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State of Emergency in Louisiana

Aired September 05, 2005 - 10:00   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: "Now in the News."
Hope is fading as death toll is climbing and the dread builds. Families and volunteers go house to house in New Orleans searching for survivors, often finding only disappointment.

Another big story developing today. It's two days after the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and his former law clerk is now nominated to replace him at the center of the Supreme Court. We'll have more on this morning's nomination of John Roberts as chief justice of the United States.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Daryn Kagan on this Labor Day in CNN Center in Atlanta.

It is an especially busy day of news. We will get to the John Roberts' news in just a moment.

First, we're going to begin with a state of emergency along the Gulf Coast.

President Bush is making another visit to the region since Katrina made landfall. He's due to speak later this hour in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. More food and water is arriving for relief efforts. So far in Louisiana alone, 620,000 bottles of water have been delivered to distribution centers along with 320,000 meals.

And just as precious, the incoming flow of medical workers. Volunteer physicians are setting up shop in the region but red tape has stalled the work of hundreds of others. For instance, a state-of- the-art mobile hospital is marooned in Mississippi, along with 100 surgeons and paramedics.

And the evacuees are fanning out. Four planes carrying more than 500 hurricane victims have landed in Phoenix, Arizona. The city's Veterans Memorial Coliseum will house about 1,000 people while Tucson will take in about 800 at its convention center.

And in New Orleans, engineers continue their work at the site of breached levees. A top priority, repairing the pumps that will allow the drainage of flood waters from the city.

President Bush, as I mentioned, will be returning to the Gulf Coast this morning to meet with state and local officials. Together they're going to confront what is likely to be the most massive rebuilding project in the nation's history. The president will also face mounting criticism that the federal government was slow in its response to the crisis. Mr. Bush is arriving in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, area this hour and then he travels on to Poplarville, Mississippi, this afternoon. He and the first lady will return to the White House this evening.

President Bush has also ordered the nation's flags to fly at half staff at government buildings and military installations. They honor both the victims of Hurricane Katrina and this weekend's passing of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. We're going to have more on Rehnquist's death and this morning's announcement in the Oval Office in just a few minutes.

First, though, we want to get back to the hurricane story and go to New Orleans. This, of course, the epicenter of Katrina's rage and the nucleus of the federal relief efforts. Our Nic Robertson is there with the latest.

Nic, good morning.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, what I want to show you first of all this morning, if I just step out of the way, you can see that the water slowly here in the center of the city is very slowly pulling back. Look, you can see the wet tarmac there. The water has already moved back in two steps I can see just in the last couple of hours.

But what is going on here today, the main thrust of the effort, still in the rescue mission also the recovery mission. The rescue of people who are still in their houses. They are still a lot of boats being put out into the water to recover and catch those people, bring them back to dry land if they want to come.

But also a big effort now being put into the recovery of the bodies. The disaster morticians operational response teams have three 31-member teams in place here. They consist of morticians, medical examiners who will be beginning to gather the bodies. They will be picking them up, transporting them to refrigerated trucks, moving them to a central mortuary just outside the center of the city here.

What will happen then is that these bodies will then be identified. The water, we know, the temperature of the water will speed the decay of some of those bodies. It may involve, we're told, DNA analysis, dental record analysis, fingerprinting analysis perhaps. But that work, the recovery of the bodies getting under way. And yesterday the mayor said there could be many, many thousands of bodies in the water and he's very concern about the spread of disease because of that.

Daryn.

KAGAN: And, Nic, what about the it's a grizzly question but what do you do with the dead bodies once they're collected?

ROBERTSON: Well, once they're collected, they will be transported to refrigerated trucks, taken to that central mortuary for identification. Very likely the procedure from there would be to inform families. There are still a lot of people who don't know what's happened to their relatives. It's very likely that there will be a cross referencing of information. From those families searching for loved ones, are they among the dead or are they still out there?

So we're likely to see that sort of procedure. The Red Cross does have a system now for trying to connect families back together who have been separated. What we'll likely see is that merging of this information.

Daryn.

KAGAN: All right. Nic Robertson live in New Orleans. Thank you.

Go live now to Houston, Texas. Former President Bush, also former President Clinton there, announcing the start of their fund to aid hurricane victims. Let's listen in.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our secretary of HHS I think is here, Mike Leavitt. He was in the other room. He may have gone. But he's going a great job. We also have Rick Perry here, our governor. I'm looking right in front of me. Mayor Bill White right here. Judge Eckols over here. And a number of congressmen, Gene Green, Allen Green, Sheila Jackson Lee. I'm just delighted that they are all here.

We just had an amazing briefing from some of the local officials talking about the feeding of more than 30,000 evacuees here in Houston. And Barbara and I have never been more proud of our hometown than we were listening to the incredible job that the citizens, the organizations are doing here.

When the president asked President Clinton and me last week to suit up again to help raise money, this time for a tragedy at home, our answer was an immediate yes, of course. And first we have discovered that we get along pretty well. Surprising the heck out of a lot of people, but we do. And I'm proud to say it here in my hometown. But mainly we're most anxious to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The money has been pouring in for weeks to groups such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army and United Way. And I hate to go on because I'm going to hurt some feelings, but so many other organizations have pitched in. And as a result, hundreds of thousands of refugees are being housed, clothed and fed.

But we're now seeing today a fund that will take this outpouring of generosity on to the next level. Recovery is going to take years. We need to help these Gulf Coast communities and, of course, the great city of New Orleans. Help them get back on their feet and we need to help their citizens get their lives back.

And it's going to take all of us working together, the public, the non-profits, the private sector, to accomplish our goal. The job is too big and it's too overwhelming for any one group. And so we conferred with the three governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and decided to establish the Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund. We will turn this money over to the governors who will then decide how best to use it. We felt strongly that the governors needed funds at their disposal since they're the one who will be most responsible for rebuilding their states. And standing behind us today or with us today is a group of CEOs who came here to help pledge their support. All of them are being they're national in scope. All of them being incredibly generous.

But I don't think anyone would mind if I singled out the chairman and CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, who is right here. Right here. He told us that they gave the Bush/Clinton Fund a total of $23 million, $15 million from the company and then $8 million from the Walton family. The marvelous philanthropists that they are. And this is just a small part of what this one company is doing. I singled out how they're getting the people that were with Wal-Mart get an immediate job when they can get away from the ravages of New Orleans.

Several of our local leading philanthropists are here. Drayton McLane, who owns the Astros, our own Jim McIngvale, Mattress Mack. Everyone here in Houston is eager to help. And we'll be announcing later on this afternoon a local fund raising effort to help take care of the evacuees here in Houston.

And now I just want to say thanks to President Clinton. I can't keep up with a man. He's an Energizer Bunny the way he travels and works. But doing work both here and abroad. But he's taken the time to show his own personal interest and support for all of this and he's leading it and, Bill, we're very grateful you're here, sir.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much, Mrs. Bush, governor, judge, mayor, Senator Obama, members of congress, ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, I guess I should say on behalf of all of us, that nothing we do can be an adequate response to the agony that we have seen. The suffering of the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. In New Orleans, in the Mobile and Biloxi and Gulfport, and little places like Bay St. Louis and rural parishes in Louisiana and other places along the Gulf Coast.

But I am very grateful to all of the folk whose had have given (INAUDIBLE). I, too, want to thank Lee Scott and Wal-Mart. And I want to mention something that they are doing because this, I hope, will give some guidance to our members of Congress, Hillary and Senator Obama and our House member whose are here, go back to work and wonder what they should do. They still have over 20 stores that are closed and so when the employees of those stores are relocated to there communities, even in other states, they're given a job at the nearest Wal-Mart store. Wherever they go, wherever they locate, anywhere in America.

Now, most companies don't have that many outlets. So I think one of the things we ought to ask ourselves is, what could we do to give incentives for people to get jobs where they have to relocate. A lot of these people are going to be out of their homes for a year or more. And Mayor Morial, former mayor of New Orleans, now the head of the Urban League, thank you for being here sir. I'd like to also thank John Wren of Omnicom Corporation who's pledged $3 million plus his employee match. And my old friend, Floy Spence (ph) and Judy Truvalcy (ph), who are doing a lot of our advertising work, Waste Management, Eddie Trump (ph), Orlando Boonster (ph). I thank all of you.

Entergy, which is not here, but they're really working hard and they're helping. Microsoft. The Association for Better New York has made a contribution to our fund because they're grateful for what people did for New York after 9/11. And I thank Bill Ruden (ph), the Wasserman Foundation (ph) and L.A. Dillard's department store and several others.

I would like to say that President Bush and I decide had we should give the gate from our library visitation to this fund. And we ask the other presidential libraries to do it and they all said yes. So and this is a pretty busy time, right at the end of the year, right before school starts again, so we should have ordinary we're trying to give ordinary folks a way to do that.

Let me just say one other thing. The reason we decided to do this is that not that we don't think the government will do their part. I think Congress will go back and pass a generous aid package. I think the president will sign it. I think the administration will do their best to implement it.

But after the Northwich (ph) earthquake, the Congress operated over $16 billion over a period of few years to help California come back. But the difference here is, you've got, as we were talking earlier, probably for the first time since the great Mississippi flood of 1927, this many people totally dislocated and there's no way they can all be taken care of. And an extraordinary number of them in New Orleans almost 30 percent are living below the poverty line. We need to have a fund where we can fill in the blanks and help people that are otherwise going to be totally overlooked.

So I thank President Bush for, as he said, suiting up again. I hope we're going to do some good. I thank all the people who have come. Just the other night on Larry King when I called in, you're going to do it tonight, I think, just people just called in. A woman came up to Hillary and me at the New York State Fair the other day working in the concession with $50 in small bills saying, I can't get off work to go e-mail this. Please take it and put it in the fund.

So we just got to keep doing this. And just remember, a lot of these people, they have no cars, no homes, no clothes, no nothing. They depend on us to give them a future. And we'll do what we can. Thank you and bless you all.

BUSH: My role is to thank everyone for coming, Gene tells me. Which I'm delighted to do. President Clinton singled out perfectly some individuals. I want to single out one former Houstonian, came over from Louisiana, man of God but he's also a great wrestler, former pro football player, my friend, Ernie Ladd, down here. He's going you know Ernie, don't you?

KAGAN: Looks like they're wrapping things up in Houston. Former President's Bush and Clinton. As they're saying, suiting up once again as they did to help tsunami victims at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. They are going to start a new fund, the Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund. And they are hoping to collect millions of dollars from corporations and individuals. Basically, as they were saying, a fund that will help fill in the blanks for people who have absolutely nothing.

Let's listen in once again to former President Bush.

BUSH: I'm not an engineer. I have no idea why it was built to a category three. The main thing is what we're trying to do is to help people that are hurting. And we can go back and find engineers that should have done it differently. We can blame somebody else. That's one of the big things you do after a football game. You go, what went wrong? We want to go forward. And I don't know anything about that. But I bet you there are a lot of people are working on it now to make it see that that kind of thing doesn't happen again.

But we've all been through hurricanes. I did. I was in the offshore drilling business. I remember going down to Cameron (ph), seeing bodies thrown on a work boat down there. And they came together, that little town. Tried to make things better. That's what we're going to do here nationally for New Orleans.

QUESTION: What do you think of the criticism that's been leveled at the government?

BUSH: The president can take it. And in a sense that, you know, what do I think as a father? I don't like it. But what do you think as a one who was president, I expect President Clinton feels the same way, it goes with the territory. And, you know, I don't want to personalize this, but we're very, very proud of him, of course. And Barbara is. And if somebody wants to tell Barbara about the things that are going wrong, the president's doing wrong, I suggest you wear your flack jacket. Where are you? Get up here.

CLINTON: (INAUDIBLE). I have a . . .

BUSH: He went into the foxhole.

CLINTON: No, I got your back back here.

BUSH: OK.

CLINTON: Let me say, Greta, in response to your first question. We had some people killed in a flood along toward the end of my first term in the New Orleans area. And there was a study done for strengthening the levee system. And I believe that we began to do that along toward the end of my second term that when the study was completed and the funding. What happened to it, I don't know. But there have been constant efforts to upgrade the system.

Now, on the other question you ask, I have a slightly different take on this. I think there should be an analysis of what happened. And I have some strong feelings about how I think FEMA ought to be organized and operated.

But the time to do that, in my opinion, is after some time passes. Right now you still have people we're still finding bodies there. And there still may be some people alive there. And, you know, we had a 9/11 Commission. We had we may have a Katrina Commission. We may have these things.

But I think first thing we've got to do is to remember, that these people are what they're going through. And now seems that, you know, we're all in harness and we're all working on it. I think it's an appropriate thing to look into but not at this time.

What I do think should be focused on now is what is the Congress going to do when they get back. How are we going to find jobs for these people, where are they really going to live, do they need some cash right away. Those are the things that I think should be done. I personally would like I hope the Congress will defer the schedule that was before it, including the state tax issues and all that. I'd like to see it all deferred and I'd like to see the needs of these folks faced now.

They feel, a lot of them, that they're poor and they feel lost and they don't feel like they got any swat. And one of the reasons that George and I agreed to do this is because, you know, we saw we saw something halfway around the world in the tsunami and all of a sudden here it was in our backyard. And very often and a lot of the people have a lot in common. And so I have no problem with you going through this whole thing about and if somebody asked me what I think, how I think the emergency management structure of the government should be organized, I'd be happy to give an answer. But I just think right now we need to focus on the suffering of the people and how to alleviate it and where to go from here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you all very much. Thank you.

KAGAN: Look like the former presidents need to go.

Once again, the questioning turned like it was going to go a bit political there but both presidents, former presidents, trying to deflect that and focus once again. They're just trying to do good and help the people that are in so need along the Gulf Coast. Once again, they will trying to raise millions of dollars with what they're calling the Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund.

We have a lot more coverage coming up. Not just on Katrina, but on the big news this morning out of the White House. John Roberts no longer just nominated to be a justice on the Supreme Court, now the nominee to be the chief justice. More on that with our Joe Johns and our Jeffrey Toobin ahead after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: And what the state was doing, I don't freakin' know. But I'll tell you, I am pissed. It wasn't adequate. And then the president and the governor sat down. We were in Air Force One. I said, Mr. President, Madam Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Frustration continuing to percolate in New Orleans. CNN's Soledad O'Brien speaking with Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans over the weekend. He said that the apparent miss communications between the White House and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco added to the problems both before the hurricane and in the immediate days afterward.

And the finger pointing continues. A senior official with the Bush administration saying that Governor Blanco rejected its proposal to take partial control of law enforcement in her state. The administration official says it appeared Blanco worried that such a move would allow the White House to politicize the disaster or blame state and local officials for problems. The governor's office would not comment on that matter.

As we were mentioning us a few minutes ago, President Bush returning to the region this hour. His first stop will be a relief station area in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And that is where we find our Deb Feyerick.

Deb, good morning.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, and one thing that I do want to mention that it's really the governor's office is now made a comment on this entire issue. They said that the governor was not invited to join the president. That, in fact, she wasn't even officially notified about the president's visit until very early this afternoon. The governor changed her plans to go to a shelter in Houston and is instead waiting at the airport at this very minute in order to greet the president as he arrives here.

Now the falling out comes over who is really in charge. The White House wanted to federalize the National Guard but the governor really felt that that would tie her hands because she would lose control over their law enforcement capabilities. She would have control over state and local police but not over the National Guard and that means they would not be able to conduct law enforcement. They would only be able to really even fire in self-defense. That is not something that she wanted. She wants to play an active role in rebuilding her state and making sure that everyone here is safe.

Now the White House, we are being told by the governor's office, was really playing what amounts to hard ball. They were giving the governor an ultimatum to cede power of the National Guard. It is something she would not do. They had sent her a document to sign. She refused to sign the document. In fact, sending a letter to the White House about an half an hour before the president was to speak at that White House in the Rose Garden. We are told that, in fact, the governor's office today had to call Andy Card and effectively invite themselves to go out with the president. He is scheduled to arrive here at 11:00 local time. That's 12:00 Eastern Time. And about an hour after that, he will address everyone.

Daryn.

KAGAN: And we'll be watching for that. Thank you, Deb Feyerick, live from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Their sanctuaries are in ruins but their devotion is still strong. Keeping faith on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A live report is straight ahead.

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