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American Morning

Time Running Out for New Orleans; Hundreds Killed in Baghdad Stampede; Flood Waters Receding in Mississippi; Bush to Release Oil Reserves; Former Police Chief: Little Can Be Done About Looters

Aired August 31, 2005 - 08:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Time is running out for New Orleans. A major American city literally filling up with water this morning. Efforts to fix a broken levee have failed so far. Now officials say the city must be evacuated. It is an enormous job, a logistical nightmare. We'll take you live to New Orleans.
A developing story this morning as gas prices shoot higher in the aftermath of Katrina. The Bush administration says it will release oil from U.S. reserves. Is that enough to stabilize prices?

And from Iraq's chaos: on a bridge across the Tigris River, nearly 650 people killed in a stampede. We have a live report ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Good morning. And welcome to AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Miles O'Brien, reporting live from Slidell, Louisiana. I'm standing on Second Street in the heart of Old Town Slidell.

Take a look down this street. The water gets much deeper as you go along. I'm right now at about ankle-depth. But this is just a little taste of the kind of flooding that has occurred here. Hundreds of houses were flooded out. The waters have receded somewhat but, nevertheless, a devastating blow to people in this community of about 30,000.

The mayor, the police officers here are telling people to stay away, because there is no infrastructure here at all: no water, no phones, no electricity. And this is a common scene all throughout this region.

Let's talk about New Orleans: 30 miles away to the south across Lake Pontchartrain. The situation there is really unlike any hurricane aftermath we have covered because normally, we talk about, as we said just here receding flood waters.

Just the opposite is happening in New Orleans, which as we've been telling you, of course, over the past several days, is below sea level. A couple of key breaches in levees that hold Lake Pontchartrain, which of course are the waters we're seeing here, Lake Pontchartrain waters on the north side. And that Lake Pontchartrain is literally draining out into what amounts to a giant bowl. And that is the city of New Orleans.

It's a critical situation that is causing people great concern in that city. Many people desperate to get out. Lots of scenes of looting. A very dicey situation, indeed.

CNN's Jeanne Meserve is in the middle of it all in a hotel, where virtually really that hotel has become a bit of an island this morning -- Jeanne.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is literally an island, Miles, no doubt about it. The water out there is rising, and the water out there is spewing and becoming even more vile.

I did get out in it yesterday and walked over to the Superdome. At that point, the deepest water late yesterday morning was about hip- deep. The conditions in the Superdome at that point were not intolerable. There are a lot of people there. At that point in time they were estimating 15,000 to 20,000 people.

But they have MREs. They have water. They have helicopters that can land there and bring in more stuff if they need stuff. The sanitary conditions are problematic, to say the least, but at least they can get food and water.

It's my impression, my belief, Miles, that the situation in some of these other buildings is going to become even more dire than at the Superdome, because we cannot be reprovisioned. Many of the people who are staying at the hotels had some forethought and they brought things.

Our hotel has been terrific. They stocked in a lot of food and water. They're rationing what they have. But sanitary conditions here are becoming problematic. Toilets don't look work. You have entire families crammed into a room. This is going to become a very nasty place to be in short order, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Jeanne, I know it's tough, but do we have any sense of the number of people that are affected this way right now?

MESERVE: I have no idea. I can tell you that this hotel has hundreds of people in it. I know that we went around and sought a room in a couple of different hotels closer to the river before the storm hit because we thought we might have a better vantage point for our cameras. They were all booked up. They didn't have room.

M. O'BRIEN: Time for (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

MESERVE: Well...

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Jeanne Meserve, thank you very much. Jeanne is holed up in that hotel, not far from the French Quarter in New Orleans. And in some respects, the reporters enduring the story in ways that they normally don't. Really, whether we like it or not, in this situation, they are actually becoming a part of the story, because they, too, are trapped as these waters rise on the city of New Orleans -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Miles, we'll be back to Slidell and New Orleans in just a little bit. We want to get more, though, on that breaking news out of Baghdad this morning. At east 648 people, many of them women and children, are dead after a stampede on a bridge near a Shiite mosque. Hundreds were injured in the rush.

CNN's Jennifer Eccleston, live for us in Baghdad this morning. Jennifer, good morning. What exactly happened? And what does the military do in these kind of situations?

JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, they were horrific scenes this morning, Soledad. This afternoon as well at this annual Shiite religious commemoration in northern Baghdad, which according to Iraqi police, killed 648 people, as you mentioned. Among them mainly women, children and the elderly.

They died during a stampede which erupted on a bridge over the Tigris River, and this bridge is a major thoroughfare for these pilgrims to actually travel to this mosque. Now according to a witness, he told Iraqi police as the thousands of people walked to this revered Shiite shrine, someone in the crowd shouted that there was a suicide bomber among them. And as you can imagine, sheer panic ensued as the crowds tried to flee to either side of the bridge.

And apparently because of the sheer mass of people and the pressure on the railing of the bridge, one of those railings collapsed. And the people who were up against it tumbled off the bridge into the Tigris River, tumbling some 40 yards.

Police say that while some of the people actually died in the crush of that stampede, the majority of the dead drowned in the Tigris River. They are still retrieving bodies from the river.

What we know is 322 people have been listed as injured and they are being treated at five hospitals around Baghdad, which are said to be overwhelmed. Tensions are very high already today after a mortar attack on that same shrine, the Kazimiye Mosque, which killed seven people and wounded 36 others.

And the U.S. military actually responded to that attack with Apache helicopters, fired on the attackers and detained 12 people for questioning, but we do not know at this date whether the U.S. military is providing some sort of assistance, logistically, medically, to the local area hospitals -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Jennifer Eccleston for us this morning in Baghdad, thank you. Jennifer, thanks.

Let's get right back to Miles. Good morning, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, Soledad. Old Town Slidell is where I stand right now. This is Second Street. It's become a canal. It remains a canal a few days after Katrina came through. The waters have receded somewhat.

Unlike the story we've been telling you about in New Orleans, no levee breaches on this side of Lake Pontchartrain. We're on the other side, 30 miles away. Yesterday we spent a fair amount of time in Biloxi, in the Gulfport area. It's a different kind of scene there. The flood waters have largely receded. And what remains is a scene that reminds me of some of the pictures that you see in the wake of, say, Hiroshima in World War II, devastation. Block after block of home, every single home destroyed, simply matchsticks left, piles of lumber.

CNN's Ted Rowlands is in the midst of that in Biloxi -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, I'll give you another taste of that type of destruction. This is one of the many debris fields that Katrina left behind, used to be homes. We're standing on what used to be a one-story hotel building of three separate buildings. It's completely demolished.

And you can see there's a car in the middle here. Actually, a local resident told us that the owner of that car was seen just before the hurricane and hasn't been seen since. There's some worry that he may have tried to ride this out.

Most of the people in this region did not try to ride it out. They escaped to higher ground. But at this point, it is still a search and rescue operation here. There are specialized teams that deal with collapsed buildings that have come in from around the country, and they are searching for possible survivors. It will then move into a recovery mode in the next few days.

But the hope is that they can get to people that are still stranded and do need help. The problem is the vast amount of real estate that they have to cover. It's not just Biloxi. It's a number of small towns along the Mississippi Gulf Coast going through the exact same scenario. Towns that were hit and slammed by Katrina and left as just basically debris fields.

As you mentioned, the comparison to Hiroshima, that's exactly what the governor of Mississippi said, as well, after touring this wreckage. It is a going to be a long week or two of search and rescue, hoping to find people alive, and then it may be months and months before things are back to normal here -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Ted Rowlands, who's in Biloxi. And of course, the concern is that there are untold numbers of dead or missing, simply washed away by that 20- to 25-foot storm surge that occurred in the Biloxi-Gulfport area, something that really took a tremendous toll.

Many people there had decided, for whatever reason, to ride out this storm and, today, this morning, they remain unaccounted for -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Those numbers, I am certain, Miles, are going to rise. I mean, in New Orleans, it's completely unclear not only which people have been rescued but how many people have perished, as well. Miles, we'll get back to you in just a little bit.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman just announced this morning that the Bush administration will release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve.

Let's get right to Suzanne Malveaux. She's in Crawford, Texas, this morning. Suzanne, good morning.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Of course, President Bush, had been looking at that option the last couple of days. They needed some more information before they could make that announcement official. But certainly, it was expected. This is something the president did back in Hurricane Ivan, releasing 5.4 million barrels from those reserves.

It's something the president does not do, he says, for political reasons or to drop the price of gas but rather natural emergencies, that this is something that they have done before in the past and certainly are willing to do this time around.

We understand that that oil will be available to the refineries as early as tomorrow. That from the energy secretary.

Now, the this morning, President Bush, before leaving his Crawford ranch, we're told, is going to hold another one of those video teleconference calls involving many of the federal, state, local agencies involved in trying to figure out, assess the damage and, of course, figure out the route to recovery, the strategy there.

The president is leaving his Crawford ranch, his vacation, two days early, going back to Washington this morning. Four o'clock in the afternoon is when we understand he's going to be chairing a White House task force that has been set up specifically to deal with this crisis, the hurricane crisis. It will involve officials from energy, as well as the Pentagon. Many different federal agencies involved in that.

And, of course, we also understand the president, the Bush administration, has been involved in discussions with state and local officials to figure out what is the best time that he can actually visit some of those damaged areas, perhaps take a chopper ride over those areas later in the week. We are told they're working on those details. Very likely that will happen later this week -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Suzanne, your family is from New Orleans. Is everybody OK?

MALVEAUX: We really don't know at this point. We have gotten -- it's been very difficult to actually communicate to our relatives. We know one family was able -- they were staying in a hotel. They were able to make it out of the hotel and then leave before one of those levees broke. We haven't heard from one of the other families. So it's been a very difficult time, as you can imagine, for many people.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet. All right. Thanks, Suzanne.

Well, as New Orleans struggles with the devastation authorities must contend with yet another problem, restoring order in a city that's now ravaged by widespread looting. Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington served for eight years as the police chief in New Orleans. He joins us from the CNN Center.

Good morning.

CHIEF RICHARD PENNINGTON, ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Good morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks for being with us.

You know, we've seen looters on the air. I mean, they're doing interviews as they're stealing things. And they say essentially they need these things, they're desperate people. At the same time, other people are walking off with flatscreen TVs and things that you would imagine are not things you necessarily desperately need. Should police be focusing on the looters at this point?

PENNINGTON: Well, actually, what the police department will have to do is maintain order and control. That will be the primary responsibility of the New Orleans Police Department.

They have to do it in a humanitarian way. Many of the people are breaking into some of those stores for food and water. And so what will happen is that the police will have to maintain a vigilance. They will have to be out on the street, letting the people know that law and order will have to prevail.

And so I think that -- I haven't seen too many police officers on the street, but even when the police officers have to arrest individuals, where are you going to take them? The jails are flooded. There are no place to house prisoners.

S. O'BRIEN: So then, sir, let me interrupt you. Because, OK, how do -- those things sound contradictory. How do you both maintain a sense of law and order while you're kind of allowing looters to break in for necessary goods and where you know, even if you were to arrest somebody, you can't put them anywhere?

PENNINGTON: Well, I think what happens is that you have to have a presence. Many of those looters go into those stores because there's no police presence. You have to -- especially areas where you can walk, areas that you can go to and from. The police will have to put a large presence of officers.

Those looters will not break into those stores if you have police officers present in those areas. And then, of course, after they loot, there's not much you can do with them after they loot.

So what you want to do is prevent the looters from going into those businesses, especially in the downtown area around the French Quarter, the areas where the individuals know that they can walk in and break into those establishments.

S. O'BRIEN: Is the police force big enough to do that? I mean, you know, when you consider the scope of the problem at this point? PENNINGTON: Well, I think 80 percent of the city is underwater. That means that 20 percent of the city is not. And so you have to realign your officers in those areas where people can have access to, people that can walk into those areas and they can break into those businesses and those stores.

And so even though many of the police officers are still housed in some of the hotels, as the waters start to reside, the No. 1 concern that I would have is get my officers out and have a presence on the street, especially around those business establishments that you can save and that you can salvage.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, when you think about New Orleans, you think about crowd control and a police force well-trained in handling crowds that have been drinking and partying, maybe from Mardi Gras. Can they handle, are they well trained in dealing with looters, with riots, potentially?

PENNINGTON: Let me say this. I was a police chief there for eight years. The officers in New Orleans are well trained to deal with large crowds. They're trained to deal with demonstrators. They're trained to deal with what's happening now.

But part of the problem has been getting those officers to those locations. And I think once the chief ascertains that these officers will be needed some certain areas, for example, the central business district, if it's not underwater, Canal Street, certain businesses, if it's not underwater, then you put the police officers, if you have to line them out on the street, you do that so you can take control and maintain order.

And I think the second phase is to start to evacuate those people out of there, because as that water back out of the Lake Pontchartrain back into the city, those people that are standing around on those streets are going to have a difficult time trying to get out of that city, because that water will rush in and then the water will start to, you know, take control.

So it's a heck of a dilemma, but I think that the No. 1 concern, the people that are still stuck there is, will there be maintenance of the city, orderly maintenance. And will the police officers be able to control what's going on?

S. O'BRIEN: Richard Pennington is the Atlanta police chief. Formerly, though, he was a police chief in New Orleans. Thank you, sir, for your time.

PENNINGTON: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: We're going to have much more from New York and Slidell coming up in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Welcome back to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING live from Slidell, Louisiana, where it's been a terrible, terrible toll in the wake of Katrina.

This is a town of about 30,000 and actually if you count the unincorporated areas around it, actually, the person I'm about to speak with is going to correct me and say it's a city, a city of 30,000. But really, about 100,000 people in all, living in the outlying areas and the city itself.

Joining me now to talk a little bit about the road to recovery and what's happened here is the mayor, Ben Morris.

Mayor Morris, good to have you with us. Just a moment to pause and reflect here as you look down Second Street here in Old Town. This is a place you love dearly. In a sense, you're so busy with tasks, you don't think about it much, I suspect. But when you see this, it's got to be tough.

MAYOR BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL, MISSISSIPPI: It's absolutely awful. We have catastrophic damage here. There's -- we have nothing working: no cell phones, no water, no electricity. Everything is broken. We're in the process of trying to bring it back as quickly as we can, but -- we have outside help on the way, but this is the worst nightmare. This storm was the worst case scenario.

M. O'BRIEN: You have probably half the population without homes, maybe more, right?

MORRIS: That's correct.

M. O'BRIEN: And so, ultimately, at a certain point, they're going to want to come back. That's going to create a crisis of its own if they do, in fact, come back.

MORRIS: I'm anticipating 15,000 homeless people in a very short period of time. I am one. I can't go back to my home. I've got three pine trees and five feet of water in my house. And -- but, you know, it's not a water of whining. There's probably 10 percent of our homes that aren't damaged here in Slidell.

M. O'BRIEN: So only 10 percent that actually were unscathed. Many, like yours, flooded out, pine trees through them. And so you're really dealing with a municipal catastrophe but a personal one as well. What's that been like, struggling with those two problems?

MORRIS: Well, I've really not had enough time to deal with mine. I just went to my house and recovered my dog, who was petrified. And then went back to work. We've been working since last Friday. And I was blessed yesterday with a shower, which was almost like heaven.

M. O'BRIEN: You've had very minimal contact with your wife for a period of time. She wasn't even...

MORRIS: I've had none. I really don't know where my wife is or my children are. They left town which, you know, thank God they did. But there's no way. Our telephones don't work; our cell phones don't work. So there's no way to talk to the outside world. In the last two days, the first time some of the media showed up and we've been able to get the message out we were telling our folks, don't come home. There's nothing here. There's no stores open. There's no gasoline. There's no lights. There's no electricity. There's nothing.

M. O'BRIEN: This is a town that's a tight-knit community. It's a town that does things like has periodic outdoor concerts in a park that is now inundated. How hard will it be to get back to the town, the town of Slidell that you know and love?

MORRIS: This city is coming back quick. I told you I was going to correct you. And we'll -- we'll be back on our feet pretty soon. We have a great city crew here. You know, they've worked all through this thing. People -- we have people lining up to volunteer to come help. Now I've got the Red Cross in. FEMA was here yesterday. So things are -- things are moving. And I think within a very short period of time, we're going to be back in business.

I may have to change the location of city hall. We had five feet of water in there and the auditorium, about the same thing. And so we've got a lot of work to do, and it's not going to be easy. And you see this goop we're standing in. It's everywhere. It's in everyone's home. And it's going to be an interesting time.

M. O'BRIEN: Mayor Ben Morris, city of Slidell, sorry about that. Thank you very much. And when I see town, I mean that as a compliment. It feels like a town in every good sense of the word.

MORRIS: Yes, I'm just picking on you. I've got to find some humor in this whole thing. So...

M. O'BRIEN: We need it now. That's for sure.

MORRIS: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Mayor, we wish you well.

You know, when he says relatively quickly, yesterday as we toured the city with him, he had a chance to talk to some people here. And he said, he was telling them it could be as long as 12 weeks before the lights even come on. Twelve weeks! So three months potentially, maybe longer.

Who knows? Because it is mind boggling with tens of thousands of trees down just in this one city. The task at hand to bring those lines back up, bring that grid and turn on those lights is tremendous.

We'll be back with more in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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