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Monday, Oct 13, 2008
Salon's hour-by-hour account of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- and how our government failed.
Sep 15, 2005 | On Aug. 23, the National Hurricane Center in Miami discovered a "disturbed" weather pattern forming off the southeastern coast of the Bahamas. Initially the weather system was dubbed a tropical storm, but it was quickly upgraded to a hurricane, one that sucker-punched south Florida. People there barely had enough time to learn its name -- Katrina -- before it slammed into the coast on Aug. 25, killing 11. "Where did this thing come from?" one incredulous Keys resident asked a local newspaper.
After the hurricane moved past Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, it gathered strength. As officials tracked its direction and assessed its power, they knew that it posed a catastrophic threat to the Gulf Coast and to New Orleans. This situation could not possibly have come as a surprise. Officials had known for years that a major hurricane could devastate the region. Yet both before it made landfall and after it struck, the response at every level, but particularly the federal, was shockingly inadequate.
Over the coming months and weeks, investigations by the media, lawmakers and independent experts will try to discover why the reaction to Katrina went as badly as it did. This timeline does not pretend to provide comprehensive answers. It aims only to lay out some of the crucial decisions and events during the critical time period.
Much about the response to Katrina still remains shrouded in the fog of disaster. But several important themes emerge in this timeline.
Every level of government failed, to one degree or another, in the aftermath of Katrina. But the lion's share of the blame must go to the highest level, the one that has ultimate responsibility: the federal government. Federal disaster planning was woefully inadequate: Command and control, essential to all disaster response, proved abysmal, and red tape snarled and slowed the response. When Katrina hit, federal officials were unconscionably ignorant of crucial developments, perfunctory and slow in their response, and unable or unwilling to take responsibility and make executive decisions.
On Sunday, Aug. 28, the day before the storm made landfall, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, and Michael Brown, then the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were briefed by the Hurricane Center on the possibility that Katrina would overwhelm New Orleans' levees. Although the levees failed on Monday, Chertoff and Brown did not apparently learn of the disaster until Tuesday. By Wednesday, the storm response had become a televised disaster, yet Chertoff, Brown and Bush did not seem to comprehend how badly the federal government had failed until at least Thursday evening or Friday morning (when Bush's aides showed him a homemade DVD of disaster footage so that he could understand what had happened).
Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana's Democratic governor, was also far from blameless. While the federal mistakes seem born out of neglect, failure to plan and outright incompetence, most of Blanco's errors stem from her apparent inability to understand the technical aspects of managing a disaster -- cutting through all the red tape.
But if Blanco failed to cut through red tape, that still leaves the question why the red tape was there in the first place. In a disaster, provision should be made in advance for bypassing the jurisdictional issues and regulations that plagued the response to Katrina. Such planning is ultimately a federal responsibility. The Bush administration in general, and FEMA in particular, simply failed to plan for the chaos that would follow a disaster of this magnitude. That is a fundamental failure of governance, and it is inexcusable.
While officials dithered and squabbled, while they issued increasingly unbelievable promises of aid being on the way, the people of New Orleans were left to suffer and, in many cases, to die. The timeline tells of their desperate straits, and how, under the spotlight of television cameras yet somehow hidden from officials, things went from bad to worse.
Salon produced the following timeline of the events through Tuesday, Sept. 13, focusing on the period between Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Sept. 3, after an extensive (but obviously far from comprehensive) examination of the public record. We looked at news stories, TV interviews, public proclamations and blog posts, and we conducted interviews with the officials involved. We're especially indebted to the work done by Think Progress, Josh Marshall's readers, the anonymous hordes who power Wikipedia, and reporters who assembled timelines for newspapers and wire services.
We also welcome input from Salon readers. If you know of incidents -- or your own personal stories -- that you think ought to be included here, please let us know at katrinatimeline@salon.com.
Friday, Aug. 26
11:30 a.m. The National Hurricane Center issues a bulletin announcing that Hurricane Katrina is a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. According to the bulletin, Katrina is "rapidly strengthening" as it moves west and "could become a category three or major hurricane on Saturday."
5 p.m. Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana, effective until Sunday, Sept. 25. "We are in the strike zone," she tells CNN.
The governor's deputy press secretary, Roderick Hawkins, says the declaration "puts us on standby just in case we need to mobilize the National Guard." The announcement activates the state's emergency response and recovery program -- which supports the evacuation of coastal areas as well as implements the State Special Needs and Sheltering Plan -- and launches preparations for providing emergency support services when the storm hits.
Sometime on Friday, there is a discussion among FEMA officials about evacuating people in New Orleans who don't have cars. "We should be getting buses and getting people out of there," a FEMA employee named Leo V. Bosner will later tell the New York Times. But the discussions appear to go nowhere. Bosner will say: "We, as staff members at the agency, felt helpless. We knew that major steps needed to be taken fast, but, for whatever reasons, they were not taken." The question of buses -- where they are and who will drive them -- will ring out at every level of government over the next few days, with little resolution until late in the week.
Saturday, Aug. 27
5 a.m. The National Hurricane Center announces that Hurricane Katrina has become "a major hurricane," reaching Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with wind speeds of 115 mph. "Some strengthening is forecast in the next 24 hours," it says. Katrina is moving west, but "a gradual turn toward the west-northwest is expected during the next 24 hours."
Morning: In his weekly
St. Charles Parish, to the west of New Orleans, orders a mandatory evacuation, while New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin urges officials in Jefferson Parish, also to the west of New Orleans, to follow the state evacuation plan. Jefferson Parish officials later order a mandatory evacuation for low-lying areas, while Plaquemines Parish issues a call for a full mandatory evacuation.
In a letter, Gov. Blanco asks President Bush to declare a federal state of emergency for Louisiana. The governor writes: "I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments, and that supplementary federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster."
Blanco estimates that the federal services -- operating emergency shelters, evacuating coastal areas and performing search and rescue missions -- will total $9 million. Meanwhile, Gov. Haley Barbour declares a state of emergency for Mississippi.
Bush grants Blanco's request. The federal emergency declaration authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate hurricane relief efforts. "Specifically," the president's declaration states, "FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding."
4 p.m. As part of Louisiana's evacuation procedure, state police set up "contraflow" on the state's highways, allowing traffic to move away from New Orleans on both sides of Interstate Highways 55, 59 and 10. The Louisiana National Guard begins pre-positioning equipment, personnel and supplies to areas near the coast, Lt. Col. Pete Schneider tells CNN.
5 p.m. In a joint news conference with Blanco, Mayor Ray Nagin calls for a voluntary evacuation of New Orleans. "This is not a test," he says. "This is the real deal."
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