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CNN LIVE SUNDAY

Chief Justice William Rehnquist Dies; Volunteer Nurse Shares View of Evacuation; George McGovern Lends Hand to Aid Evacuees; Rescues Continue, Pumping to Begin; Help Reaches Elderly Man Trapped in Home

Aired September 4, 2005 - 15:30   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: Top of my agenda today is, I've got some firefighters and police officers that have been pretty much traumatized and we've already had a couple of suicides.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The stress of restoring order to a city in turmoil proves too much for some members of the New Orleans police and fire departments. And again, you're looking at a live picture of the Crescent City, as rescue and recovery missions continue all along the gulf coast, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Tony Harris.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Fredricka Whitfield. And that last picture you were seeing a live picture out Lubbock, Texas where a lot of the evacuees from New Orleans had been taken and they will seek some temporary refuge, perhaps there.

We begin with a critical mission update on rescue and relief operations along the gulf coast. An additional 10,000 National Guard troops are reportedly headed to the gulf coast, on top of the 7,000 more active duty forces that President Bush ordered yesterday into the area. The president plans to return to the region himself tomorrow.

Military helicopters continue to drop bottled water and MREs, meals ready to eat, to people still waiting for a rescue to take place in New Orleans. The dead are everywhere, and the work of finding and counting corpses have begun. Most officials expect a number of deal in New Orleans alone will reach into the thousands. Evacuees began arriving as far away as Arizona and Utah today. Others will find themselves in places like San Francisco and still others will be on cruise ships that are making their way into the gulf coast region.

And the Army Corps of Engineers is gathering pumps and generators from around the country to help pump the floodwaters out of New Orleans. Engineers say it could take anywhere from 36 to 80 days to drain that city. Our reporters are standing by live all across the ravaged gulf coast. We'll take you to New Orleans, the battered gulf coast, rather, of Gulfport, Mississippi, and to evacuation centers in Houston and Baton Rouge.

We begin this however in New Orleans, a city that is confronted chaos and destruction for almost a week now. The city's embattled mayor spoke out earlier today in an exclusive interview with CNN's Nic Robertson. Among other things, he talked about the situation in New Orleans, firefighters and police officers have been facing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAGIN: The physical and psychological evaluations, there's no...

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the police and the firemen?

NAGIN: Police and the fire, they've been holding the city together for three or four days almost by themselves, doing everything imaginable, and the toll is just too much for them. So I need to get them out, and we've been trying to figure out where to take them so they reunite with their families and hotels are an issue so someplace like a Las Vegas that has a tremendous amount of hotels, we're trying to figure out a way to get them to those locations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: As the tragedy unfolded, Nagin accused federal officials of thinking small and dragging their feet in response to his city's urgent needs.

Nearly a week after hurricane Katrina delivered its deadly punch to New Orleans the situation there remains grim and what the future holds is anyone's guess. CNN's Jeff Koinange reports from New Orleans, now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This reminds of a situation, you'll appreciate this, in 2000 in Mozambique, remember when (UNINTELLIGIBLE) all over the southern region of that country, it was village after village underwater and there were these dramatic helicopter rescues by a by south African pilots. This is exactly what it reminds me of.

Remember that scene where that baby -- a baby was born in a tree? This is exactly what's coming to mind right now. Unbelievable scenes a week after this hurricane swept through the city, look where I'm standing right now. I can tell you in the middle of Canal Street I'm under at least two feet of water. If it has receded and we can see it, looking at the walls here to my right, if it's receded it's maybe a foot or so. So, this could have been at least three, four feet at some point.

And look, this is a week later and this is what we're talking about when you talk about these people. All of these apartments above me, above these stores are apartments where people still are staying. They had probably bought supplies that will last them a few days. They probably didn't realize this would go on for a week and it will be going on for the next few weeks and they were hoping against hope that the water would recede so that they don't have to go to the Superdome or the convention center, because their lives' possessions, their entire homes they wouldn't know what would happen to them once they left the city. This is why I think most people who are still in their homes decided to stay.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: And that was CNN's Jeff Koinange who was on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans -- Tony.

HARRIS: And Fred, we want to show you the pictures again of evacuees arriving. Do we have -- there it is, evacuees arriving in Lubbock, Texas. As you can see the operation is fully engaged right now. We're seeing law enforcement just ahead of the bus and we see folks getting on the bus, as you can see there, law enforcement officials all over the ground there in Lubbock, Texas, as evacuees make their way into Lubbock, Texas, and from there, where they go, well, we don't know now, but we are certainly hoping to food and shelter and fresh clothes at this hour. Once again, evacuees arriving, it looks like on American Airlines jet or maybe they came in on bus and maybe will be getting on that plane and heading to other parts of the country, as this strange journey they are on right now, continues.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is in Louisiana today, touring the devastation and overseeing the enormous military relief effort. He began his day in hard-hit Baton Rouge. That's where we find CNN's Drew Griffin.

Hello Drew.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tony, hello. There is an incredible story being played out here, right now, in Baton Rouge. Yesterday an evacuation from an apartment building, an a helicopter evacuation from an apartment building in New Orleans, children being plucked from the roof, parents being plucked from the roof, somehow they all got separated. Some of the children actually came here to Baton Rouge. The parents, unknowingly, went to San Antonio, until just about an hour ago, parents had no idea where their children were. Now they do, and there's a reunification going to take place this afternoon, hopefully, in Texas.

With me, Annette White with the Department of Social Services with the state of Louisiana, an incredible story to tell.

ANNETTE WHITE, DEPT. OF SOCIAL SERVICES: It's a blessing. It's a real blessing. We were able to connect these children with their parents through the National Association for Missing and Exploited Children's Web site, and by the grace of god, all the parents ended up in one location and all the children ended up in another and we're so happy that these families are going to be reunited.

GRIFFIN: And a mother in San Antonio without her children, goes up to the people there and says, where are my kids?

WHITE: Right.

GRIFFIN: And she was able to see them on the Internet.

WHITE: Well, she said her daughter's name was Gabrielle, and ironically, yesterday afternoon our folks here, Office of Community Services people here in Baton Rouge, talked to the little girl and she told them, they showed -- they took her picture to put on the Web site, and she saw the picture and said, "Gabby," so they knew her name was Gabby, and until that point -- she's 2-year-old, she hadn't been able to express who she was. And so they put that information into the bank with the National Association, and they made the match, the association made the match through that means.

GRIFFIN: And the reunification going to happen today?

WHITE: It's going to happen today. The children are being taken to a plane. They're going to fly out of Lafayette about, I guess, about 60 miles from here, and they're going to fly to the Air Force base in San Antonio, and the families will be reunited.

GRIFFIN: Incredible story that's taking place right now, Tony. There's not too many kids, fortunately, missing from their parents, but there are some out there, and Louisiana is telling everybody, if your kids are separated from you, they think only about 20 or so maybe.

WHITE: At this point.

GRIFFIN: Yeah, at this point call 1-800-the-lost and they'll try do a kind of reunification like is taking place right now, hopefully in San Antonio. Back to you.

HARRIS: What a wonderful story. OK. Drew griffin for us, thank you.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in her home state of Alabama, where she's got to go look at some of the hurricane damage there. This morning she attended church services at a town of Whistler, near Mobile. Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding and property damage along Alabama's gulf coast. Dauphin Island was, south of Mobile, was especially hard hit.

WHITFIELD: An air lift is underway out of Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana, that's the same place where a field hospital was set up earlier in the week. CNN's Rick Sanchez is there and joins us live with the very latest.

Rick, what's going on?

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been following the process of the people as they're evacuated from different hospitals, three major hospitals that we've been focusing on over the last couple of days because they're closer to the city itself and they felt, for a long time, abandoned. That's Tulane University and Charity Hospital. Eventually they were able to get people out of University and Tulane hospitals, but at Charity Hospital they had a very, very difficult time and the reason for it that they had no helicopter pad, so they literally had to take patients, some of them critical care patients, and put them in boats over to University Hospital where the heliport was so then they could eventually to life flight them out of that area. You can imagine how difficult that was in and of itself. They say that nurses, even doctors, and many of the patients felt absolutely helpless. They didn't what they needed to care for some of the patients in that hospital. Some of them simply perished. Some of them died in transit as they were literally trying to get them onto boats, onto the other hospital, up to the roof so they can get them out in helicopters.

It's been an unbelievable scene that's been described to us by some of the hospital officials that we have talked to. Among them a hospital official who told us that at one point the nurses themselves were so dehydrated, so lacking in nourishment, that they resorted to giving themselves IVs just so they could make it through so they could help some of the patients.

After that ordeal, of course, they're brought here to Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans where they are, essentially, brought in, in helicopters and then ferried through this airport to a processing center in what is without doubt an interminable line that basically snakes through the underbelly of this airport, into, eventually, the airport itself and there, they are separated into different categories. They decide which people are in critical care and those are put on C-5s, taken out of here, and in many cases, to military bases or military hospitals. The others then -- are tried to -- put into categories as to whether they'll take them, whether they're going in Houston or San Antonio and Dallas, but it's a long, long ordeal for these people. Many times they're waiting in lines for hours, and that's after what they had already been through.

WHITFIELD: Wow.

SANCHEZ: It's a difficult process. Back to you.

WHITFIELD: That is remarkable. And Rick, while you were talking we were seeing live pictures of another active runway, that one being in Lubbock, Texas because a number of the evacuees from New Orleans are ending up right here, in Lubbock, Texas, before they find some other sort of temporary shelter, whether they're going to stay in Texas or move on to another state, we don't know the answers to that.

And Rick, before I let you go, is there any way of describing how the medical teams there are going to continue to get the kind of equipment they need to carry out the medical measures they have to take on so many of these patients?

SANCHEZ: Well, it's so difficult, Fred. I wasn't able to hear the last part of your question, but we were surprised last night before we went back to our camp, we checked to see how the lines were doing, and my producer, Michael Hart and I looked at each other, stunned, wondering whether they'd be able to get all of those people through the process. When we got up this morning, we realized that for the most part, it had at least dwindled and many of them are on their way out. They're saying they do -- they're doing the best they can. They're having triage officials and paramedics and hospital officials from all over the country coming into this area and they're also, unfortunately, bringing in priests and ministers and rabbis to, in many cases, have the last words or last rites with the people perishing here, as well. WHITFIELD: All right. All right, Rick Sanchez, thanks so much in the airport just outside of New Orleans.

HARRIS: And we will have more on the makeshift hospital at the airport when we talk live to the head of Medivac a little later this hour.

The other major story developing today, the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the future of the U.S. Supreme Court. We will take you live to Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my baby! Oh, thank you!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: And those are tears of joy. Something we certainly need in this time of grief.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BETTY ROBINSON, HURRICANE VICTIM: Hello my name is Betty Robinson, trying to get in touch with Suzie Pierce. Please tell her that I'm alive and well.

GABRIELLE WHITCOME, HURRICANE VICTIM: I'm Gabrielle Whitcome. I wanted to let my dad, Jim Whitcome, know that we are OK, me and Courtney are fine. Everything is OK. We're just wondering where you are.

JAMES EVERHART (UNINTELLIGIBLE): I'm think about my niece and nephew, over there, my sister-in-law and brother, and I'm OK over here. Just letting you know I'm doing pretty good.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: To the east of New Orleans, life goes on, albeit difficulty amid the devastation. CNN's Ted Rowlands is with us now from Gulfport, Mississippi -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, we saw today this area which, believe it or not, used to be an Episcopal church filled with churchgoers praying and coming together and as you can imagine it was an emotional scene. The church has been completely devastated and completely wiped out. That didn't stop the folks from coming out here. A lot of them seeing each other for the first time. A lot of these people rode out the storm and haven't done much movement for the last week, staying in their homes. Others evacuated, and then have come back to find that they have lost their homes, and so it was a very, very emotional scene today. A lot of tears and at one point even the reverend broke down. This is going on along the Mississippi gulf coast. There's a church just about a mile and a half from here, same exact scenario, in that scenario, the church was basically gutted the first two floors or first floor, but the slab was still there, and the roof was there, and they gathered there, and they prayed together, and this is the first chance for a lot of people to get together and see each other and talk about survival, and talk about where they're going to go from here and that's really the reality that is starting to set in, with a lot of folks along the Mississippi gulf coast, where are they going to do go? Are they going to come back? Are they going to build and how are they going to pull it off? Some are insured, others -- most are not because technically, it's flood insurance.

Meanwhile, we also have an ongoing search and rescue effort along the beaches, we saw firemen and patrolmen from around the region on ATVs and they are searching for bodies they could believe could be underneath mattresses and pieces of debris. The beaches all along the coast are unbelievably littered. It really does looks like a bomb exploded all along this area. It is hard to relay and have you comprehend the destruction along this coast. There's a lot of coverage of the ongoing tragedies in New Orleans. Here it's a step or two beyond there, and now, it really is getting into the questions of how is this rebuilding going to take place and it's going to be a difficult, difficult task.

WHITFIELD: Difficult and long. Ted Rowlands, thank you so much, from Gulfport, Mississippi.

CNN's Larry king hosted a star-studded three-hour long special to help all the hurricane survivors. One of his guests, singer Celine Dion, got quite emotional when she began talking about the response to the disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CELINE DION, SINGER: How come it's so easy to send planes in another country to kill everyone in a second, to destroy lives, we need to serve our country, and for me to serve our country, it's to be there right now to rescue the rest of the people. We need the cash, we need the blood, we need the support right now, we need the prayers. It is -- you know, when I was hearing a couple of days ago that these things are not reachable, it's too full of water, maybe I'm too much like, I'm not thinking with my head, I'm talking with my heart. Nobody can open any roofs, the helicopters fly in, take two people at a time, take a kayak, go into those walls. There's kids being raped at night. We hear gunshots, big guns, what's that? Those people are praying. They're walking like this, hello do you see us? We're still alive, but we're dying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Poignant remarks, right to the point. She's expressing a lot of the frustration that we have been hearing from so many people on so many levels.

HARRIS: I can tell you something? I hope she gets an opportunity at some point today to hear from Lieutenant General Russell Honore. If she can hear the passion of his voice, I hope it would, my thought is maybe it would make her feel better about the efforts on the ground now. Hard to go back. I understand the emotion, but boy I tell you what, it's so great for this country at this point in time to hear from that general on the ground, making such a difference and the passion in his voice, and his efforts on the ground are just amazing. I hope she gets a chance to hear that. Maybe it will make a difference.

WHITFIELD: Well, next hour we'll give you all a chance to hear and see some of the best moments from Larry King's all-star special and that aired last night.

HARRIS: I can't believe I'm reading this. There's another hurricane brewing in the Atlantic? Meteorologist Brad Huffines tracks the storm, that's next.

WHITFIELD: Plus critical to the recovery of the city of New Orleans is the repair of those broken levees. An update on that progress still to come.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: In the wake of all the destruction and chaos in New Orleans, police are putting their own lives at risk to help save the lives of others. The task has been grueling, heart-wrenching and dangerous, as we see from CNN's Karl Penhaul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Time for takeoff as the heat haze rises off the tarmac at New Orleans International Airport.

(on camera): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) bullet proof vest because in recent days and unidentified snipers have been firing on military helicopters from inside the city. So far today, though, there have been no reports of any incidents.

(voice-over): As we skim over New Orleans, the skies are buzzing. Dozens of choppers ferrying out the sick and stranded. We drop onto a university campus in the flood ravaged eastern lakefront district. The last men standing here, five officers from the New Orleans police department. For five days and nights, they secured a landing zone and estimate they helped 3,000 men, women and children onto helicopters and away to safety.

SGT. JOEL SYLVE, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: We felt like we was in a war zone. You know, we were in a couple of fights there, and we trying to maintain calm. I mean, people losing their mind.

PENHAUL: Armed with assault rifles, pistols, and pump action shotguns, they kept marauders away and tried to keep the peace as hurricane survivors grew more desperate.

SYLVE: There was times I didn't think we was not going to get out. And I'm, you know, I'm trying not to scare them. Our biggest problem were the men. The men wanted to get out before the women. There's a lot of coward men out there and that was our problem. We had men running to the chopper, and we had to drag them off.

PENHAUL: The scenes were enough to make hard men, even a veteran cop like Sergeant Sylve crack. Sylve and his exhausted buddies could have called it quits days ago but they'd made a promise to ordinary citizens around them.

DET, PATROLMAN JIMMY WARD, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: We told them, reassured them that we will still be on the ground when the last person is left out there. We gave them our word on that, we made sure that we saw everybody get on that last helicopter or second to last helicopter getting out there, before we even took a step onto our helicopter, that brought us out to here. We gave them our word. We kept our word.

PENHAUL: Sergeant Alfred Russell was the last cop to join the team at the university. He had been trapped in his own apartment until the Coast Guard winched him out Thursday.

SGT. ALFRED RUSSELL, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: Anybody who knows anything about that section of the city, that far off, you have a lot of reptiles in particular alligators, snakes, you have all kinds of wildlife in that particular part of the city, so actually trying to swim that far is not -- wasn't an option.

PENHAUL: The helicopter brings the cops back to the airport. After that kind of ordeal, that water must taste almost as good as champagne. These officers are used to seeing the underbelly of life out on the beat, but they've never see it as bad as this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know that it's gone completely to hell but I'd say it's kind of close.

PENHAUL: And it's a hell that's etched in their memories.

SYLVE: I got those people out, and it's all I wanted. And we did it and you know those babies, I can still see them in my mind.

PENHAUL: Karl Penhaul, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: And next hour, Karl Penhaul takes us along on some dangerous Coast Guard rescues across New Orleans.

WHITFIELD: When we come back, we'll tell you about the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and we'll examine the future at the nation's highest court now with a rare two seats for the president to fill. We'll be right back.

TONY HARRIS, CO-HOST: And once again we're seeing these aerial pictures of the scene over in New Orleans. We can tell you that more troops are headed to the Gulf Coast to help millions recover in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All of those years, William Rehnquist revered the Constitution and the laws of the United States. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Plus the chief justice of the highest court in the land is dead.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CO-HOST: Hello again, I'm Fredricka Whitfield along with Tony Harris here at the bottom of the hour.

President Bush now has not one but two vacancies to fill on the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died last night in his Virginia home after a battle with thyroid cancer. He was 80 years old, days away from becoming 81 years old.

CNN's Elaine Quijano joins us now from the White House with some reaction and what the president plans to do now.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, there, Fredricka.

Well, a busy time for the Bush White House, now dealing with a number of major events. Of course, you just mentioned the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, but also this happening against a backdrop of the Iraq war continuing and the president still trying to lead the response dealing with Hurricane Katrina.

Now, it was on that front that the president today visited the Red Cross headquarters here in Washington, the president continuing to try to send the message that the government is very much in control in the wake of the natural disaster.

He made that stop just a short time after an appearance here at the White House in the Roosevelt Room in which he expressed his thoughts on Chief Justice Rehnquist and he also described somewhat how he intends to proceed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: There are now two vacancies on the Supreme Court, and it will serve the best interests of the nation to fill those vacancies promptly. I will choose in a timely manner a highly qualified nominee to succeed Chief Justice Rehnquist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIJANO: A timely manner certainly a key phrase. On Tuesday, in fact, President Bush's pick to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was scheduled to have hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But with memorials and a funeral now expected, the committee could certainly postpone those hearings. Unclear yet exactly whether or not that might happen, but with two vacancies, a far more complicated picture. President Bush now has a number of options available to him -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And what are some of those options that are at the top of the list, if the White House is at all revealing that?

QUIJANO: Well, difficult to say what's at the top of the list. One thing that is making the rounds, certainly, there's been talk perhaps that the president might choose to go with Clarence Thomas or perhaps Antonin Scalia, two justices to be elevated, one of them, to the chief justice position.

Now, that in effect, would have the effect of having three vacancies, something that is a possibility. But we should mention that all of this is speculation at this point.

Another option that's been talked about is perhaps having Sandra Day O'Connor be the chief justice or at least ask her to be the chief justice, something that already some Democrats have indicated would be a good choice. She's widely respected on all sides.

But very difficult to say, Fredricka, which way the White House is leaning. The president and that very small group, that inner circle deciding which way to go, but unclear at this point if there is one option that looks more attractive to them than the others.

WHITFIELD: All right. Elaine Quijano at the White House, thanks so much -- Tony.

HARRIS: And the world view of reaction to Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, aid is being offered from countries all around the world. Cuba is one of a dozen countries worldwide offering to help Katrina's victims.

Cuban President Fidel Castro is volunteering to fly 1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medical supplies to Houston. Other countries offering aid include Nigeria, which is pledging $1 million to disaster relief. War-torn Afghanistan is offering $100,000. The U.S. is also asking NATO and the European Union to provide emergency assistance.

President Bush says people displaced by Katrina and its aftermath will see a tidal wave of compassion from Americans. Over the weekend, Tennessee volunteers boxed up food and clothing, and 100 buses from New York are headed to New Orleans to help evacuate people and bring in supplies.

Hundreds of people have donated shoes and other badly needed clothing items to evacuees in Houston, and the American Red Cross says it has raised more than $196 million, Fred, in donations.

WHITFIELD: And if you've been watching CNN, you've seen people today still being rescued from rooftops by helicopter. Many are being taken to a field hospital at the Louis Armstrong International Airport just outside of New Orleans. That's where I'm joined again by reporter Rick Sanchez -- Rick.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We were talking a little while ago about all the different people from all the different countries who are offering help. And earlier in a report when we were talking, I mentioned that was paramedics that were coming in from Harrison, Arkansas.

I want you to meet somebody now who came in from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. It's Beverly Owens. She's an R.N., and she's good enough to join us to try and tell us how this particular operation here at the airport is going, because I say airport but really this has been turned into a military hospital.

BEVERLY OWENS, R.N.: Yes, it has. The operation that we do is called, in Texas, we are Texas for DMAT, the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. And we are like a field hospital.

SANCHEZ: Is that -- essentially this is a field hospital. How is the process working? We see these helicopters bringing in so many people, all of them seeming in different conditions. How do you break them down and put them, give them the need that they need?

OWENS: Exactly. As we take them off of the choppers, they're brought in and triaged, whether they're medically needing immediate care or they can go to a holding area or no care at all, and they just are trying to get to another area. So we bring them in, triage them and take them to the area that they most need.

SANCHEZ: How do you deal with the emotions of this incredible situation for them? We were watching last night, as they filed past these lines. It seemed to just go on forever. They seemed heart- stricken.

OWENS: Yes. Yes, they are. It's pretty sad. You have to just kind of put on your game face and do the best you can. And I think all of us have had to take frequent breaks and go off and cry ourselves. So...

SANCHEZ: Well, you guys are doing a wonderful job. We thank you so much for taking time away from your own family to come out here and help so many people in need.

OWENS: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thank you, Beverly Owens, R.N. from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. She's one of so many people, doctors, nurses, paramedics, who are in this area trying to make this triage work. It goes around the clock, never ending. We'll be following it for you.

Back to you, Fred.

WHITFIELD: All right. Rick Sanchez, thanks so much.

An awful lot of good people, Tony, who are lending their expertise and giving their hearts to this effort to try to help out folks the best they can.

HARRIS: It's great to see. Great to see.

We want to check in now at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, where thousands of evacuees have been housed. CNN's Sean Callebs is there with more good people reaching out and helping others in need -- Sean.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, Tony, about 25,000 people at the complex here, 16,000 in the Astrodome behind me and really people from all over the country coming here, doing what they can.

Standing next to me a face you may remember from his years and years of public service, George McGovern.

Thanks very much for joining us here.

Now you saw all this human suffering. You felt you had to come down from Montana, where you spend the summers, now your home state, South Dakota. What makes you want to come down here and what are the stories you're hearing, the families disconnected, that have been split up?

GEORGE MCGOVERN, FORMER GOVERNOR: Well, you know, we've been watching on television what goes on here, and I said to my wife, I think it was Thursday night, "You know, I'm just a private citizen. I have no official office anymore, but I'm going to go down there just to see those people and talk with them and to hear their stories."

And what you see here in the Astrodome in Houston is maybe 10,000 or 12,000 people who are refugees. I've been visiting with them today. They tell sad stories, but they also tell hopeful stories. They say that Houston's done a brilliant job.

CALLEBS: And one thing we were talking about, there's so much concern right now: did the federal government, did FEMA do everything it can? You say this is not a time for finger pointing.

MCGOVERN: I don't think so. That can come later. We'll try to figure out who was responsible for what and where the failures occurred, but right now, we need to be as united as possible in the relief and rehabilitation of these people.

CALLEBS: Now, you worked in John F. Kennedy's.

MCGOVERN: I did.

CALLEBS: And you were very active in Food for Peace.

MCGOVERN: That's right.

CALLEBS: All over the world, developing countries. You say you're seeing certain similarities to what's going on here?

MCGOVERN: Yes, and I walked through those villages in India and Pakistan, China, elsewhere. I saw the same kind of desperation that you see in the faces of these people.

And the great thing about Food for Peace, which I had the honor to direct during John Kennedy's administration, is that we used our surpluses, our agricultural surpluses to reduce hunger in those areas on a gigantic scale.

CALLEBS: Great. Mr. McGovern, thanks very much, former presidential candidate in 1972. Eighty-three years young, said he had to come down and see this firsthand. And Tony, one thing that Mr. McGovern also told me, he believes that New Orleans can be rebuilt, can be the thriving city it once was but clearly has to somehow find a way to get above sea level -- Tony.

HARRIS: Sean Callebs. Sean, thank you very much.

We'll take a break. When we come back, we'll show you more amazing rescue attempts and rescue attempts that are success stories, as we continue our coverage here on CNN. We'll be right back.

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WHITFIELD: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Thousands of people being evacuated out of New Orleans, many of whom were stuck in their homes for various reasons, didn't leave the city, et cetera. You saw a double box there of images on each side of your screen. On the left side was a rather grainy picture of Lubbock, Texas, because a number of the evacuees have been airlifted to Lubbock, Texas.

HARRIS: That's right.

WHITFIELD: It's a town mostly agricultural. It's a rail industry town and a number of people are going to try to make that a temporary home.

HARRIS: That's right. That's right.

WHITFIELD: That population of 200,000 for a little bit. And then Phoenix, as well, was the other.

HARRIS: And as you mentioned, there are -- these are folks who are being taken to any number of cities around the country. You mentioned Lubbock, and Phoenix. And we know yesterday that folks were being taken into Arkansas. And we heard just a moment ago the buses are on the way from New York City to help folks.

We also know, Fred, that people here in Atlanta are opening their homes to some of these evacuees, as well. So people all over the country. There's Lubbock again. People from all over the country are doing everything they can and opening their doors, opening their hearts to help these evacuees and get this process moving along.

WHITFIELD: Wow. After getting off that plane and getting onto the bus...

HARRIS: Sure.

WHITFIELD: ... and most of those folks, all they want at this point is a shower, a hot meal, and some way to rest their heads.

HARRIS: That's right.

WHITFIELD: And get a little bit of rest. They deserve it at this point. We'll continue to follow that. The evacuees make it to various cities across the country.

The Army Corps of Engineers is gathering pumps and generators from all over the country to help pump the water out of New Orleans. Officials say it could take anywhere from 36 to 80 days to get the job done.

CNN's Tom Foreman joins us now from Washington with more on how federal agencies are working to help reclaim that city -- Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now, see, about what you were saying a minute ago. I'm willing to bet that there's somebody from New Orleans, Louisiana, or the Gulf Coast in every single state in this country right now, because they have been chased so far by these floodwaters.

At breakfast this morning, by the way, two tables away people there was people there from Mandeville, Louisiana, used to live down there. Sort of like Old Home Folks Day.

This is the problem. The problem is the floodwaters that are keeping anyone from going back and continuing to hamper the efforts. If we fly into New Orleans here, I want to talk about the areas that are still flooded.

The Coast Guard, doing all those amazing rescues, say that today, for the first time, the number of people that they've been pulling off of rooftops has dropped a little bit.

Now, a lot of that has been happening, if we zoom in here and look at this, that is the Superdome, and the central business district and over here is the French Quarter.

A lot of where these rescues were happening were all out in here, which is heading toward the eastern side of town, all up in this area here, which is the central part of town. And some in this area over here, which is part of uptown up here.

I want to you look at this. This is the area we're talking about. Here is a satellite image from just after the storm. Look at the flooding. That's what it is before the storm. And look at that. All that darkness was everything that became flooded.

So there's a tremendous number of areas that, even as the water has receded, have remained wet. Remember, this is a picture from right after the storm, so it's not that bad now, but it gives you an idea of all of the areas that were flooded.

The French Quarter, interestingly enough, stayed pretty much dry in the whole process, which is very, very good for the future.

Now, however, the Coast Guard says they're doing more boat rescues, particularly moving more down into this area, St. Bernard Parish, and further down into Plaquemine Parish, which is way down here, now in New Orleans east.

They continue to find lots and lots of people in attics and on second floors, many of these people utterly exhausted, many of them without food and water for days now and many of them, quite frankly, dying. So the rescue and the race against these flood waters continue.

The pumps are going to be in place, but it's going to be quite a time before the roads are passable. So they're using many, many, many boats. They're getting vehicles wherever they can, and they continue to run about 60 helicopters around the clock, moving them out a little bit more into the rural areas now, picking up everyone they possibly can in this entire extraordinary effort. The floodwaters remain, as they have from the beginning, a key to this whole thing.

WHITFIELD: And Tom, those satellite pictures, those images that you're showing are remarkable, showing the scope of the water, just in that New Orleans downtown area.

But you know, what is so perplexing is, with the portion of the city that tours most generally know, the French Quarter, is it an issue of elevation, that perhaps the French Quarter is a little bit higher ground than the eastern portion of the city and that's why that area may have been spared?

FOREMAN: That's exactly why. The French Quarter was actually the original part of the city that was built.

At the time that the French built it back in the early 1700s, it was about nine feet above sea level. It was built on silty soil and it dropped down.

WHITFIELD: Wow.

FOREMAN: But it's been built up many times over the years, so the French Quarter is a bit higher. Look, you cannot raise this city above sea level. Too much ground, too expensive.

WHITFIELD: Yes.

FOREMAN: However, the dikes, the levees can be repaired.

WHITFIELD: And that is going to have to be the next step, at least. Tom Foreman, thanks so much, from Washington -- Tony.

HARRIS: CNN is trying to help link families and friends to missing or stranded victims of Hurricane Katrina. We've set up a victims and relief desk to help people find or at least talk to their loved ones.

Carol Lin is at desk now. Hi, Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Tony.

We are getting a lot of e-mail. There's a trend. And there's a trend. We're getting e-mails about nurses who are missing and also e- mail from nurses who are sending e-mails in their precious spare time about their patients. But a Louisiana nurse, Anita Douglas, went even further, bringing 95-year-old Charles Korn to her house during Katrina and then protecting him on her roof from the flood until they were rescued Wednesday. Happy to report that both are safe and being treated now in San Antonio.

And do you remember the story we told about a 94-year-old father starving and trapped in his New Orleans house? Well, thank you to a Connecticut viewer who got in touch with her son, who lives in Douglas Moore's neighborhood. She had her son deliver food and water to the elderly man, and he was also able to help other stranded people there. This morning, CNN facilitated a security team to treat Douglas Moore for dehydration and get him to his family in Baton Rouge.

We love hearing from you. We love telling these stories. You can e-mail us at HurricaneVictims@CNN.com. We are going to try to help and also get your name on our safe list to let your family know that you are safe.

Back to you guys.

HARRIS: OK, Carol, thank you.

WHITFIELD: All right. Much more ahead, including we've been talking about how volunteers, people of all kinds of trying to do their best to try to help out the folks. Well, coming up in the next hour you're seeing a picture right now, a well-known singer, Macy Gray, she has pitched in. She's volunteering out of Houston. We hope to have a live interview with her coming up after this break.

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WHITFIELD: A lot of people have been asking how they can help the so many evacuees all throughout the Gulf Coast region. Well, a number of people have volunteered, raised their hands to volunteer. Among them, Grammy-award winning singer Macy Gray has made her way to Houston, Texas, to the Astrodome there to see for herself how the evacuees are doing.

And Macy, let me ask you, here you are, a girl who was born and raised in Canton, Ohio. You end up going to school in California. What connection did you feel like you had with the people there of New Orleans, who have now been relocated to the Astrodome?

MACY GRAY, SINGER: Well, I've been to New Orleans a few times and I met a lot of people there, and it's really, really wasn't about that, though. It was just watching TV and just really wanting to help, you know, just seeing the -- like the disaster that those people were in, and just really wanted to do whatever I could to help them.

WHITFIELD: And we're looking at some videotape now of you perhaps going through some of the items that a lot of the evacuees are going to be receiving, clothes, food, et cetera. Describe for us what you have been seeing there at the Astrodome.

GRAY: Well, there's a lot of people there. There's, like, some 20,000 people here and it's already overcrowded, and last night I was here, and I think seven more buses came in and they're opening other facilities to accommodate them, but it's overcrowded. It's filthy.

It's not like -- it's great that they're being evacuated out of the disaster, but now they need places to go. They need places to live. They definitely can't stay out here much longer like this.

It's like some of the rooms up there are like Skid Row. And the Red Cross and the people that are here are doing a great job, but you have 20,000 people with no place to go and nothing but a cot and food and water. And it's, you know, it's horrible. I can't imagine.

And I just think people should come down and volunteer and give their time. And everybody here has unique needs and just help, you know, on a personal level. Because there's money coming in, but a lot of these people aren't seeing it at all, and you know, like one million people who were, like, in the FEMA lines since two days ago. And then they get to FEMA, and they have to fill out all these paperwork, but a lot of these people are not literate, and they don't have I.D. with them so they're kind of getting the runaround.

WHITFIELD: So it sounds like you're describing a lot of the people there have expressed to you some frustration, while they're glad they have now a new roof over their heads temporarily.

GRAY: Right.

WHITFIELD: They've got somewhere to sleep.

GRAY: Right.

WHITFIELD: They're getting water, et cetera. There's still a lot of frustration. So how do you try to reach out to these folks here in this temporary great, you know, feeling of need -- hopefully it's temporary. What do you say to them? How do you help comfort them?

GRAY: You -- I mean, you can't really. A lot of people are functioning. Like, a lot of people are out and about, and you know, I've heard a couple of guys say they're trying to get jobs, you know? So I know there's -- there's some teachers coming down to help the kids, to tutor the kids.

WHITFIELD: Do you feel it's getting close to a breaking point?

GRAY: Absolutely. Absolutely there's a lot of people down here that are totally delirious, you know, can't find their families.

I went over to the lost children ward yesterday, and you know, there's mothers down there that just were separated from their kids, just by logistics.

WHITFIELD: Sure.

GRAY: Like they got on one bus and put their kids on another bus, thinking they were going to the same place, but they went separate ways.

WHITFIELD: That's happening way too much. And you know, Macy, next time you come across some folks like that, there is a phone number, 1-800-THE-LOST...

GRAY: Right.

WHITFIELD: ... for a lot of those folks who have been separated from their kids.

GRAY: Right.

WHITFIELD: Try to pass that on if you could. I know you're doing all you can. And a lot of folks are awfully appreciative of you taking the time out to help them out there in Houston. And thanks so much for taking the time out to talk to us.

GRAY: Well, I just want -- I just want the government to do its job. There's a lot of black organizations, really powerful black politicians, celebrities out there. And I would say 95 percent of these people are black, and you need to come down here and, like, really, really help. It's one thing to send money, but just to be here is a whole different story. And they need more than that.

WHITFIELD: Excellent point. Macy Gray, thank you so much.

GRAY: All right. Thank you.

HARRIS: And Fred, we'll take a quick break. And at the top of the hour, when we come back, we will talk to a FEMA official on the ground in Houston, Texas.

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