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American Morning

Assessing Katrina's Damage; Over 600 Dead in Baghdad Mosque Stampede

Aired August 31, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien.
New Orleans. A desperate effort to plug a critical levee has failed at this hour. More water from Lake Pontchartrain is pouring into a city already 80 percent flooded. And, in a race against time, authorities say tens of thousands of people stuck in the city must be evacuated. But where will they go? How will they get there? Is enough being done to help this city literally drowning by the minute? We're going to put those questions to the governor and to the mayor straight ahead.

Good morning, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien, live in Slidell, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Here the story is one of flooding and trees down. There are hundreds of homes damaged, hundreds of homes underwater. A search and rescue operation is still underway. And we will have a live report from here all throughout the morning -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: And breaking news in Iraq. A stunning loss of life. More than 600 pilgrims killed in a stampede north of Baghdad. Those stories are all ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, and welcome to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Miles O'Brien, reporting live from Slidell, Louisiana, a place that is particularly hard hit in the wake of Katrina. In this town of 30,000, it's difficult to find anyone who is not adversely affected by this storm. Hundreds of homes remain underwater.

If you look behind me here, this is the center of town here. Still some flood waters here, although they have receded. Unlike New Orleans, with the problem with that broken levee, the flood waters are receding here somewhat. The case here is one of devastation, as you see from these aerials of this town of 30,000, a bedroom community for the city of New Orleans. Not far from the Stennis Space Flight Center for NASA, where a combination of flooding and high winds has left a terrible wrath. No phone, no electricity, no phones. And right now, people in Slidell doing everything they can to try to pick up the pieces -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Miles, we're going to have much more from New Orleans in just a few moments.

Also some news to tell you about out of Baghdad. Police say 648 people dead after a stampede near a Shiite mosque. Nearly a million pilgrims were gathered to mark the death of a Shiite saint who's buried in that mosque. Witnesses say a crowd on a bridge panicked when somebody said yelled there was a suicide bomber. The crowd pushed against each other, they collapsed a railing on the bridge, and hundreds of people drowned. Three-hundred and 22 others were injured. We're going to have a live report for you just ahead from Baghdad.

S. O'BRIEN: Back to New Orleans now. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, right now even more water is pouring into New Orleans. Efforts to prepare broken levees that have swamped the city have failed so far. Workers are now trying to plug the holes with huge concrete blocks. They're also looking for a barge to fill a big gap. Meanwhile, the water in the city just keeps rising. The city's already 80 percent flooded. Downtown and in the area near the Superdome, where thousands of people have taken shelter, are now flooded. Some people say the city looks to them like a war zone.

Let's get right to New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. He joins us by phone this morning. Mr. Mayor, thank you for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it.

Here's how it sounds from our vantage point. Things are getting worse and it doesn't seem like there's much of a plan to make things better. Is that a fair reading?

MAYOR RAY NAGIN (D), NEW ORLEANS: Well, you know, we have, you know, our challenges, and obviously over the last couple of hours, the challenges have escalated. The good news in the city is that we -- our rescue efforts have been tremendous, and we've saved thousands of people that have been on top of roofs and stuck in attics. But, unfortunately, we do have that rising water situation.

S. O'BRIEN: You mention, sir, too many cooks. What did you mean?

NAGIN: Well, you know, yesterday, I was a little frustrated. There was, you know, I was expecting the levee to be plugged with some 3,000-pound sandbags and it didn't happen. So we have command centers that are spread out in different locations and, this morning, we're going to bring all of our command centers together so that we can get all of the varying opinions in one room and start to work, you know, in (INAUDIBLE).

S. O'BRIEN: I could imagine that would be very frustrating. Who exactly is in charge? I mean, why are you still talking about a plan when you're 48-plus hours into this storm hitting? It wasn't much of a surprise in a lot of ways that it was coming.

NAGIN: Well, you know, this is an unprecedented event. And you have so many agencies working down here. You have wildlife and fisheries, with over a hundred rescue boats. You have the National Guard. They are mobilizing another 3,000 troops that are expected to be here. You have the state. You have the Army. You -- we have an unprecedented number of support personnel. And it's just a matter of getting everybody totally on synch and making sure that we have the sense of urgency on the priority issues. That's my concern. S. O'BRIEN: So all of these different agencies, in your opinion, aren't really communicating well and aren't talking?

NAGIN: Well, we're talking, but unfortunately the communication systems are not that great down here, with the surprises. Most of the cell phones are not working. E-mails are not working properly. Batteries have run out on most of the radio systems that we have. So we're constantly in a state of flux, as it relates to communication. But we're going to get it fixed.

S. O'BRIEN: This is a city that is below sea level and right in the path of hurricanes. I mean it has been for a long, long time. Why is there not a plan in place or a plan that has been in place for years and years in the event of something like this happening?

NAGIN: Well, there's always a plan in place. The last time New Orleans had an event like this -- similar, not even as worse as this -- was Hurricane Betsy in the '60s. No one could have predicted that a Category 4 or 5 would come this close to New Orleans and breach levees of two main parts of the city. That's the unique thing.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you feel, sir, that the administration and that FEMA are doing enough to help out?

NAGIN: FEMA is on the ground. I talked to the director of FEMA. He assured me that everything that we needed would be taken care of. I just tell you that it's really hard to understand the devastation and the challenge that we face, unless you're here. So now that we have people on the ground, I'm sure we will pick things up.

S. O'BRIEN: There are huge problems with evacuations. Why aren't people and why haven't people been taken out of the city by whatever means possible?

NAGIN: Well, you know, we have some very unique challenges in that respect, also.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you mean?

NAGIN: All of the -- we're basically almost surrounded by water, so there's a bridge system that brings us out to the east. That bridge system has been destroyed by the storm, for the most part. There's a high-rise interstate. It's a double, you know, lane in a state that is basically a jigsaw puzzle, missing slabs -- huge missing slabs of concrete. So that locked us in. To the west, there's a problem with flooding in certain sections of the interstate to the west. So we're really kind of locked in with only one kind of alternate route where you have to go through several gyrations to in and out of the city.

S. O'BRIEN: Why not military transport planes, why not C-140s dragging people out or taking people out and evacuating them? I mean, you've got 20,000 or so people just inside the Superdome, where the temperatures are getting to, you know, 90, 100 degrees. There's no bathroom facilities. They're hungry. They're frustrated. They're, obviously psychologically a wreck. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that these people are going to start snapping very soon.

NAGIN: Yes, but you have to understand the priorities of our challenges. We had thousands of people. We evacuated probably close to a million people in the metropolitan area. But there were still a couple hundred thousand still here. So all of the resources initially were focused on rescue. And we have rescued thousands of people that were trapped in attics and on roofs. So that was the main priority, as far as getting people out, with the challenge of rescue and rising waters. And then we've had some looting. We've had our hands full.

S. O'BRIEN: Are you getting all the assistance you need? Is there anyone you'd like to ask assistance from?

NAGIN: We -- the federal government is working great with us. The state is working wonderful with us. It's just a plethora of challenges and we just need, in my opinion --- I'm a very impatient person in a crisis. We just need to all make sure that we're on the same page, and we're moving with a tremendous sense of urgency to get things done.

S. O'BRIEN: I think you're not the only person who's impatient in a big challenge. Mayor Ray Nagin, thank you for your time this morning, and good luck to you. We'll check in with you again.

We want to get to John Zarrella. He is in New Orleans. He is covering the story for us, with a lot of challenges himself, because, of course, the phone service is very tough.

John, good morning to you. Give me a sense of where you are and how things look from where you are.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Soledad, we are where we have been pretty much, in the hotel district right near Canal Street, not far from the French Quarter. This is where we've been staging for the last several days and it has become more and more difficult, of course, to get around, to make our way around the city, because the water is continuing to rise. It's very doubtful that we will be able to even get out of the hotel proper today at all, the water is so high.

And with some of the issues that the mayor said and stated -- so politically correctly, I might add -- about the difficulties that they are facing, because we are -- you know, you hate to say you're -- as a journalist you never want to become part of the story, but certainly, we are part of the story because as we are, as everyone else in this city, we are stranded, we are stuck. We cannot physically get out of the city.

S. O'BRIEN: John, let me interrupt you there for a second. How many people are in the same situation? You're stuck with how many others right now in this hotel?

ZARRELLA: Well, in this particular -- in our CNN group alone, there are 30 of us here. And then there are about 200 people in this hotel. There are the hotel workers, their families, a few tourists who are still here. Last night, the hotel organized a group and told people here's a way that you might be able to get out of the city if you want to get out. I saw some people going down, husbands, wives, a couple of children, going down and it was nearly dark, and with all of the looting going on, and they had their bags and they were leaving. I just shook my head and I said I cannot believe that they're trying to get out at darkness with the water and all that's going up.

And, of course, the problem is, the pump stations are failing. The levee breach is not being fixed. As the mayor told a radio station earlier today -- did not elaborate with you -- was that the helicopter that was supposed to be dropping sandbags was diverted to another operation. And this is, I think, where he's talking about the communications problems that they are having.

You know, quite clearly, it was not until yesterday afternoon that we even saw any of the National Guard on the streets around us. And only a few of them were -- you know, they've been diverted to different areas. In fact, that helicopter was diverted to a rescue in a church, the one that was supposed to be dropping the sandbags to try to fix the levee.

With the pumps failing and the levee not fixed, we could very easily see another 10 or 15 feet of water right here at the hotel. As the mayor said, the bowl is filling up. So this is clearly becoming the nightmare scenario.

S. O'BRIEN: It certainly is.

ZARRELLA: You're right. People knew this was going to happen, Soledad. This should not have been a surprise. It's been talked about for years, the worst case scenario.

S. O'BRIEN: And now you're experiencing...

ZARRELLA: And quite frankly, from our vantage point, it does not appear that there has been any major coordinated effort here, at least from where we're sitting, to get the people out. You're going -- and we've been talking, correspondent Jeanne Meserve and I, about how people are, as you said, quite frankly, going to start snapping. Not just there, but in all of these hotels, the people that are stranded, people in their homes that are still stranded.

So I talked to one man. We were on the roof of the parking garage and he was in a building across the way, in a hotel across the way. And he was screaming over at me, please tell people how everything is deteriorated here. I had to run with my family, he said, to get out of my neighborhood because of the looting that was going on. I ran with my family for our lives.

S. O'BRIEN: It sounds absolutely horrific. John Zarrella. We're going to ask you, John -- we're going to stick around with you and check back in with you in just a little bit as we continue to move along.

We want to get to Miles O'Brien, who is in the town of Slidell, to get that side of the story. Miles, good morning again.

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning again, Soledad.

A couple of thoughts here. First of all, as you look at the center of Slidell -- and you see the flood waters that are still here -- it's worth pointing out that they have actually receded since we were here yesterday. So it is not the same story as New Orleans, where that levee breach is causing the waters to, in fact, rise. As a matter of fact, Slidell is about six feet above sea level. As we know, New Orleans is about that much below sea level. And what a difference a few feet can make.

But the story here is a combination of that storm surge, which was about 15 feet. It was no match for the six feet level there. Causing tremendous flooding. Many homes still under water. Search and rescue operations still underway today. And then this, you can see a little taste of it. Trees down. Tens of thousands of trees down. And, in many cases, when those trees were uprooted, they took with them water lines, gas lines, all kinds of utilities. The fact of the matter is, Slidell is very much off the grid this morning.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity yesterday to tour this city with the mayor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Slidell, Louisiana, isn't what it used to be, not by a long shot. This city of 30,000, just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, got clobbered by Katrina. A hundred and 40-mile-an-hour sustained winds and a tsunami-like wall of water, about 15 feet high.

MAYOR BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL, LOUISIANA: Very conservative estimate on the number of large trees that we have down is about somewhere between 10 and 15,000. And a lot of them are sticking in homes. And I personally have three of them in my house, so it's one of the worst things I've ever seen.

M. O'BRIEN: Mayor Ben Morris is a local legend here, but with no power, no phones, no electricity, and no hope things will be fixed soon...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We want our electricity back.

M. O'BRIEN: He has become a town crier of sorts, spreading the grim news face-to-face, door-to-door.

MORRIS: Your electricity is most probably...

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Do it! I learned myself!

MORRIS: Six to eight weeks away.

M. O'BRIEN: Or maybe 12 weeks. So many trees, so many lines down. It all boggles the mind.

MORRIS: If you have battery, radios, you most probably need to get ahold of a... UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE)?

MORRIS: You know, battery radios.

M. O'BRIEN: These folks were among the few who rode out the storm at home. Trees fell, water rose, and they got ready to head for the attic. Fortunately, the surge leveled off at ankle-depth. Relatively speaking, they were lucky.

(on camera): Are glad you stuck on out here or do you wish you had gone to a shelter?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really don't have an option. We don't have the finances to leave.

M. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Slidell is a place people know your name, your parents and who you dated in high school. In short, an extended family that gather frequently for concerts in a park that is now inundated.

(on camera): It must be hard to see it getting back to that right now.

MORRIS: Oh, no. Piece of cake. By October, we will most probably finished our amphitheater and we'll be having concerts in the park again. This is just a bump in the road. A very bad bump in the road!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: A very bad bump and the mayor will be our guest a little bit later on AMERICAN MORNING, and we'll ask him some more questions about the road to recovery here in Slidell.

When we return, we'll take you to the Mississippi coast of the Gulf of Mexico where, in many respects, it looks as if a bomb was dropped there. Back with more AMERICAN MORNING in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Welcome back. I'm Miles O'Brien, live from Slidell, Louisiana, where there is tremendous damage in the wake of Katrina. But, of course, it's not just here in Louisiana. Let's move to the east a little bit, the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport, among the most hard-hit as a result of this storm.

Let's begin in Biloxi. That's where we find CNN's Ted Rowlands -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles. The reality of the devastation that Katrina caused was apparent yesterday at daybreak. And today, the work will continue. You can see this debris field of what used to be homes. This is being played out across the Mississippi and Gulf Coast (INAUDIBLE) here in Biloxi. But in other small towns, it is still a search and recovery effort (INAUDIBLE). M. O'BRIEN: All right, I apologize. We've obviously lost our audio link with Ted Rowlands. We'll get back to him very shortly. Let's move a little bit more to the east.

Right next to Biloxi is Gulfport, Mississippi, and that is where we find CNN's Kathleen Koch. Actually, that's a little bit back to the west. I apologize. I'm getting it backwards in my head.

Kathleen, what's the situation there this morning?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, here, as in all up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast, people are completely shell- shocked. They simply not -- they can't comprehend the enormity of what's happened, the reality of it, because it's simply so unreal.

We'll show you some aerials of Gulfport, Mississippi. I used to live in this region. I worked in Biloxi, Mississippi. I used to drive Highway 90, an east-west route along the Gulf Coast. And it is completely blocked. It is totally impassible, covered by 18-wheelers, pieces of buildings, all sorts of debris.

Then there are towns that we made our way to yesterday for the very first time, where no one has gotten. Towns further to the west here, Long Beach, Pass Christian, towns of some 24,000 people. People around the country feared everyone might have been killed. But we got in there. First of all, we did manage, with the help on (INAUDIBLE), to get to downtown Long Beach. And once we got to the beach -- it was our first time to make it to the beach there, we realized everything within two blocks of the beach had literally been flattened. You couldn't tell what structures were. Were they homes, were they businesses? It, indeed, did look like a bomb had been dropped in the first two blocks.

Then we went to Pass Christian, a little fit further to the West. There, again, when you went in from the beach, you did you have homes that were standing. But many of them had lost their roofs. Most of the streets, except for the one that we did find in downtown Long Beach, to the beach, were just completely impassible, covered by dozens and dozens of trees, by rooftops.

Everyone in this area, again, is so shocked because they're only seeing a little piece of where they're trapped right now, their little neighborhood. There is no power. Most of the area has no water. There are still rescues going on.

We were told as of yesterday, here in Harrison County in the Gulfport/Biloxi area, we talked to someone from the coroner's office, describing people bringing bodies to their office in the backs of cars, in the backs of trucks. Bodies of loved ones, bodies of neighbors. And then when the phones were still functioning -- they don't work anymore -- telling the coroner's office you could find a body on this corner, on that corner, we marked it, please come and get it.

But it's a horrific sight and it's hard to imagine just how long it's going to take to recover -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Kathleen Koch, truly a horrifying scene. And as time goes on, it becomes truly a public health concern, with the lack of all that infrastructure and the possibility that there could be many hundreds of people who have died in all of this.

Back to you -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles, we'll get back to you in just a little bit. We want to bring you up-to-speed on our other top story this morning.

Breaking news out of Iraq. The death toll rising after a deadly stampede today. At least 648 people are dead, hundreds more are injured.

Let's get right to Jennifer Eccleston. She is live in Baghdad for us. Jennifer, what exactly happened?

JENNIFER ECCLESTON: Well, Soledad, it was a scene of totally chaos at this annual Shiite religious commemoration in northern Baghdad. And as you mentioned, Iraqi police are reporting that 640 people have died. Many women, children and the elderly. They died during a stampede which erupted on a bridge over the Tigris River. This bridge is a major thoroughfare in order to arrive at this mosque.

And according to witnesses who told Iraqi police, as the thousands of people were walking to the revered Shiite shrine, someone in the crowd shouted that there was a suicide bomber. And as you can imagine, panic ensued as the crowds tried to flee. And, apparently, a railing on the bridge collapsed due to the sheer force and the pressure of the people. And those people then tumbled off the bridge into the river. Now, police say that while some of the people were crushed and died as a result, the majority of the dead, indeed, drowned in the Tigris River.

We also have updated number on those injured. It's 301, and they are being treated in five hospitals across Baghdad, hospitals which are being described as overwhelmed. And tensions were already very high today, because early this morning, there was a mortar attack on the same shrine, the Kadhimiya mosque, which killed seven people and wounded 36 others.

A little context here about the day. Thousands of Shiites gathered here to commemorate the death of Imam Mousa al-Kadhim. He was a prominent figure in Shiite history and he's buried at this mosque, which is, indeed, the third holiest shrine in Shia Islam. And those thousands of people were coming here from Shiite areas across Baghdad, not only Baghdad, but indeed across Iraq -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Terrible, terrible. And awful pictures to see, too. All right. Jennifer Eccleston for us. Jennifer, thanks.

Our complete coverage of Katrina's aftermath will continue in just a moment. We've got the latest on Katrina's record-setting impact on oil and gas prices. That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Part of the aftermath of Katrina, oil prices way up. Let's get right to Andy Serwer. He's "Minding Your Business" this morning. Good morning.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Good morning, Soledad.

Record oil prices this morning. Over $70 a barrel. Up until now, oil prices have been rising because of an increase in demand. And now, for the first time, we're seeing a decrease in supply. Some 10 percent of U.S. production is still offline.

We have just learned, Soledad, that the Bush administration will authorize the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the SPR. In a few minutes, I understand we're going to have U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. He will obviously be talking more about this.

Wholesale prices of gasoline around $2.60. Retail prices typically 40 cents more. That means we are going to be looking at $3.00 a gallon gasoline, I think, over the next couple of days.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, much more to talk about ahead.

SERWER: Indeed.

S. O'BRIEN: We're back in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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