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CNN Live At Daybreak

Blame Game; Death Toll in Mississippi Tops 200; Online Communities Helping Katrina Victims

Aired September 08, 2005 - 06:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: There is lots of blame going around for the failures following Hurricane Katrina. To Democrats, responsibility goes all the way to the top, stopping at the president. To Republicans, responsibility starts at the bottom, beginning with the mayor of New Orleans.
CNN's Ed Henry looks at both sides.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Thousands likely already dead. Water so toxic, New Orleans may face a public health crisis.

How is Congress responding? Democrats want the FEMA director's head and are ripping into President Bush.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: When I said to the president that he should fire Michael Brown, he said, "Why would I do that?" I said, "Because of all that went wrong, with all that didn't go right last week.' And he said, "What didn't go right?" Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous.

HENRY: Republicans want to shift blame to local and state officials in Louisiana who happen to be Democrats.

REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: The emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up. And it's the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can't handle the problem, they go to the state. And the state does what they can do. And if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government, they ask for it, and it's delivered.

HENRY: Both sides are coming together to approve another $52 billion in relief, on top of the $10.5 billion already allocated, unprecedented for a hurricane.

But neither side seems ready to tackle the tough questions about why initial help took so long to get to victims. Republicans launched what they called a bipartisan probe of Katrina, but didn't consult with Democrats beforehand, leaving even GOP strategists wondering whether the investigation will carry any weight.

Democrats stole a page from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," with Senator Harry Reid demanding that the Katrina investigation include questions about whether the president's vacation delayed relief efforts.

STU ROTHENBERG, POLITICAL ANALYST: The president's job approval numbers are bad. Iraq is bad. The gas prices are bad. I think this has emboldened Democrats to really take the president on at the moment.

HENRY: So far, the attacks do not seem to be hurting the president. The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows only 13 percent of the public blames Mr. Bush for what went wrong in New Orleans. Thirty-eight percent blame no one, while 25 percent say it's local officials.

Democrats insist they're focused on legitimate questions such as whether Bush administration changes to FEMA hampered relief efforts.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: What I'd like to do is get it back to the level of competency and leadership that it had during the Clinton administration. When it was independent, when the director had actual experience in dealing with disasters and when he had a cabinet rank level so that there was no doubt that when a disaster struck, he was in charge. And he was able to marshal all of the resources of the federal government.

HENRY: But Democrats may run the risk of overplaying their hand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The problem is that if the questions turn into lectures and turn into what appear to be partisan attacks, that would be dangerous, I think, for the Democrats.

HENRY: But one senior Democrat said the party has no such fear. We have to pound the president even harder, he said, a sign that while Americans may be coming together, Congress is not.

Ed Henry, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, let's move east now to Mississippi. Senator Trent Lott says hundreds of mobile homes are on their way to the area, and that would be a welcome sight to some of the more than 17,000 who are still living in shelters there.

CNN's Allan Chernoff is in Biloxi, Mississippi, this morning.

We just lost his signal. We're going to try to get back to Allan. When we get that signal back up, of course, we'll take you right to Biloxi.

In fact, we're going to try our technical problems right now. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: There is no telling what will be uncovered when the waters are finally pumped out of the city of New Orleans. The mayor, Ray Nagin, has already said the country needs to be prepared for a shock.

CNN's Sumi Das is in New Orleans.

Good morning.

SUMI DAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Twenty-three of the 148 pumps in New Orleans are working to help rid the city of its floodwaters. And as the water level recedes, search and rescue teams are going house to house in new areas. And as they do so, they are making some grim discoveries.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAS (voice over): For the first time since Hurricane Katrina blasted the New Orleans area, emergency workers have found a watery mass grave. More than 30 bodies have been found in this flooded nursing home in St. Bernard parish.

Twenty miles away in New Orleans, the air is filled with smoke from a number of fires. Although Mayor Ray Nagin ordered mandatory evacuations, the New Orleans Police Department says for now it will hold off on forceful evictions.

Force may be unnecessary. After a week-and-a-half of brutal conditions, rescue workers are seeing a change in attitude from residents who refused to or couldn't comply with the initial evacuation order.

JEFF CASE, RESCUE WORKER: Each day they're a little more apt to come out. Those who have been in here have been here for a long time without food and water. And we're having a little more success at getting people to come out.

DAS: The New Orleans police chief says his officers have responded heroically.

SUPT. EDDIE COMPASS, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: No police department in the history of the United States, or really the history of the world, has ever been tested like this police department.

DAS: As government at all levels comes under unrelenting criticism for its response to Katrina, the House and Senate have formed a bipartisan committee to investigate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Americans deserve answers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DAS: The committee must report its findings to Congress no later than the 15th of February -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Sumi Das reporting live from the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans this morning.

So now let's move east to Mississippi. Senator Trent Lott says hundreds of mobile homes are on their way to the area. And that would be a welcome sight to some of the more than 17,000 who are still living in shelters there.

Allan Chernoff is in Biloxi.

Good morning -- Allan.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

And you can see right behind me why so many people are living in shelters. The debris just piled up right along the street. Everywhere you look you can see the damage this morning.

But you can also smell it, the smell of rotting fish, rotting food and, the police say, very possibly rotting bodies as well.

The official death count in Mississippi right now is 201. It's certainly possible that is going to keep on rising.

About 20 percent of the homes in this region were simply destroyed. We're standing on a very narrow strip of land here in Biloxi. The ocean is about four blocks to my left, and the bay is probably about nine blocks to my right. During the actual storm, the water met midway. That's how intense it was over here.

Now, we do have on the beach camped out Marines, also troops from the Navy. They're here to help out, to clean up, to begin to restore the situation here. In fact, they're calling their camp right on the beach Camp Restore.

Also here to restore, the Salvation Army, the other army. As you see, they're set up to begin serving hot meals. Nobody here just yet. As a matter of fact, there is a curfew in effect for another half-hour here. There had been some looting in Biloxi, not right in this residential neighborhood, which, by the way, is a very low-income neighborhood, but in the western part of town, where there are stores, more downtown area. There had been some looting. The police say it wasn't too bad.

Nonetheless, a curfew in effect until 6:00 a.m. local time. Afterwards, we'll begin to see people coming over here and getting some meals and later today as well.

There's going to be some child care in the football field right behind me. And that will give the adults a chance to begin to pull themselves back together -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Allan Chernoff live in Biloxi, Mississippi, this morning.

Thousands of Americans are extending a helping hand and more to those who are hurting the most from Hurricane Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

I've been blessed. I've got so much to offer. I just, you know, want to help somebody or some family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: That was David Lance (ph), just one of the many opening their homes to storm victims. The online community, Craig's List, is an Internet hot spot, helping to coordinate those needing help and those who can provide it.

Joining us live from San Francisco this morning is Craig's List CEO, Jim Buckmaster.

Good morning, Jim.

JIM BUCKMASTER, CEO, CRAIGSLIST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Craig's List wasn't originally about this. I mean, you went on Craig's List to, what, buy things like cars and washing machines. When did it change?

BUCKMASTER: Well, the day after the hurricane, we noticed that there were a tremendous number of missing person reports starting to pop up on the New Orleans site, and also offers of temporary shelter were already coming in the day after the hurricane.

COSTELLO: Well, I want to show people a live shot of your Web site right now. If we could take this shot that Roger is getting for me. And I'm just going to scroll up with all of the pictures of the missing. They just go on and on and on. Did you expect to get so many?

BUCKMASTER: No, the numbers really have surprising. I mean, literally many thousands of missing person and found person reports, and then also literally thousands of offers of free temporary shelter coming in from all across the country, many of them complete with bus fare or airfare to get the people to where the housing is. It's pretty remarkable.

COSTELLO: Do you have any idea how many of these people have been located?

BUCKMASTER: It's hard to put a number on it. Certainly we've seen lots of reports and gotten lots of nice e-mails from people who have thankfully located their loved ones. And we're also starting to get the reports now of people getting matched up for housing, which is pretty nice as well.

COSTELLO: Yes, we heard from a gentleman shortly before you came on the air live, opening up his home. How does that work online?

BUCKMASTER: Well, you know, as I said, there are all of these offers of free temporary shelter all over the place online. People, oftentimes it's a friend or a family member or an associate who will do the looking for the victims since many of them -- almost all of them do not have Internet access themselves just yet. So, it's often found on their behalf.

And they just e-mail or phone the person offering the housing, and kind of take it from there.

COSTELLO: Yes, the other thing that you're service is providing, because a lot of people don't have Internet service because they're staying in shelters, but they can actually print off a flyer of sorts and stick it on the bulletin board advertising their needs.

BUCKMASTER: Yes, that's one of the many changes to the site that our tech guys have been doing in kind of an emergency fashion was creating a special print mode for the site, where hundreds of listings can be printed out in one print job and either put up on a bulletin board or passed around, since access to phones to running way ahead of access to the Internet in the shelters.

COSTELLO: Jim, will this change Craig's List in the way it works forever?

BUCKMASTER: Well, at this point we're considering this as part of our core mission. We had a somewhat similar, although different too, experience around 9/11 on our New York site, where we were scrambling hour by hour and day by day to add new things to the site to help people and basically just watching how people were using the site and trying to make it a little more graceful and less clumsy for what they were trying to do.

COSTELLO: Well, you've been doing a great job and providing a great service. Jim Buckmaster, thanks for waking up so early to be with us this morning.

Your news, money, weather and sports. It is 6:45 Eastern. Here's what's all new this morning.

Vice President Dick Cheney will be visiting the Gulf Coast today. President Bush wants Cheney to oversee the relief effort and report back to him.

In money news, Delta is cutting jobs and jets. The airline says the sale of 11 planes is part of its restructuring plan. Delta will also cut 1,000 jobs at its hub at the Cincinnati airport.

In pop culture, "Harry Potter" is going digital. All six of the novels are being offered for audio downloads. You can get the boy wizard's stories through Apple's iTunes.

In sports, Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis is the first 20-game winner in franchise history as the Fish beat up on the Washington Nationals 12-1.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: That's a look at the latest headlines for you this morning.

In New Orleans, the good news is that the floodwaters are being pumped out. The bad news is what that water is going to do to the environment. We'll have more on that story when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: And welcome back. It is 6:50 Eastern. Here is what will be making news today.

As we've been telling you, Vice President Dick Cheney travels to the Gulf Coast today. He'll assess whether the government is doing all it can for hurricane relief. I'm going to have to cough.

In the meantime, authorities are going house to house in New Orleans, trying to get thousands of holdouts to leave the city. So far nobody has been forced to go.

Like New Orleans, Galveston, Texas, also relies on walls to survive a monster hurricane. On this day 105 years ago, the hurricane without a name leveled thousands of buildings. At least 6,000 men, woman and children were killed.

If we can take just a short break right now, I do have to cough, and I apologize to you. But we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Again, I do apologize. Everything is fine right now.

We have been telling you for a few days now just how toxic the floodwaters in New Orleans are. And now that so-called sludge is being pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, a lake once beloved as a place to sail, to fish, to swim, a lake some say is just as important as the Chesapeake Bay. So, let's talk about its future.

Joining me to talk about that is Ed Laws from Louisiana State University.

Good morning, Ed.

ED LAWS, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: This is a lake that's served as a nursery for fish and crabs. Should we assume that the fish and the crabs are dead now?

LAWS: Not at this point. Obviously some water is being pumped out of New Orleans. And it's certainly probable that there will be an impact. But at this point, the extent of the releases is far less than the potential when they have all of the pumps going.

I think the concern is, first of all, that the water that's being pumped out of New Orleans has no oxygen in it. And, of course, fish and other animals need oxygen.

It has a lot of organic matter, although I don't know what the numbers are. But it's safe to assume that it's full of organic matter. It's going to be full of nutrients. And there will be some toxic substances in the water. Some of them will be organic. Others will be inorganic like lead and mercury.

COSTELLO: And that's those are the things we really need to be concerned about. But at this point, nobody really knows the chemical makeup of this water.

LAWS: Well, I can't say that nobody knows. I can say that I don't know. Samples have been taken. They're in the process of being analyzed. Actually, I suspect we'll have an indication within a week or so of what's in there.

COSTELLO: So, we should assume there will a fish kill. We just don't know how large.

LAWS: That's a fair statement. I mean, this is a lake that's maybe 20 miles across. And it's very unlikely that the entire lake will be impacted. And if things work out as we might hope, the impact will be fairly localized.

But you're certainly looking at an area that will be devoid of oxygen. And because Lake Pontchartrain is about 10 percent seawater, there is sulfate in the water. That's one of the major salts in seawater. And the sulfate will be converted to hydrogen sulfate gas in the absence of oxygen, and that is a very toxic gas.

COSTELLO: So, you say that damage may be localized, and we hope it is. But eventually, all of that water will be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico. And that means it will travel everywhere. So...

LAWS: It will eventually find its way out. If it is released slowly enough, it will probably be diluted and dispersed by current systems in the Gulf of Mexico and hopefully have minimal impact. I think the greater potential for ecological damage is going to be in Lake Pontchartrain and in Lake Borne, which receives the overflow from Lake Pontchartrain, because these are systems with restricted circulation, and so less dispersal.

COSTELLO: You mentioned current systems. A lot of this will have to do with the weather and the wind direction and all of that kind of stuff. I want to bring Chad in to this. He's got a great animation to show us.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Ed, everybody is saying how they're pumping it all into the Mississippi River. That actually is not correct, because actually a lot of it is going into Lake Pontchartrain.

Here is the levee break here. That's the 17th Street Canal. I'll zoom you out a little bit. This is Lake Pontchartrain, and there are only a few exits for Lake Pontchartrain, one being right down here, the Chef Menteur Pass. That goes right through the Intercoastal Waterway. All boaters that are going to be in there are going to be running through this stuff. Up through The Rigolets as well.

The exit area here is well north of what we call the mouth of what people think of, the mouth of the Mississippi, which is that red pin there.

This is going to have a widespread effect if they pump water out as fast as they hope to be able to pump it out.

COSTELLO: Yes. And, again, Ed, the weather will play a part in this as well, won't it?

LAWS: The weather will be a big factor. If you have wind mixing, of course, that will speed up the exchange of oxygen with the atmosphere and tend to reduce the impact of the water coming out of New Orleans.

Now, another factor that comes into play is all the nutrients in that water, because that will very likely stimulate an algobloom (ph).

MYERS: Yes.

LAWS: And sometimes these algoblooms (ph) are dominated by species that produce toxic substances or actually neurotoxins that can affect the fish and shellfish. It can also affect people that eat the fish and...

MYERS: I mean, in layman's terms, Ed, you're talking about a red tide, right?

LAWS: That's a red tide, yes.

COSTELLO: Oh. And we all know that we've had examples of that in recent history in Florida, for example.

LAWS: Florida. There was just a red tide off the coast of New England. For whatever reason, these seem to be becoming more and more common, and historically there have been red tides in Lake Pontchartrain. And what's happening right now certainly has the potential to create another one.

COSTELLO: Ed Laws, thank you for joining us. I wish we could talk to you longer. From Louisiana State University joining us live this morning. We appreciate it.

LAWS: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: A quick travel forecast before we have to go.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: From the Time Warner center in New York, I'm Carol Costello along with Chad Myers. "AMERICAN MORNING" starts right now.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Carol, good morning to you.

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