the end? That's a bridge that's runs up there. They just told us it's still got about ankle deep, mid-calf deep water over on it.</s>KAYE (voice-over): We kept on pushing toward his neighborhood. The ride there didn't offer much hope. If Rita could do this, what were the odds Welch's house was still standing?</s>WELCH: My father and my grandparents always told me about what happened during Hurricane Audrey. I could -- I would imagine it, but I never thought I would have to see it.</s>KAYE: We'd seen Cameron Parish and Creole by air, but up close the destruction was magnified and morbid. Dead wildlife everywhere, rabbits, pigs, and cows half buried in the brush. Some cattle looked like upside down ointments in a marsh made by Mother Nature. Those who survived appeared wild, when a cow came running at us, Welch pulled out his gun. Just the trauma of all that what happened and the salt water, they don't have no water to drink, what it is they're disoriented and plus the salt water makes them go out of their mind, they just don't know what to do.</s>KAYE: This goose appeared disoriented and thirsty. We gave him fresh water, then tried to follow us back to our boat.</s>WELCH: This is downtown Creole.</s>KAYE (on camera): Main Street.</s>WELCH: Main Street, Creole Louisiana. Watch the mud it's going to be real slippery.</s>KAYE (voice-over): We arrived in Creole to find Main Street destroyed. The only restaurant in town, closed for business, the grocery store out of business, and the mechanic shop in need of repair.</s>KAYE (on camera): You see that yellow building right there? That's the Creole Post Office. It use to be over there, to the right of that mail box. But when Hurricane Rita come through it spun it around slammed it on the other side of the bank.</s>KAYE (voice-over): These guys just returned from Welch's neighborhood. He's desperate for information about his home.</s>WELCH: They got a Baptist Church right on this side. Still up?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, well, not that much.</s>WELCH: Not much?</s>KAYE: The search and rescue missed him home by half a mile. Welch will have to wait another day. The water is now too low and our airboat won't make it.</s>KAYE (on camera): How frustrating.</s>WELCH: Bad. I probably won't get there today.</s>KAYE: Ben Welch's family has really had a rough couple of months, Aaron. Not only is it very likely that he lost his home with Rita, but his mother-in-law lives in New Orleans, or I should say, use to live, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, she lost her home there, as well. Now in terms of cattle, they're number, right now, about more than 1,000 dead. There is one man who lives here in Cameron Parish who had 5,000 cows. He's only been able to find 500.</s>BROWN: How long did they think, Randi, before the water recedes?</s>KAYE: Actually, it's receding quite quickly. Apparently they were able to get trucks in -- big trucks all the way to Cameron, the city of Cameron, which is the farthest point the parish, and even on our airboat today, there were some of the roads, that he was able to go on with his boat yesterday when he was down there, that were already dry today. So it seems to be they've opened up some of the locks and it seems to be receding.</s>BROWN: And it's pretty dry there today, I don't mean the roads, I mean the weather. Not raining.</s>KAYE: Oh no, it's quite warm, quite warm. In fact, we had some record high temperatures here today.</s>KAYE: Randi, thank you. Randi Kaye in Cameron Parish. Anderson, it's just, as we said earlier, it is this reminder that you can on the one hand talk about it could have been much worse and it could have been much worse, but if you're in one of those three parishes in Louisiana that got whacked or in those towns in Texas that got hit very hard, it was plenty bad enough.</s>COOPER: Yeah it was, and most of the people -- I was out in Vermillion Parish yesterday in a boat, and everyone will tell you, look, most of them are Cajuns, they lived there all their life, someone one said, look, "I have never seen anything like this. My dad has never seen anything like this." If just doesn't flood in that part of the world, so it was quite a shock for a lot of those people who weathered the storm pretty good, but it was that second storm surge with these wind coming up from the south that got them. Lieutenant General Russel Honore is the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. He's in charge of the clean up all across Louisiana. Right now he's dealing with Cameron Parish, and Aaron, he says it's completely destroyed. Lieutenant General Honore joined me earlier from Cameron Parish. I began by asking him just how bad things are there, really.</s>LIEUTENANT GENERAL RUSSEL HONORE, CMDR. JOINT TASK FORCE KATRINA: It is bad. Cameron is destroyed. The only building that's usable in Cameron and Creole combined is the courthouse. All the other buildings are destroyed, sad to day, but that is the situation, with dead cattle and dead rats littered across the road. It is a bad situation</s>COOPER: Do you have any sense of -- with the dead cattle, I hear reports of several thousand, is that accurate, and any reports of people?</s>HONORE: Nor reports of people in this area, but the -- all the infrastructure is destroyed with the exception of the court house. We made to the courthouse today. We're hoping to get light in the courthouse tomorrow and we're in the process of clearing the streets, the main routes, but the city is destroyed -- the churches, the hospitals, none of those buildings are usable anymore. We're in the process of getting basic life support and clearing the roads and making it safe so the parish government can move back to the courthouse. On the point of the cattle, there's probably 2,000 cattle that need food and water. We're working tonight to figure out how we could helicopters to move the large bales of hay in. He can do the hay and we're working through the problem how do we get water to these cattle who are scared and running around in the marsh. We will work that hard, but if there's anybody out there with a solution, we could use some help. The point of contact here is Mr. Freddie Bushwa (ph), he is a USDA veterinarian in Cameron Parish.</s>COOPER: What -- how long -- I mean, what do you do now? What do you do tonight with darkness falling, what do you do you do tomorrow? What are the priorities?</s>HONORE: The priorities is to continue to try and get the -- regroup the government, to get the government back up and running in a suitable place. Right now, this building behind me, we moved in</s>COOPER: I just -- I just finally -- if you could say again, who's the point of contact if there's anyone out here who is listening who has any suggestions on what to do with those cattle who are needing food. Who should they try to contact?</s>HONORE: Mr. Fred Bushoir (ph) and we'll make sure that number gets flashed out to you later so you can share it. The cattle are sacred; they've been drinking some of the brackish water. It changes their temperament. It causes them to excrete more of their body fluids and they're losing weight. So we could use some help with that. There's some big-brained people out there that can figure it out. We've got helicopters; we got to figure out how we get water to these isolated cattle.</s>COOPER: We've requested a number; unfortunately there is no number for that man, Freddie Bushoir (ph). I guess if any viewers do have any suggestions on the cattle that -- any experience with this, they could e-mail us, cnn.com/360. We'll try to forward those e-mails to Honore's office. That is what we face now, another massive cleanup operation in that part of Louisiana. Now look at how we got to this point. What it was like waiting for Rita's arrival and the moment of impact. Even when the cameras couldn't operate or when the Seattleite dish was down, the thoughts are mine, the photos are by Jenson Whacker of Getty images.</s>COOPER (voice-over): Waiting for a hurricane, it's often a tense time. You read the latest forecast, try to find a safe location to broadcast from. We set up near the Neches River in Beaumont, Texas. We also had a fallback position for when things got really bad. It got dark pretty quick. The rain was constant, in a matter of minutes we were all completely soaked. By around 1:45 a.m. we'd retreated to our more secure location. (on camera): It's just miserable out here. It just continues to be sort of nonstop, this pouring rain. Just, you know, every minute after minute after minute without any letup. (voice-over): As the hurricane approached, the rain increased and the winds shifted dramatically. (on camera): The winds are just constant now. They are just whipping and it's like a thousand needles just pricing you as you're trying to stand out here. I'm just going to try to get over there because you can't even look into it -- you cannot look to where the wind is pointing because it's just too extreme. (voice-over): Around 3:30 we lost our satellite truck and could no longer transmit live images. Producers and engineers tried to get us back on the air. It's frustrating to be there and not be able to broadcast. I called into CNN on my Blackberry. A photographer captured what I was seeing in pictures. The site that I am seeing right, I wish we could broadcast right now. It is a sight that I have rarely ever seen before. It looks like a solid white -- just a solid wall of white that is just sweeping across the entire region. There are just a few trees visible. There's one light, which is actually a car light from one of our vehicles and it is casting an eerie glow to this wall of white wind and water. It is eerie, it is beautiful and it is horrible at the same time. (on camera): About 20 minutes later our engineers were somehow able to get the satellite dish working again. The winds were nearing 90-miles-an-hour.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have Anderson Cooper back with us who's in Beaumont -- Anderson.</s>COOPER: Those photographs were by Jenson Walker, I mispronounced his name before. I know his mom is watching, so I want to apologize for that. He was also telling me that some of those images which look like they're black and white, they're not black and white pictures, they're actually color picture, there was just no color in the sky, it was such a white out, it was remarkable to hear that. Coming up, the agony of knowing your home could be destroyed, yet you can't get to it. And watch your wallet, the ripple effect from Rita, oil prices and more could they take a hit? This is a special two hour edition of</s>NEWSNIGHT: STATE OF EMERGENCY from New York and New Orleans.