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CNN Live At Daybreak

Saving New Orleans From Big Hurricane

Aired June 06, 2002 - 05:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well here's a question for you this bright early morning, what is it worth to save New Orleans from the ravages of a major hurricane? It's not a rhetorical question, it's a real question emergency managers and federal officials are wrestling with because the day just may come. And if the big one hits, New Orleans could be submerged. It is below sea level.

CNN's John Zarrella explains why as our special series on hurricanes continues.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New Orleans is home to some of the best music, best food, and best parties in the country. But it is one of the worst places in the country to be if the big one hits.

WALTER MAESTRI, JEFFERSON PARISH EMERGENCY MANAGER: We pray it doesn't happen. You know we're the one government agency in the world that gets to pray a lot.

ZARRELLA: New Orleans is at risk because it is below sea level; a bowl with water all around. In a major hurricane, the storm surge could be higher than the levees and floodwalls that surround the city.

(on camera): This quiet, tree-lined neighborhood sits on the lowest ground in New Orleans, some 10 feet below sea level. Emergency managers say the storm surge from a big hurricane would submerge all the one-story houses, and quite possibly all the two-story homes as well.

(voice-over): They imagine a city without clean water, a working sewer system, electricity, alligators from the bayous blown into the streets as well as nutria: 20-pound rodents. Worst of all 20,000 to 30,000 people would die.

MAESTRI: A guy says well, I'll go into my attic if the water starts to rise. And so he gets to the attic and he can't get out. I mean if the storm comes in the middle of the night, many people who chose not to leave are going to simply drown in their beds. If the storm comes on weekends, very possible in that scenario that the French Quarter becomes one massive tomb.

ZARRELLA: The best defense is mass evacuation. But many people cannot or will not leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well I got a boat in the backyard. I'd have -- I'd float it, and have it tied and then (ph) -- you know on top of my roof as high as I could.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. Go somewhere and get in the basement, I guess.

ZARRELLA (on camera): A basement of a house?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Some experts propose a giant floodwall to seal off one-third of the city, to save people who do not evacuate. But there's a controversy. The Army Corps of Engineers typically pays the lion's share of flood control projects based on how much property and commerce they protect. It does not count loss of life.

AL NAOMI, CORPS OF ENGINEERS: That's because no one has effectively given me a cost or a value of a human life. And until somebody can do that, it's very hard to say -- I mean one human life lost is too many I think.

MAESTRI: Lives have to matter. And to talk about economic benefit and not including lives -- individual's lives is ridiculous, because whose economic benefit are we talking about?

ZARRELLA: Any solution is year's away and New Orleans worries its luck would run out.

John Zarrella, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Now for more on the storm, don't miss "CNN PRESENTS" this weekend. You'll want to watch "HURRICANE: WHEN THE BIG ONE HITS." It airs Saturday night at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific.

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