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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Katrina Aftermath: Live From Bay St. Louis
Aired August 31, 2005 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Kitty, thanks very much. We are live in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a town which has been devastated by this storm. A special edition of 360 starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Chaos in New Orleans. Bands of gunmen roaming the streets. Looting in plain sight. And at the Superdome, more than 30,000 people stuck inside, as nightmare conditions continue. Where will all the people go?
Federal emergency workers move into the Gulf region, with search dogs, chain saws, and medicine. But how are they reaching the victims, and will it be too little, too late?
In Mississippi, the body count continues to grow. Anderson goes on a search-and-rescue mission and makes a grim discovery.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If someone locates a body, do not try to move the body. Leave the body as put.
ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, "Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And welcome back. We are live in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where it is 6:00 p.m. here on the southern coast, in Mississippi.
There are helicopters circling overhead. This is a town which has just been devastated. And we're going to show you the extent of that devastation in the next hour.
But first, we've been trying to sort of wrap our minds around this story. And we came across a picture. I want to show it to you.
This is a story where really everything is turned upside-down, and you sort of, you know, shake your head trying to figure out what it is you're looking at.
Look at this picture and try to see what it is. It's hard to tell at first. What it is, is submerged school buses in New Orleans, Louisiana. Just one of the images that capture the larger story here, a story of confusion, a story of devastation.
Here in Bay St. Louis, you know, we've gotten so many e-mails from people saying, you know, you talk about Gulfport. You talk about New Orleans. You talk about these big cities. What about the small cities?
Bay St. Louis is as small as they come here on coast of Mississippi, and it has been hit extraordinarily hard. We'll show you a little bit of that shortly.
But first, let's show you what has happened today in Louisiana, in Mississippi, in Alabama. This is what has happened over the last 24 hours.
Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two days after the Gulf Coast was hit by Hurricane Katrina and those left behind in flood-ravaged New Orleans wave desperately, still waiting to be rescued.
They use whatever they can to get themselves and their loved ones to safety. More than 30,000 are now seeking shelter at the Superdome, waiting for buses that will help them escape their washed-out city.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they know we're tourists. And they know you've got money. You know, so, we don't know where to go. We don't got family here.
MESERVE: For some of them, at least, there is place to escape to. Houston, Texas, will take 23,000 evacuees and house them in the Astrodome.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now, we're scrambling to take care of those that arrive every day.
MESERVE: Food and water are in short supply in New Orleans. Looters run loose in the streets. And police, overwhelmed by search- and-rescue operations, aren't there in sufficient numbers or with the right equipment. Communication, even for the police, is nearly non- existent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most of the cell phones are not working. E- mails are not working properly. Batteries have run out of most of the radio systems that we have.
MESERVE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working to shore up the city's broken levees, planning to drop sand bags weighing up to 15,000 pounds into the breach.
New Orleans is not the only Louisiana city in crisis. The city of Slidell, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, was virtually wiped out in Katrina's aftermath. Fifteen thousand could end up homeless there.
Things are looking grim throughout much of the Gulf Coast. In Mississippi, more than a million people are without power, and the state has put out the call for help from doctors and nurses around the country. There is little left of towns like Pass Christian and Long Beach. Backhoes and dump trucks began the tough task of clearing away debris in Gulfport. And in Biloxi, entire neighborhoods are gone, casinos crushed by Katrina's fury.
This day was designated as a day of prayer by Louisiana's governor. And at least some of those prayers may soon be answered.
Four U.S. Navy ships are set to leave Norfolk, Virginia, filled with food and medical supplies. It will take five days to reach the Gulf. And the U.S. Comfort, a hospital ship, should arrive in seven days, ready to help provide much-needed medical care.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This recovery will take a long time.
MESERVE: President Bush left his Crawford, Texas, vacation today and flew over the beaten and battered Gulf Coast in Air Force One on his way back to Washington, surveying the damage and later offering words of support for those suffering in the storm's aftermath.
BUSH: Right now, the days seem awfully dark for those affected. And I understand that. But I'm confident that, with time, you get your life back in order, new communities will flourish.
The great city of New Orleans will be back on its feet. And America will be a stronger place for it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Well, that all may happen. But right now, it is hard to see how for many of the people in New Orleans. There is just simply desperation and fear, a lot of fear in the city tonight.
Eighty percent of New Orleans is still under water. The mayor of New Orleans said today that it could be hundreds, if not thousands, of people dead. They simply do not know.
There is a lot that this water is hiding. They do not know what is submerged underneath that water, though what we have seen is horrible enough. A lot of people have pulled out of New Orleans for safety reasons.
CNN's Chris Lawrence is still there. He joins us on the phone. Chris, what do you see? What's the latest?
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, I just got here a few hours ago, Anderson. I drove in by myself. I'm standing right now on Canal Street in about knee-deep water watching the fire department try to put out this fire, right on the heart of Canal Street.
No working fire hydrants anywhere in this area. They're trying to pump the water from the street to keep it under control, because these buildings are so close together, if one goes up, no telling how many more might just follow.
And coming in, you know, as I was driving in, passed just intense looting. Saw somebody throw a rock through a window, saw people running out of stores. As I passed one area, I heard two gunshots go off. I don't know if they were shooting necessarily at me, but I just got out of there.
And then I came down here, made my way downtown, I was talking to one of the police officers. And as we were talking, we saw somebody walk right by. You could tell he had a gun right in his waist. And he said, yes, he's got a gun, but I'm one guy. There are 10 of them.
The police say, right now, they're just trying to maintain as much as they can and survive. But they are not going out trying to confront people. Some of the officers tell me that communication is non-existent. They've had to siphon gas from some of the abandoned cars to keep their cars running. A lot of them are scrounging up food and water on their own, just trying to make do.
And really no direction from the top. I was with this one officer who was with five people. He just banded together with five or six other officers, and they were just trying to control one corner. But they had no orders or anything like that. It's more just, hey, we're trained to be police officers, so we'll do what we can, but we're not really sure what we're supposed to do. Because they're just like the rest of us -- they have no communication whatsoever.
Anderson?
COOPER: And I mean, is the Army there? Is the National Guard there? Is there any attempt at, you know, enforcing order on the streets?
LAWRENCE: There is a National Guard presence here in certain areas, but not in all areas. I was down at the Convention Center, and these officers -- there were six or seven of them -- standing right across from 3,000 people who had gathered at this Convention Center.
These people are hungry. They're tired. They've got nowhere to go. They've got no answers, and they've got no communication whatsoever. And the officers said, when night comes -- I'm watching the sun dip behind the buildings right now, he was very afraid -- he said, I don't know which night it's going to break, but these people have a breaking point. And I'm scared to see what happens when they reach that point.
Because they just have no answers. They're wandering. And they're hungry. They're hungry and they're thirsty. And they've got kids with them. And like any of us, you do what you can to try to eat, and to drink water, and help your family. And he felt like these were very, very desperate times down here.
COOPER: Chris, do you have an evacuation plan? Do you know -- I mean, you've got to get off those streets.
LAWRENCE: Somewhat. You know, I just kind of got down here. And I made my own way down here, just kind of asking people and looking on a map.
It's so hard to get around, because one street will be completely dry, and you keep driving and it just drops. I mean, you will be in knee-deep water, and then waist-deep water, and chest-high water just like that.
So it's tough to plan something like on a map. You almost just have to drive and figure it out as you go.
COOPER: Well, Chris, I wish you -- just stay safe. Try to get indoors, and especially when it gets dark. Chris Lawrence, we'll check in with you a little bit later on, on the phone.
We're getting so many e-mails from viewers wondering how they can help, what they can do. I know it's frustrating, when you're sitting in your home, you see these images, you want to do something.
We're putting on the screen now a number of organizations you can contact to help. Also, on the CNN web site, CNN.com, if you want, you can go on that, find out more information about who is doing what here, what groups are working here, and how you can help them in any way possible.
There is a lot more to come tonight.
In Waveland, a town very close to here, just west of Bay St. Louis, I spent the day with some FEMA workers, some urban search-and- rescue, a team from Virginia. They're working around the clock, calling it search-and-rescue. But in truth, it has come down to body recovery, and they are finding bodies every hour in Waveland.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is amazing. This is America? I just don't -- I mean, you hear about this in foreign countries, not here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Welcome back to our special live edition of 360 from Bay St. Louis, just west of Gulfport, just a little bit east of Waveland, towns all of which we have reports from tonight.
I want to show you a little bit, though, of where I am right now. I'm very close to the water's edge. Behind me, first of all, some houses, which have been completely lifted up from their foundations, and just pushed, and just really completely destroyed. These houses are probably going to have to be torn down.
On another camera, you can see it's the foundations of some houses that used to be there. These used to be lake-front houses or bay-front houses. They are just simply gone. Those houses have completely gone. And you can see why. There are just trees, huge, enormous, age-old trees, which have just been tossed up like twigs and are laying in the road.
It is a scene of utter devastation here in Bay St. Louis.
It is even worse just a few miles away in Waveland. I'm going to bring you a report from there, where I worked -- spent the day with some FEMA urban search-and-rescue workers just working around the clock, just trying to find bodies, trying to save lives. It is an extraordinary scene there.
But you know, person after person came up to me today. And they were angry. And they're saying, where is the federal government? I mean, yes, there is some FEMA urban search-and-rescue people here, but where is the Army? Where is the National Guard?
I mean, people -- it is desperate here. It is a desperate situation. There is no food. There is no water. There is no electricity, no ice. And it is deteriorating very rapidly. There is looting going on, not just in New Orleans, but in a small town like Bay St. Louis.
Randi Kaye, who was in Biloxi, also found a lot of people asking that same question, where is the help? Here she is.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Homeless and hungry. Three days without food and water. Residents of Biloxi want to know if help is on the way.
BARBARA BARHONOVICH, BILOXI RESIDENT: I want to get phone service to call FEMA to give me a trailer.
KAYE: Ever since Hurricane Katrina steamrolled her city, Barbara Barhonovich has been sleeping on the porch of her brother-in-law's home.
BARHONOVICH: We just have no job, no home, no vehicle. All we have is our life. And I don't like living it like this.
KAYE: Barhonovich has just a few bottles of water left and no food. Police told her where she could get water, but it's too far to get there without a car. Three days after the storm, no sign of FEMA or the Red Cross in her neighborhood.
BARHONOVICH: I know there's devastation everywheres, but I think they should have enough people to put a few in different little areas. I don't know. I'm just -- feel like we survivors from an atom bomb or something.
KAYE (on-screen): If could you talk to the director of FEMA today, right now, what would you say?
BARHONOVICH: I need a place to live, something to where I could just feel secure and not sleeping out on the porch.
KAYE (voice-over): Across town, Joseph Gibson is also waiting. For him, it's matter of life or death. He's a diabetic with little medication left. All he's eaten for three days is potato chips.
(on-screen): So you have no food, no water, no anything?
JOSEPH GIBSON, BILOXI RESIDENT: Nothing. Zero.
KAYE (voice-over): Gibson was in his first-floor apartment when waves started pounding at his door. He pushed his way out and rode a 25-foot wave to safety upstairs. Nearly all of his belongings gone, Gibson has nowhere to turn.
GIBSON: I don't understand why it's so slow. They're acting too slow in a thing like that. You know, this is an emergency. We need help now, not tomorrow, but right now. They need somebody here right now.
KAYE: Gibson says his next door neighbors drowned. He saw their bodies floating in the water, while he was fighting to survive. Gibson says even getting those bodies removed took longer than it should. One lay exposed in the street for two days.
This man saw it.
GREG FERGUSON, BILOXI RESIDENT: Police came out there and stayed with it for a little while, but they had to go somewhere. And then finally the fire department came and covered her up.
KAYE (on-screen): How long did that take?
FERGUSON: A long time.
KAYE: In a city where nearly every home is damaged or destroyed, every car crushed, the need for help may be greater than any of the relief organizations anticipated.
Late in the afternoon, relief became reality. We saw a handful of FEMA trucks arrive with plans to set up shop at a local hospital. Gibson, Barhonovich, and the others here will wait to see if aid shows up in their neighborhood. Until then, they're on their own.
GIBSON: Nobody's been out here at all. Nobody's been out here to try to check us out.
BARHONOVICH: I feel like I've been punched while I'm down. This storm wasn't kind to anyone.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE: And, Anderson, I spoke with a FEMA representative here in Biloxi tonight. He told me, in his opinion, it is not unreasonable to allow five or six days for this aid to arrive.
I asked him, why so long? He said, well, the storm delayed them, just like it delayed a lot of other things. He said there's a pipeline which slows things down, that all of the goods are staged in Alabama, then sent to the states, transferred to the states. And then the states fan them out to the cities and the neighborhoods that need them.
But from what I understand, the aid is here on the ground in Biloxi, but it is going to take a few more days to get to all of the neighborhoods that need them. He told me, this FEMA rep, told me tonight, in his words, we roll as fast as humanly possible.
Anderson?
COOPER: All right, Randi Kaye, thanks very much.
We're talking with the director of FEMA right now, Mike Brown, who is in Baton Rouge.
Director Brown, thank you very much for being with us. First of all, I got to say, I spent the day with a team from FEMA of urban search-and-rescue guys who were working extraordinary work, working around the clock, as I know a lot of people from FEMA are here in the state.
But I got to tell you. I have come across so many people who are outraged and have come up to me today just shaking, saying, where is the federal government? I mean, this has been more than 48 hours. Where are the troops? Where is the National Guard? Where is the Army?
As you know, people are desperate. How do you answer that question? Where are they?
MICHAEL BROWN, FEMA DIRECTOR: They are on the way. They are in the state now. And I want to say unequivocally, Anderson, I understand their frustrations. I've seen this time and time again.
I know how hot they are. I know how miserable they are. I know how their lives have been totally disrupted by these storms.
Now, I will say that we do move in as close as we can to the storms before they hit, but the last thing I want to do is to have those rescue workers be in harm's way as they move in.
But I'm going to push that, because what I'm hearing on your stories, frankly, is unacceptable -- that stuff in Mississippi. I was with the governor yesterday. And we need to start that distribution now. So that's going to happen. You can tell them you've talked to the FEMA director, and it is going to happen.
COOPER: OK. And I don't want to harp -- you know, FEMA -- look, you're doing God's work here. I spent the day with these guys. There are a lot of people -- there are hundreds of workers, thousands of workers here. They're working hard. So I'm not blasting them.
But I mean, it is getting scary here for people. There are old people in their homes, no electricity, looters running around. Police, you know -- the FEMA team I was with today, they have to have police security now. And they're fearing for their own security. And these are, you know, these are pretty tough guys.
What about air drops of food or air drops of water? I mean, is that feasible? What about bringing things on boats, or bringing in the Army? Is that possible?
BROWN: Anderson, it is possible. And, in fact, the president today said whatever I need I have available. So we have hooked up with Northern Command, with the U.S. Army, with the entire Department of Defense, to start doing that very kind of thing.
This storm is so massive -- and I don't want to make any excuses -- but this storm is so massive that we're going to have to start doing those kinds of things, doing air lifts, getting things in there as quickly as possible.
And we recognize that perhaps the National Guard and local law enforcement can't do that, so we want to come in and help them. So what you're seeing is unacceptable. We're going to speed that up. And we're going to help those people.
COOPER: Mike Brown, I appreciate you joining us. I know you've got a busy day. Thanks very much for your answers. I'm going to pass that along to a lot of people here who are watching literally right here, right now, very upset.
Mike, appreciate it. Thanks very much.
A little bit later, you're going to see some of the hard work that FEMA is doing on the ground here. Again, these urban search-and- rescue guys, who, I mean, they're just working around the clock. You know, they don't have much food. They don't have much water. And they are just -- you know, they're finding corpses every hour here in Bay St. Louis and mainly in Waveland, where I was. I'm sure it could be in Bay St. Louis, as well.
Also, the levees in New Orleans. Why they are breaking? What we can do? What can be done to try to repair them and make sure it doesn't happen again.
So much more to cover in this hour.
Well, it looks like we have an Army or a National Guard helicopter overhead right now. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDWARD MCGRAW, HURRICANE KATRINA REFUGEE: This is extremely devastating. And right now trying to bear the brunt of being the head of the family. I'm trying to really not break down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: An American flag flying at a home here in Bay St. Louis, a home which has been destroyed by this storm, a home which, some 48 hours after this storm has hit, is still in complete devastation, as this community is. So many people wanting answers tonight.
It is really getting desperate, not just here in Bay St. Louis, not just in New Orleans, but in small towns, like Waveland, which, just to the west of us.
We spent the day in Waveland, as did CNN's Gary Tuchman. And there are -- I mean, there are literally just -- it's hard to describe. And there are blocks after blocks of people's homes just totally gone.
Gary Tuchman spent some time with one family as they returned to their home to find it completely devastated.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Market Street in Waveland, Mississippi, no longer looks anything like a street. Every home anywhere near here has been destroyed. We walk with 17-year-old Rebecca Macintosh (ph) across what were the tops of homes.
(on-screen): Do you know who used to live in this house we're standing in?
REBECCA MACINTOSH, WAVELAND RESIDENT: I think this is the roof to the house that was right there, that an old friend of mine used to live in.
TUCHMAN: I mean, this doesn't look like a neighborhood. Be careful. Watch your step.
MACINTOSH: No. It really doesn't.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): From the roof, we see the house Rebecca and her grandmother evacuated, a home that she saw from afar after the hurricane, she hasn't yet seen close-up. Her grandmother couldn't come with us because the walk was too strenuous.
(on-screen): So these are your neighbors?
MACINTOSH: This is my neighbors'.
TUCHMAN: I sure hope they weren't inside there.
MACINTOSH: Yes, me, too. I'm not sure if they evacuated or not.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): And then we see Rebecca's house.
(on-screen): And is that black thing over there, is that your roof?
MACINTOSH: That was our roof.
TUCHMAN: That blew all the way down there.
(voice-over): The only part of the home that isn't destroyed is the mailbox.
(on-screen): Is there anything that you left behind that's important to you that maybe we can look for right now? MACINTOSH: I had a lot of collectibles I had to leave behind and a lot of things that meant a lot to me, but there was just no room to bring them.
TUCHMAN: Like what did you leave behind that meant a lot to you?
MACINTOSH: Like, a lot of porcelain dolls that can't be replaced.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): As we look inside the house that was the center of this teenager's life, we find some of her keepsakes.
MACINTOSH: Yes, this is one of them, Barbie Dolls that I collected, the Millennium Edition.
TUCHMAN (on-screen): Here's your guitar and here is -- what's this?
(LAUGHTER)
MACINTOSH: It's actually a Mardi Gras doll that I got when I was, like, seven.
TUCHMAN: I don't know if this has any sentimental value to it.
MACINTOSH: Not as much as the other stuff, but, hey.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): We leave the house and trek back to Rebecca's grandmother. Our producer shows her the box of keepsakes we brought back.
CATHY EVERARD (ph), WAVELAND RESIDENT: God bless you. Thank you, so much. You guys are so blessed. Oh, God. I don't know what this world would do without people like you. I don't know.
TUCHMAN: But there is a lot more heartache. Cathy Everard (ph) can't find two of her sons.
EVERARD: I am so worried. I just buried my sister last week. And I've already lost my daughter. And now I don't know where my sons are or how they're faring, or what they're doing, or nothing. Help. I wish they would contact me.
TUCHMAN (on-screen): Tell us their names.
EVERARD: Kevin Macintosh (ph). He lives in Keel, Mississippi. And Brian Macintosh (ph) lives here in Waveland. But I haven't been able to find either one of them.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): In this neighborhood, there is no shortage of anguish.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TUCHMAN: So as we speak, Cathy and Rebecca are looking for their loved ones, like so many other people here. I think one of the hard things for us today in Waveland, Anderson -- and you spent the whole day there, too -- was just knowing that there are fatalities there. They're going to find more bodies.
And we walked into some of the houses that have been decimated. And we knew that the officials, the authorities hadn't been there yet. And we were afraid we were going to find bodies, too.
COOPER: And you can smell them. I mean, to be -- I don't want to get too graphic. But you go into these communities, you can smell the death. And it's something you never get over.
Gary, thank you. We'll be in Waveland again tomorrow night where the devastation is just complete, especially near where the water is.
Situation breakdown in New Orleans. We're going to address that when we come back. Why are people acting like they are, with the looting, shooting at police officers? You heard our own correspondent, Chris Lawrence, in New Orleans. He heard two shots when he was driving by. We'll look at that situation in New Orleans where it is total situation breakdown.
Also, grim discovery. Urban search-and-rescue teams from Virginia and elsewhere in Waveland finding bodies every hour. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Well, I can tell you no doubt those casualty figures are going to rise. We found six dead people today. So those numbers are, without a doubt, going rise.
The headline "Hope Amid Ruin" for the "Sun-Herald", south Mississippi's newspaper. It is -- hope is a very hard thing to hold onto right now here in Bay St. Louis and Waveland where we've been today, in New Orleans and throughout this entire region.
Adaora Udoji tonight looks at what is happening, what is causing this situation breakdown in New Orleans. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Heartbreak and chaos has risen as high as the water flooding New Orleans.
HARVEY JACKSON, WIFE MISSING IN HURRICANE KATRINA: We ain't got nowhere to go. I'm lost. That's all I had.
UDOJI: Pandemonium and desperation but also opportunists. Looters ransacking stores in a city that is cut off from nearly everywhere else. They are taking everything they can carry. Police nearby, the few who can get in, say that they can do little. They have no cars. No way to round up looters. Nowhere to take them. No cell phones working to call in reinforcements.
Help is not coming. Not yet. Not nearly fast enough for the thousands who haven't eaten in days and have no water, as they bake in the sun by day, and try to keep safe in a city that is pitch black at night. HOWARD SAFIR, FORMER NYPD COMMISSIONER: The majority of people are good citizens and know what they are supposed to do. But there are always about 10 percent or less of people who take advantage of the situation and they have to be dealt and they have to be dealt with very quickly.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's bad around here. People trying to eat and survive. Just, you know, trying to take care of their family.
UDOJI: But the dire situation is nothing like any of them have ever experienced. An overwhelming stress says Kathleen Hall, who studies stress.
DR. KATHLEEN HALL, THE STRESS INSTITUTE: They are in a survival mode. These people don't know where they're going to live, what they're going to do, where their families are, what conditions their homes that they have lived in. Everything is uncertain. It is contrary to every single cell of our human nature.
UDOJI: Tens of thousands are homeless and anxious. In this catastrophe, with a future so uncertain, angst, anger and heartbreak hitting as hard as Hurricane Katrina. No one recognizes the place they call home.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
UDOJI (on camera): And, Anderson, as you know, there are just heartbreaking stories and they are endless. And this afternoon, earlier today we were standing on Canal Street, where so much of that looting is going on, standing next to a police officer, in fact.
And there was a woman, must have been in her early 40s, who came running up. She was in tears. She was talking about how her mother, who is a dialysis patient, has been trapped in an apartment building where some of the flooding is the heaviest. And she was very sick for the last two days, and she was only getting sicker. And there was really nothing that police officer could do, because there's no communication.
I mean, there are stories on and on like that. But we have to remember the police officers and the rescuers, all of them, many of them have also lost their homes and all of them are out there working real hard, just as you said. We saw the same thing.
COOPER: Adaora, thanks. Also you should remember the Coast Guard. I mean, their families are suffering as well, and yet they are still out there working very hard indeed.
Captain Bruce Jones joins me now. Captain, what kind of rescues have you been seeing today?
CAPT. BRUCE JONES, COMMANDING OFFICER COAST GUARD AIR STATION: We have been continuing today, as we did the last 24 hours, plucking people off rooftops throughout the area of New Orleans that are heavily flooded. We have a task force coordinating a multi-agency aviation response effort with over 25 Coast Guard aircraft along with 30 to 40 DOD aircraft that are now on the scene assisting with the effort. In the last 48 hours since the eye of Katrina passed New Orleans, we have rescued over 1,500 people, mostly one at a time, from rooftops in the New Orleans area.
COOPER: How do you prioritize who gets rescued?
JONES: It is very judgmental on the part of the aircraft commanders. They're told to go out and find people in distress. Triage, using your own best judgment and decision-making and rescue people that need assistance.
Typically we'll fly over a neighborhood where people are in knee- deep water, and immediately bypass that neighborhood, even though they're waving at us, and we go to the areas where the water's up to the rooftops. And there are plenty of people to pull off the rooftops there. What we have found -- and the reason the rescue effort hasn't tapered off -- in fact the need is increasing now, is that neighborhoods we flew over in the 12 hours after Katrina's eye passed in which the water was only near waist-deep, now the water in those neighborhoods is up to rooftops. And people which were not in distress 12 hours ago, are in distress.
COOPER: I know it's not your call. But should New Orleans be evacuated? I mean the whole city?
JONES: Well there are significant portions of the city which are not flooded and which did not sustain terrific damage. There's, obviously, significant, if not the majority of the city which did suffer tremendous damage and a large portion of the city is completely under water, but there are large portions of the city in which the damage was, miraculously, rather minor.
COOPER: Captain Bruce Jones, appreciate your work today. Thank you very much. We hope to talk to you tomorrow, as well.
Here again, how you can help. A lot of e-mails we're getting on this. Some organizations which are doing work here in Mississippi also in Louisiana. You can also go to our Web site, CNN.com to see how you want to help.
When we come back, we're going to show you what happens when a levee breaks. Another levee broke today. They're still trying to repair the levee from yesterday and the day before that. Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans is under water right now. Imagine what that is like. It might get worse. The pictures are extraordinary. We'll be right back.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The police was...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...took our shoes. Ain't no reason. Because we was walking down the street..
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Asked me if I had a gun. Do I look like I have a gun on me? With no shirt on, no shoes, they took our shoes. So we got us some new shoes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why we got new ones.
(INAUDIBLE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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COOPER: As if the people in Mississippi haven't suffered enough, throughout the day here on the Gulf Coast, there have been storms, thunderstorms and rain. A storm is coming right now. Take a look over my shoulder at the bridge from Bay St. Louis. That bridge is just gone. It is destroyed.
It's become a meeting point for people here to see whether or not their neighbors, their friends are still alive; trying to get cell service. But that storm is coming. It may hit us in the next half hour or so. Take a look also, at this new video of a levee that has broken on Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.
This is new video that we have just gotten in. We are seeing it for the first time. Nothing to stop this water from just pouring in right now. Another levee broke yesterday, another one the day before that.
CNN's David Mattingly takes a look at the levee's, why they break and how important they are.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Possibly for the first time in its long and storied history, the party in New Orleans is over. Neighborhoods have become seas of rooftops. Streets, formerly filled with tourist, are now rivers of foul-smelling floodwaters. The city's uncertain future resting entirely on repairing the ruptured levees.
GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO (D), LOUISIANA: We've got an engineering nightmare trying to fill the breach of the levee where the waters are pouring into the city. I think they've been working on it all during the night and continue to work on it all today.
MATTINGLY: Built as a protection from the water, the earthen dams did what they were supposed to do. They were built to endure a Category 3 hurricane, but Katrina was a Category 4.
The hurricane thrust water from the Lake Pontchartrain over the levee along the 17th Street Canal. That was followed by catastrophic failure. A massive section of the barrier wall gave way. The lake and the city became one. A similar scenario unfolded in the east end of town with the levee on the Industrial Canal. It was not strong enough to hold the water back and then part of that levee gave way, as well.
The Army Corps of Engineers is working furiously to repair the levees, using helicopters to drop up to 3,000-pound sandbags over the breaches.
MICHAEL ZUMSTEIN, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: We're implementing several different plans and courses of action. First and foremost we've got to close off the breach along the 17th Street Canal and any other weak spots that start happening. Then we can start proceeding with the procedure of unwatering (ph) the city.
MATTINGLY: But with no electricity, there is no way for the drainage stations to pump the water out of the city. Because the city is below sea level and shaped like a bowl, the water inside New Orleans is literally trapped with nowhere to go.
David Mattingly, CNN, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: You just saw Mike Zumstein with the Army Corps of Engineers in that piece. We're going to talk to him now. Mike, thanks for joining us. I know you're on your way to be involved in this effort. How do you try to repair a levee?
ZUMSTEIN: I'm sorry. Say again?
COOPER: How do you try to repair a levee?
ZUMSTEIN: All right. We have several instruments in place right now. In fact, I was just watching the late-breaking news of another failure off that levee. We have a contractor that is in place via Louisiana Department of Transportation for an emergency measure of closing off the mouth of the 17th Street Canal. That would not have been the intentional course of action, but that would be an immediate fix for the problem.
COOPER: And then long-term, I mean, it's got to be a tremendously difficult thing to do.
ZUMSTEIN: Yes, sir. But the first and foremost is to, you know, close off the breaches and the only reason that we would not have originally elected to do the closure of the mouth of it, is because we still need that discharge channel to pump out this city. But however, it is a necessity to go ahead and close the breach. So, we're going to close that any way possible. We're also looking at...
COOPER: Well, how do you go about doing that? I mean, how do you close that breach?
ZUMSTEIN: ... still implementation of placing the sandbags and any other measures that possibly can occur to create a closure of the breach.
COOPER: So, you're not sure exactly how to do it at this point, but you're going to just try everything you can?
ZUMSTEIN: Well, right now, like I said, we're not banking on one course of action. We have alternative plans as we speak.
COOPER: Mike, appreciate you joining us. Erica Hill has the other day's top headlines. Erica, what's going on?
ERICA HILL, CNNHN ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson.
We start off with a really sad story out of Iraq. A rumor -- just a rumor -- actually proving pretty deadly during a religious procession there today. At least 965 Shiite pilgrims were killed, more than 465 injured in a stampede on a bridge.
Thousands of pilgrims allegedly panicked over this rumor of a suicide bomber. And while they were -- this was all while they were making their way to a mosque. Some of them jumped into the Tigris River and drowned, while others were pushed and crushed.
In Washington, D.C., fallout from the debate over the morning after pill, known as Plan B. Susan Wood, the director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Women's Health, has quit because the agency postponed a decision on allowing over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraception. Now, Woods says she can't stay on the job when scientific and clinical evidence is overruled.
From a team of international researchers, a genetic milestone: A new study shows the DNA of chimpanzees is at least 96 percent similar to us humans. But there are at least 40 million differences in that remaining four percent. The findings published in the journal, "Nature," could shed a little light on why some people get cancer and AIDS, while chimps do not.
And finally, Anderson, you have no need to worry, my friend. You're not disappearing after all. Another study suggests the Y chromosome, what makes you a man, is going to stick around. Researchers say they've actually found no sign of gene loss. They longer believe, Anderson, it's going to disappear in 10 million years. So, there is one thing you can cross off the worry chart.
COOPER: Great. I've got like a million other things.
HILL: Yes.
COOPER: Erica, thanks very much. Appreciate that. We'll check in with you again in 30 minutes.
You know, TV often gives a glossy image to disasters like this. There's nothing glossy about what is happening here. It is miserable. It is hot. There is no water. There is no electricity. People are desperate and there are bodies laying in homes, that are rotting and decaying. The smell is very disturbing.
We went out with search-and-rescue workers today. We'll show you their grim discoveries when we come back.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Actually, we're in the same boat as lots of people. Do you stay? Do you pack up? Do you leave? It's like, what do you do? We're still all in a state of shock. And it is just thank God we have got each other.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, the sun beginning to set here in Bay St. Louis. Normally, I would say it is a beautiful sunset, but there is nothing beautiful about the sun going down here in Bay St. Louis.
There has been looting throughout the day. At night it is particularly dangerous. You can see there is wreckage everywhere. People just stumbling around looking for anything they can find in the wreckage, maybe something they can cook, maybe something they can drink.
It is a desperate scene here in Bay St. Louis as it is in Waveland just to the west where I spent the day with an urban search and rescue team from Virginia. They are doing work with FEMA. They are doing extraordinary work. Search and rescue they call it, but it is really body recovery.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER (voice-over): Days after Hurricane Katrina in Waveland, Mississippi, they are still finding bodies every hour. A FEMA urban search-and-rescue team from Virginia has been told there are four bodies inside this house. Sally Slaughter, a neighbor, discovered them this morning.
SALLY SLAUGHTER, HURRICANE KATRINA VICTIM: Well, I went up in the attic and nothing. So I broke that window out and they are right there. Right inside the window.
COOPER: Inside a family of four drowned by the storm surge. They didn't evacuate because they were scared of looters.
COOPER (on camera): When the -- the smell is really just terrible. When the homes are broken into, and the rescue workers go inside, the smell is just overwhelming.
These people have been inside this house for more than two days. And the house has been boarded up. So when they open up the windows you can smell it well outside the house.
People have been boarding up their home before the storm. And some of them were hiding inside the homes that were boarded up. So, these four people -- a man, a wife and two children -- have died in this home, and they have been inside for 48 hours now. So when rescue workers break inside the home, and open up the windows the smell is -- it is overwhelming. It just goes down the block.
(voice-over): In Waveland, the living have become used to the smell of death.
SLAUGHTER: My family thinks I'm dead because I haven't been able to get a hold of anybody. To let them know. They thought I stayed at home.
COOPER: I hope you're going to be all right.
SLAUGHTER: Hopefully my family sees this. I'm OK.
COOPER (voice-over): Just down the block, another victim, another body swollen by the water.
DAVID CASH, RESCUE WORKER: Apparently, she died probably during the storm surge from one of these buildings here. And since there are still people living in these buildings, the residents moved her over here and kind of dumped her here, as this apparently has been the dumping ground for people that have died, but there are still people out there living in the areas that they're dying.
COOPER: So, her neighbors actually moved her body to over here?
David Cash is a 10-year veteran of Virginia Search and Rescue.
CASH: But this was different, people didn't heed the warning to evacuate. And they were kind of caught at the last minute, you know, in a very bad situation. Do they stay and try to ride it out? Do they try to get on the road and risk being injured on the road? And unfortunately the people we're seeing today thought that this was going hit New Orleans.
You know, the people down here unfortunately put up with this a lot. And they thought that this was going to hit New Orleans. And when it took a northeasterly turn at the last minute, they got the brunt of it.
COOPER: A few blocks away, the team finds yet another body.
(on camera): One body has already been removed from this house. There's a woman whose body is laying in the corner next to an overturned couch. The team has seen a photo of a woman with an infant, a baby, and they think there may be an infant inside. And they are searching for the infant's body right now.
(voice-over): After a 10-minute search they can't find the baby. They have to move on. There's more work to be done identifying the dead, trying to help the living.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: There are so many stories of people in need.
Basil Kennedy, you have lived here for 30 years in this area. We're going to talk to you in just a moment about what has happened to your house. It was just over there. One of the many houses here that has been destroyed.
We'll be back with that. We have a lot more coverage ahead. Stay with us.
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COOPER: Just one of the many images we see here, a picture amid rubble. One of those pointed images you see block after block, house after house here in Bay St. Louis.
Basil Kennedy, your home is just a few houses from here. Or it was, I should say. It was destroyed by the storm.
BASIL KENNEDY, HURRICANE KATRINA VICTIM: It is still there, but it is in a pile. It doesn't look anything like a house anymore.
COOPER: You didn't even recognize -- how did you identify it?
KENNEDY: I found the fire plug that I knew was there and found the house right next door.
COOPER: That's the only way you could find it?
KENNEDY: That's it.
COOPER: You were going to stay in that house?
KENNEDY: I've stayed here since I grew up in Hancock County, in the area. I have lived in this house for 30 years. And I never left before. And I had two very good friends talk me into leaving. It's the first time I left town for a storm.
COOPER: Have you said thank you to those friends?
KENNEDY: One of them is my age, and about as ugly as me, and I went up and kissed him and thanked him for it. And the other one I've called five times and thanked her for it.
COOPER: Because, you know, we have seen so many people who have died in this community because they decided to ride out the storm. And it wasn't even bravado, they were afraid of looters. They didn't want to leave their house.
KENNEDY: Well, I had a couple of friends that spent the morning hugging to a tree and to the debris line. And they are all beat up. They had broken arms and skinned up from head to foot, but they are alive and I'm happy.
COOPER: There's a lot of rescue people, a lot of people from FEMA working hard on this, but there's lot of frustration. I mean, all day people have been coming up to me saying, look, where is the federal government? Where's the Army? Where's the National Guard?
Do you feel frustrated?
KENNEDY: Not at all. I think they are doing everything they can. We had a communication problem, because cellular phones aren't working right. There's no land lines to speak of, no power. But it's going to come back. It just takes a little bit of time. And everything will be wonderful again.
COOPER: And you're...
KENNEDY: I got ice today. I got water today.
COOPER: Did you, really? That's great.
KENNEDY: My brother lives in South Carolina. And he told someone I was down here. And he's got a semi coming down with stuff...
COOPER: Are you kidding?
KENNEDY: Yeah. It's just unbelievable the outpouring from people out of the area.
COOPER: Well, there's people from all around the world watching this and praying for all of you. Basil...
KENNEDY: I want to say thank you from the Mississippi Coast to all of you. We appreciate it.
COOPER: Basil, thank you.
KENNEDY: Thank you.
COOPER: And good luck to you. I'm glad your family is safe, most importantly of all.
KENNEDY: Thank you very much.
COOPER: ...many people here.
So, here's how to help, if you'd like. On the camera, we're showing you some of the organizations. Also, you can go to CNN.com to find out more information about how you can help. A lot of work to be done here, not just in these immediate days a weeks, but in months and years ahead.
Our special coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath continues now with CNN's Paula Zahn. Paula?
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