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CNN Live Sunday

New Orleans Voluntary Evacuation Continues After Hurricane Katrina

Aired September 11, 2005 - 17:00   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR, CNN LIVE SUNDAY: ...to add up the human cost of hurricane Katrina as President Bush heads back to the region for another firsthand look. We'll have the latest on what's being done to help people recover.
Also today, we'll have a look at how America is honoring the 9/11 victims four years later.

And the Dalai Lama is in the United States offering a message of hope to victims of both Katrina and the 9/11 tragedies.

Hello and welcome to CNN LIVE SUNDAY. I'm Fredericka Whitfield.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR, CNN LIVE SUNDAY: And I'm Carol Lin.

We've got the latest developments in mission critical. The commander of joint task force Katrina predicts they'll find fewer bodies than first thought. Lieutenant General Russell Honore says it will be far fewer than the 10,000 that the New Orleans mayor predicted.

And more signs of recovery in hard hit Biloxi, Mississippi. People might start getting mail and schools might open as soon as early October. You can't really tell from these pictures. Eighty percent of the city's homes have some running water. But not all of it is safe to drink.

Louisiana officials say FEMA is moving too slowly to house people left homeless by the hurricane. They want trailers for 58,000 people who are in shelters right now. The Federal relief coordinator says housing is a top priority.

Meanwhile, the demand for housing in Baton Rouge has sent home prices through the roof in the city.

Also this just in, we're learning more about a change in policy once again in New Orleans about forced evacuations. CNN's Dan Simon is in New Orleans. Dan, have you nailed this one down?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, those residents who are in the city and refusing to leave the city can, perhaps breathe a little easier tonight because we know that the police department will not be conducting forcible evacuations. That means if you're in the city of New Orleans and you're in your house, that means you can stay. You'll still be violating the order, but this actually marks a radical shift from the policy. Of course, the mandatory evacuation remains in effect. This is not an invitation for people to come back into the city. We first got an indication that this was going to happen from a woman we talked to who lives in the French quarter. Her name is Kay Vereen. Listened to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAY VEREEN, NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: Because of the health risk, they just wanted us to know that if I do stay, that I'm here illegally and that I'm at my own risk. And I said that that's what I chose to do. And they took my name and my address and the number of people in the house and said they would not be bothering -- no one would be bothering us again.

SIMON: So they've made it clear to you that they're not going to force you out of your home?

VEREEN: That's correct, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIMON: So once again, the police department will not be conducting forcible evacuations here in the city of New Orleans. That's good news, I guess, if you're one of those people who actually wants to stay in the city. We are here live on the river walk and the city of New Orleans behind me is actually the USS Iwo Jima.

And we're going to shift here. We're going to talk about the president, who is expected to land on the ship within the next hour. We actually saw some gunner boats protecting the area a short while ago. The president left Andrews Air Force base this afternoon. Let's talk a little bit about what he's going to be doing tomorrow. We understand in the morning he's going to get a briefing about recovery effort. That's going to take place on the ship. And then he'll actually head over to dry land where he'll get a tour of the region, the Louisiana region, and then a bit later on he's going to head across the border to Mississippi and take a tour of the Gulfport area. So a lot going on here today. Of course, we'll have the very latest a bit later on. Back to you.

LIN: That's right Dan. All right. Thanks very much for that update. The bottom line is, people who are in their houses can stay in their houses.

We are waiting for the president to arrive, as soon as he does in New Orleans, we are going to take it live and bring all the events there as to what the government is doing for those hurricane victims. We'll bring it to you live. Fred.

WHITFIELD: The man leading the military relief effort in New Orleans says his troops continue to provide food and water to people who choose to stay. Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore says it's not the role of his soldiers to enforce the mandatory evacuation order in that city, but we've since learned that all of that has been changed. In the meantime, earlier, Honore spoke with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GEN. RUSSEL HONORE, CMDR JOINT TASK FORCE KATRINA: I think our ultimate purpose as public servants, really local or state level, and Federal troops and National Guard is to save life and limb. The decision to remove the citizens is based on their criteria, which I refer you to the state and the city from a health and safety perspective. But we're working through that. I mean, these are tough decisions. They go to their heart and core of our democracy and people being able to make their own decisions. But there's a greater good for the community --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: All right. Well, obviously the situation has changed on the ground because the general is now saying, and the police are saying, that if the people are going to stay in their houses, then they do so at their own risk.

Now, in Sun Valley, Idaho, I want to bring you some remarkable pictures. The Dalai Lama is the exiled supreme religious leader of Tibet who saw his country invaded. He fled to India, became a best- selling author and here he is addressing a crowd of 10,000 people in Sun Valley, Idaho, by invitation from a supporter of his. He's on a 20-day tour of the United States. And I'm wondering -- well, he stopped speaking so we're not going to take some of his remarks, but we have Sibila Vargas on the scene. Sibila, I'm told that when you meet the Dalai Lama, he is so charismatic, it's a moment that you'll never forget.

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I haven't met him personally, but I can tell you just being out here -- I was definitely touched. I'll tell you, you hear about his charisma, but just hearing the audience right now laughing and he interjects humor and also very deep things that he's talking about, but I think that's part of his charisma, that he really is able to touch people in a way that very few people can.

Today, of course, the message was about compassion and healing. He spoke about the victims of 9/11. And he spoke -- took this time to also speak about the victims of hurricane Katrina. It was a very, very timely message. He spent -- he began talking about quarreling and the fact that we do a little too much of it. He talked about stopping the violence. That was a major point. He also spent a lot of time talking about moving past the pain.

He said that people can't go forward if you keep on thinking back on the events. This was really all a chain of reaction from years and centuries ago, so that in order to move forward in life, we kind of have to let go of the past. He took a lot of time praying for the souls, and I think that was a very emotional time for most of the people here. You could hear a pin drop, everybody was just glued to the words that he was saying. He was praying for the souls and we all kind of took a little time out and bowed our heads as he started praying for the souls and the people that were left behind.

But he spent time talking about the frustration that so many of us feel when we see people dying the way they did here after hurricane Katrina and also 9/11. But he said he offered them advice on how we can actually go forward and deal with our emotions.

BC

DALAI LAMA: Frustrations will not solve the problem, already happened. And particularly too much sorrow, too much anger, too much frustration will not bring your close friends who passed away, will never return. So the more sadness, more frustration brings more suffering to yourself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VARGAS: So you can see, he also talked about definitely moving on. And he also said, Carol, I just want to end by saying this, is that we worked so hard during the tsunami to help and support the victims of that disaster and because of that, we have friends all around the world that are really trying to help us here in the United States at this very pivotal and pretty much horrible time. Carol, back to you.

LIN: Living by example. Thanks very much, Sibila Vargas reporting live from Sun Valley, Idaho. Now the Dalai Lama is going to talk about coping in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina on tonight "Larry King Live." The Dalai Lama is actually going to be taking your calls. It all begins at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific.

WHITFIELD: And continuing to patrol the flooded streets of New Orleans, members of the 82nd airborne division as well as the U.S. Coast Guard and on board the boat with them is our Ed Lavandera. He joins us on the telephone. Give us an idea Ed, what you're seeing - oh, well, we've got you both picture and sound. What are you seeing as you patrol those streets?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There we go. If you bear with me just one second. We're on the airboat and we're just trying to get over one of the humps in the street, so they're blasting the airboat full strength here. But basically what we've been doing is patrolling some of the streets here between Canal and Tulane, just as these streets that take you in toward downtown New Orleans.

What this team of 82nd airborne soldiers and the Coast Guard are doing now is basically going house to house. They're not entering any of the houses unless they see signs of life. What they're doing is keeping track of which houses are secure, which have been emptied, which houses might have pets in them, which houses might have people if them. They have rescued one person earlier today, a couple of pets they've come across as well.

Kind of interesting, we also had to spend some part of the day at one of the hospitals along the streets here where they were sent in to double-check that everything had been cleared there. It was an eerie sight. As you go to all of these houses, it is so quiet throughout many of these streets. But you get a sense of what it was like in the initial hours as the flood waters were rising in these streets and you watched -- you could see the remnants of what people did to kind of stay alive for those days. In the hospital you could see that the kitchen had been emptied out. There were vending machines where the glass had been broken out as well, where people were using that to survive, beds all over the place. The hospital was a complete disaster, is what it looked like.

We're continuing to see water levels drop as well. As you go through the streets, you see the water markings on the walls have dropped about four feet or so, which is good news. It's actually making it in some places very difficult for the airboat to make its way through the streets. We're basically cutting back and forth. In some places you can see the medians of the street starting to appear in the middle of the road, so the airboat's got to push its way over that. But it's still a very dangerous situation. The water smells awful and many of the soldiers and these Coast Guard guys that we're with here today, any moment they get splashed with just a little bit of this stuff, they immediately go to the bacteria gel and wash down. They don't really want to spend a whole lot of time in it. But they continue to look.

One of the things they do say is that in the last few days they've been very busy picking up people, people yelling out to them wanting to be rescued, but today much quieter. They get the sense that a lot of people that want to be rescued, have been rescued. But now it's the people who are intent on riding this all out inside their homes. But what they're doing is going back and people they've established a rapport with over the last couple of days and they go to them and just double-check, hey, make sure you're OK and going back and checking to see if it's time for them to leave.

Many people we've come across say they have plenty of food and water to ride it out. But these soldiers and Coast Guardsmen spending time with them, talking to them, hoping that if they keep returning, they'll eventually change their minds. Power of persuasion is the weapon they're carrying on the waters today. Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Ed Lavandera, thanks so much, traveling with the 82nd airborne division as well as the U.S. Coast Guard. And once again, just to reiterate that New Orleans police are now saying they will not forcibly remove any of those last holdouts who choose to stay, instead telling them they are staying at their own risk.

LIN: Well, it's low and threatening, hurricane Ophelia is still lurking off the Carolina coast, but the question is, will it actually hit land? Meteorologist Jacqui Jeras keeping a close watch on this storm. Jacqui.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's the big money question still Carol. We think that it probably will and it'll probably be making landfall somewhere along the coastline of North Carolina, but we still can't rule out South Carolina at this time. A little bit of dry air has been moving into the hurricane today and has weakened it just a little bit and the maximum sustained winds have dropped down to 75 miles per hour. That's just in now so it's barely a category one hurricane. The location about 250 miles east-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina. Also just in, tropical storm warnings now have been issued from the south Santee River extending up towards Cape Lookout. Tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions are expected in about 24 hours. Basically, the tropical storm winds extend out about 150 miles from the center of the storm, so that is going to start brushing parts of the coastal areas, we think, as early as tomorrow afternoon.

Hurricane watches remain in effect. This is the same watch that's been in effect all day and throughout much of yesterday for Edisto Beach. It's getting up towards Cape Lookout. That means hurricane conditions are possible within 36 hours.

Here's the forecast track for you, very little change on this one. A little bit of drifting off to the west is expected, very, very slowly, maybe only three miles per hour, but we think we'll start to see this maybe by later on tonight, and then it's going to start to take that pull on up to the north. Very little change in strength is anticipated as there is a little bit of dry air which has been moving in and not to mention there's been a lot of up welling, some of the cooler water has been churning up because the hurricane has been sitting over the same area and with cooler water temperatures, that will prevent it from becoming a major hurricane. Carol.

LIN: All right. Thanks Jacqui. We'll check in with you in the next hour.

WHITFIELD: And just moments ago, Carol, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco visited Reliant Stadium in Texas, crossing the border into her neighboring state, thanking the officials there for taking in the majority of the evacuees from Louisiana. Let's listen in on what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO, LOUISIANA: We never want to not thank people who have been so good to our people. We've been through a trying time. There's not one of us standing up here who was not praying that this cup would pass us by. It did not. It stopped right in our faces. And it hurt so many of our people. But their lives were preserved.

We have heroic missions. We have thousands and thousands of Louisiana citizens who came out into the dark waters in the night, pulling people off of rooftops and pulling people out of attics, and saving people so that they could get here. We have thousands of members of the National Guard, thousands. In fact, we have about 20,000 in our state right now, who came from all other -- all kinds of other states, some 30 states, to help our rescue mission.

We ramped up rapidly and we saved and sent out some 64,000 people after the storm. But I think that you received a lot of our people before the storm because I personally and everybody I knew, begged people to leave before the storm came in. And we had a very systematic, well thought out exit plan and hundreds of thousands left.

Now, Louisiana is packed, and every community is close to being doubled or at least, you know, growing by leaps and bounds. We simply didn't have the infrastructure. A lot of our people are connected here in the Texas area, especially in Houston. So a lot came to find refuge with their families, are staying in your hotels, staying in homes with friends, because there's so much interconnection. Our lives are well interwoven. I have family here and as a child, visited here. This was my summer delight, to come actually into Pasadena, Texas.

But Houston was always our destination as we got in the car and moved all around. So we have a special love for all of you and we just came to say a huge Louisiana thank you. And the great blessing that we all experienced was we got out of our vans and we heard music. We heard a jazz band. And we looked up and we saw what we call a second line. That simply means that you just get behind that jazz band and you dance your way around the room or the streets or wherever you find it. Usually we have a little white cloth, a little handkerchief or a napkin or something that we wave while we danced. We didn't need our white napkins, we just needed our people and we were so glad to see them and they were excited and so we know you're taking good care of them. Thank you, Texas, we love you!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Taped remarks coming from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. Obviously, very fatigued and stressed over all that has transpired over the last couple of weeks, but case in point, she really wanted to drive home the point of just thanking the neighboring state for taking in the majority of the evacuees from Louisiana, as well as getting a lot of help from the National Guard from that state, as well as 34 other states across the country. Carol.

LIN: So many people extending themselves in such wonderful ways to these hurricane victims.

Just ahead on this special edition of CNN LIVE SUNDAY, Americans remember those who were killed September 11, 2001.

And later, you're going to hear from a businessman who's giving car dealers a good name as he comes to the aid of those left homeless by Katrina.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Well, it's been four years since the 9/11 attacks. The families of those who died at ground zero gathered at the site this morning to speak the victims' names out loud, one at a time. It was very emotional. Many people dropped roses into a reflecting pool.

Now, in Louisiana New York firefighters assisting in hurricane relief efforts held a service to remember their colleagues who died in the trade center attacks.

And at the White House, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with their wives and White House staff led a moment of silence on the south lawn. Victims' families and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani were among those who attended today's ceremony at ground zero. CNN's Mary Snow has more on today's observance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One by one they read the names.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And my brother, Lieutenant John A. Kreshi.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And my sister, Candace Lee Williams, American Airlines flight 11. I love you.

SNOW: This year, siblings of the 2,749 people killed four years ago honored their loved ones at the World Trade Center site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jimmy, you're always in our hearts and forever on our minds.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we just wish, we'd do anything to have your big bear hug and your bit booming voice, just to hear you one more time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My brother, Carlos, I miss you so much. He was my baby brother.

SNOW: Thomas Petty and Adrian Ferentz read the name of their big brother Phil, one of the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's good to hear someone recite your brother's name. It's nice to be a part of that and say it yourself.

SNOW: Four moments of silence marked the time suicide hijackers crashed planes into the twin towers and when the towers subsequently collapsed in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. There was music and there was poetry, readings by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, governors and mayors.

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: We come to keep a promise, to remember those who died not just as names or as part of a larger number, but as individuals whose lives still burn bright.

RUDY GIULIANI, FMR. NEW YORK MAYOR: Katherine Mansfield wrote movingly of the unbreakable bond shared by brothers and sisters. Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart, tucked so close that there is no chance of escape of my sister.

SNOW: The politicians spoke only briefly. It's been a tradition each year to keep politics out of the ceremony. It was family members who strayed from the script.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Bush, do the right thing, bring our troops home!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our family would like to thank the men and women in our United States military for their courage and their conviction to life, liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten it.

SNOW: Divided in opinion, but united in their pain, a pain reflected in two small pools where the towers once stood. For so many, ground zero is their only gravesite. After 4 1/2 hours, all the names were read. It's just the flowers and the memories that remain. Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: Just ahead, a California businessman reaches out to the victims of Katrina. Find out what he's doing to help.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: There are countless stories of Americans who have opened up their lives and their wallets to help the victims of hurricane Katrina. Joe Cardinale owns car dealerships in the Monterey, California area and he's giving some people a chance to start anew by offering an incredible deal. He joins us on the telephone now. Glad you could be with us. And so, Joe, you, your wife, and a pilot friend headed to Houston and you made a deal to a couple of folks who felt like we just can't refuse it. What was the deal?

JOE CARDINALE, LIVE ON PHONE: Well, we told them, you know, if they would come back to Monterey, we would -- we have eight car dealerships and we could give them jobs inside the stores and we would keep, prop them up for a few months, get them an apartment and start anew.

WHITFIELD: And so you had you at least four takers, right?

CARDINALE: We have a family of four. We had a couple. We are a single guy and had a few others that just didn't show up.

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, for those who did show up and who did get back on the plane and head to your town of Monterey, California, how are things going for them?

CARDINALE: Well, so far so good. The community has just come out in mass, wanting to meet them and touch them and do whatever they could to make sure that they could help them get through this transition. Going from Katrina into the Astrodome and now all the way out to California, a gigantic transition for these people.

WHITFIELD: A huge transition. So a lot of folks who were survivors of Katrina, who had to relocate to shelters, such as at the Astrodome, really had nothing but the clothes on their backs, so starting over from bare bones is what a lot of these people have had to do. How do you help get them going so that they can even focus on job training and then eventually working at one of your car dealerships?

CARDINALE: Not only did they just have the clothes on their back, they had to have great courage just to get on an airplane and hope somebody was on the other end to pick them up. Right now, we gave them a little money and

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