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CNN Live At Daybreak

Big Government to the Rescue for Katrina Victims

Aired September 16, 2005 - 06:00   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is Friday, September 16.
It's big government to the rescue for the victims of hurricane Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And what it's going to take is big money, lots and lots of money. How much will all that big money cost President Bush politically? Our Bill Schneider adds it up for you.

Also, homeowners and insurance companies square off over the big claims as communities begin to cleanup, rebuild and file lawsuits.

ANNOUNCER: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK with Carol Costello and Chad Myers.

COSTELLO: And good morning to you.

We'll have more on President Bush's address to the nation in just a minute.

Also ahead, the view of Katrina through the eyes of children of the storm.

And the pied piper of Akron, Ohio heads to Houston to offer evacuees a safe place to stay.

But first, now in the news, a drive-by shooting starts the day in Baghdad. Three Iraqi workers are dead, a dozen more wounded. The attack happened at a spot where day laborers gather looking for work. The gunmen got away. Nearly 200 people have been killed in various attacks in the past three days.

Across the nation today, many of you will take part in a national day of prayer for all of the people affected by the hurricane. President Bush will take part in an 11:00 a.m. Eastern service at Washington's National Cathedral.

Ophelia isn't quite as strong, but it's still beating up the North Carolina coast. Ophelia once again a tropical storm, downgraded from a hurricane. And it did cause some damage -- Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It did.

In fact, that was sound side flooding, Carol. The wind pushed so far and so long into the sound, Albemarle and Pamlico Sound, that the water built up in here. Well, after the storm left, all that water had to go somewhere. It tried to get out, but the islands were in the way. And all of this area here flooded significantly.

The package out of Rob Marciano yesterday was pretty amazing to see. It was like an eight foot surge coming the other way after the storm had really pretty much passed away, passed gone, completely away from Cape Hatteras.

Still a little bit of wave action this morning, but really not too bad.

The forecast is for that storm, though, to take a northward turn and not miss Nantucket by very much. There will be huge waves here all the way along the coast for this weekend.

I have a really great graphic that I want to show you. Pay attention to this thing here. This is actually from September 3, just released by NOAH. There's that little symbol of NOAH. Now, what I want you to notice is anything that's colored red is about a foot deep. Anything that's colored in the yellow, about five to six feet deep. And anything that's blue is over 10 foot full of water.

Now we're going to get you back into New Orleans. Here's the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River didn't flood. Neither did the French Quarter. Look at this. This is so high and dry. No red here at all, all the way down to the Garden District, pretty much high and dry. That was those zip codes that the mayor was talking about yesterday that are actually going to be able to comeback.

So this is why we're getting so many good live shots from the French Quarter, where it doesn't look like very much is all going on. Really, there wasn't much flooding at all in this area.

We'll take you back over to here. See that white spot? That's the Superdome surrounded by white and red. So the red from one to two, two feet of water.

We'll get you a little bit farther back up to the north. This is where a lot of people live. It's called Mid City. Mid City here, Canal Street, heading up Carrollton, North-South Carrollton right through here. That's about three to five feet. Many of the areas, especially down along where the streets are, about five feet deep there in the green.

Now back up to where you have the big jazz fests, right there. You can't even see it. That's the fairgrounds under about three feet of water.

Now we take you up to where the levee break was and where the land is the lowest and the most below sea level. You see this entire area here just to the east of Bucktown. Here is the 17th Street Canal. All of that water filling in here, all the way over to City Park. That right there is City Park, all the golf courses right through here.

And then farther over to the east, Carol, it looks just like this, green and blue, between 10 and 15 feet of water all the way through all of these suburbs here.

COSTELLO: Yes, and we can't get into those areas to bring you pictures of it because it's too dangerous.

MYERS: Well, and this was at the peak of the flooding. The water has come down from here. So those numbers, the colors wouldn't be as bad today if we took the same picture.

COSTELLO: Yes. Still 40 percent of the city underwater this morning.

MYERS: Right. Yes.

COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: The president also said the hardest work is still ahead. President Bush made that comment during his address to the nation last night. The president, speaking from New Orleans, also announced a series of initiatives aimed at aiding recovery of the Gulf Coast.

The first is a Gulf Opportunity Zone. The plan includes tax relief for companies to create jobs in the region. Loan guarantees would help small businesses rebuild.

Second is worker recovery accounts. Those would provide $5,000 for people to be retrained in order to get new and better jobs in the region. It would also allow for child care during the job search.

Third, the president purposes an Urban Homesteading Act. Under that plan, federal lands would be offered for free to low income citizens under a lottery system. President Bush also offered a change in policy for the next disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Yet the system, at every level of government, was not well coordinated and was overwhelmed in the first few days. It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And to that end, the president also said Congress would begin an investigation into the government's response to Katrina. That investigation will be led by Virginia Republican Tom Davis. David, you'll remember, led the House committee that held the steroid hearings in March. The bipartisan select committee is expected to report its results by February 15.

The Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, said a crucial part of the president's speech was the understanding that the federal government has a major commitment in the Gulf Coast.

And Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, also liked what she heard. She issued this statement. I'm quoting here. She says: "I'm greatly heartened by President Bush's strong words tonight reaffirming the nation's commitment to rebuilding southeast Louisiana. I believe the president was sincere when he said there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again."

It may take a long while, but the city and the Gulf Coast will rise again. Still, given the slow response to the disaster, some Democrats aren't so sure the government can lead the recovery charge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: We will rebuild the Gulf Coast and billions of dollars, billions of taxpayer dollars, will be spent in the process. We Democrats want to be certain that the money goes to help the victims, not to enrich the contractors.

REP. GENE TAYLOR (D), MISSISSIPPI: The National Guard saved FEMA's behinds. That's as politely as I can say it. People would have starved if the National Guard hadn't gone around FEMA and delivered what food they could get their hands on and delivered it by helicopter. They never should have had to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Even before Katrina, the White House had a hurricane recovery plan. In June, no bid contracts were awarded to major Bush contributors like Halliburton, for hurricane cleanup.

Now for the latest from the disaster zone and our mission critical update.

Hurricane Katrina is officially the most destructive storm ever to hit the United States. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made that determination. It says the damage was more widespread than during Camille in 1969. Katrina is also expected to be the most expensive storm ever.

Evacuees in Houston may just stay there. The "Washington Post" asked people at the Astrodome if they plan to return to Louisiana. Only 43 percent said yes. Of the people looking for new hometowns, nearly 70 percent said they would stay in Houston.

Large areas of New Orleans could be drained by the middle of next week. But the Army Corps of Engineers warns that just because they're dry, doesn't mean they're safe to live in. The receding waters are revealing mold, mildew and muck on many of the buildings.

But that's not all being left behind underwater.

CNN Radio's Jim Roope joins us now life from New Orleans.

Tell us more about the cleanup -- Jim.

JIM ROOPE, CNN RADIO CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's going slowly, from what it seems, anyway, in my opinion, especially around the areas where Mayor Nagin says he'd like to reopen and get 180,000 residents back in, those higher and drier areas Chad was talking about. There are still mounds and mounds of rotting garbage. There's debris everywhere. They're pumping out some 90 million gallons of water a day into Lake Pontchartrain out of those flooded areas, but still, the flooding is going slow. we've learned that progress is a relative term, depending upon where you are in this city. Progress is quicker in some places than it is in others.

But there is progress, however slow. Any movement that's forward is good movement, I guess.

COSTELLO: Well, that is true.

Let's talk about the mayor's plan to bring people back into the city this weekend. He wants 180,000 people to come back into the city like over the next week or so?

ROOPE: Yes. You know, I just can't see that. I don't get that commitment by him. Whether that's lip service, telling people what they want to hear, I don't know. But as I mentioned, there's so much debris. I'm still slaloming around downed power lines and trees and fences and signs and pieces of building all over the streets.

Yes, there are dumpsters everywhere and those dumpsters are full, but no one's emptying those dumpsters and there's still mounds of trash and debris everywhere in those areas where he says people can come back in. He wants to open up the French Quarter on Monday? That's just a couple of days from now. That's not going to happen. There's still no electricity. The infrastructure is in terrible shape.

We just got word yesterday we can shower, but we can't drink the water. If you're going to brush your teeth, you use bottled water. Don't shave with it because if you cut yourself, you get contaminated that way, too.

So what's going to happen in the next couple of days, it's beyond me if he thinks he can reopen some of these areas now.

COSTELLO: It seems that the mayor is taking the charge, though, to try to revitalize the city and bring it back. In the president's speech last night he vowed that state, local and federal officials would all work together, with perhaps the local and state taking the lead as far as how to develop a new New Orleans.

How do you think that will work?

ROOPE: Well, there's no czar as -- for lack of a better word, that's the word everybody loves to banter about -- to oversee the rebuilding. Now, well there's inspectors general to watch spending, there's nobody that's going to, where the buck stops or that can make that final decision.

So I think you're going to have, you know, kind of a Keystone Kops thing going on for a while, where everybody is going to be making their own decisions based on their own needs. And that's not going to mesh completely. There's going to be some parts that need this, some parts that need that. Then you have Mississippi and Alabama in the mix.

It's a lot of money it's going to cost to rebuild this. I was talking with Congressman Steve King in Iowa and he said look, this is going to be deficit spending, this is borrowed money, but it's necessary spending, we have to do it anyway. But it's a huge price tag. And so we kind of need that one person that says OK, this is a good idea, that's the good idea, that's a good idea, but we can't do yours first, we'll do his second and we'll go over here and do this now, but right now let's start here.

We don't have that and I think that's where we're going to run into problems.

COSTELLO: All right.

And, you know, it's probably going to cost, what, $200 billion plus?

Jim Roope...

ROOPE: That's what everybody -- that's the price tag people are talking about.

COSTELLO: Huge.

ROOPE: Yes.

COSTELLO: Jim Roope live from New Orleans this morning, from CNN Radio.

Thanks, Jim.

Pumping all the water out is going on continuously southeast of New Orleans. You heard Jim mention that. St. Bernard Parish was heavily damaged by hurricane Katrina. The floodwaters are down enough for some residents to come back.

CNN's Keith Oppenheim met one man facing the worst.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bobby Berthelot had a lot to lose.

BOBBY BERTHELOT, MARINA OWNER: Everything was rolling. Everything was up, you know, and all of a sudden it's gone in one night. OPPENHEIM: In St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, Bobby lived at a marina he owns with his brother.

BERTHELOT: This was like a little patio room. We had counters and refrigerators down here. That was a deck.

OPPENHEIM: The Berthelots also had a gas station, a bait shop, an Econo Lodge motel.

BERTHELOT: We had just renovated all this lobby.

OPPENHEIM (on camera): This is a lobby that was just renovated?

BERTHELOT: Right. It don't look like it, but it was.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): There were enough slips here for 200 boats. ESPN would come here to cover fishing tournaments.

UNIDENTIFIED ESPN ANNOUNCER: The third day of competition at our tournament here in Chalmette.

OPPENHEIM: Hurricane Katrina stopped all that, with winds that sliced buildings and a storm surge that scattered large boats.

(on camera): It's really a terrible one-two punch, wind and then water.

BERTHELOT: Right, which was hard for anything to stand.

OPPENHEIM: Yes.

(voice-over): The marina employed more than 60 workers.

BERTHELOT: It was about a $8 million or $10 million development from the front all the way to the back.

OPPENHEIM (on camera): How much of that do you think is gone?

BERTHELOT: It's hard to say right now. You know, we're going to try to salvage as much as we can, because we owe the bank. So we've got to salvage enough to take care of them.

OPPENHEIM: You really don't have a choice here, do you?

BERTHELOT: We don't have a choice, no.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): A military unit arrives to shore up a shrimping boat. Other than that, no help yet from insurance companies or government.

BERTHELOT: We don't know what they're going to help us with. We don't know what FEMA is going to do to help us.

OPPENHEIM: But with all the uncertainty, Bobby Berthelot says somehow, he will rebuild.

(on camera): Is that because you have to or because you want to or both?

BERTHELOT: Well, I guess a little bit of both. I'm not going to just give it up. I'm not going to throw in the towel, that's for sure. We worked too hard for 30 years to just throw it in.

OPPENHEIM: You feel like you owe it to yourself?

BERTHELOT: Right. And to my kids and grandkids.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Chalmette, Louisiana.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

COSTELLO: And still to come this hour, big fights over big money. Homeowners feel their insurance companies should pay out in the aftermath of a storm. In fact, the State of Mississippi now suing insurance companies to force them to pay. We'll talk about that.

Also, Katrina's youngest victims use art to cope with the loss of their homes and schools.

And help from the president if you or someone you know is still looking for friends or family. 1-877-568-3317 is the Family Links hotline. It's maintained by the Red Cross. The number again, 1-877- 568-3317.

Here's a look at what else is making news this Friday.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

COSTELLO: Your news, money, weather and sports.

It's 6:17 Eastern.

Here's what's all new this morning.

President Bush is promising residents of the Gulf Coast that the federal government will rebuild. In a speech from New Orleans, the president said the government will do what it takes and stay as long as it takes to help rebuild communities.

In money news, an upcoming hurricane Katrina benefit concert will be available on Pay-Per-View. Tuesday's Madison Square Garden show features Simon & Garfunkel, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett, among others. Cable operators say they'll donate fees for the show to the relief effort.

In pop culture, the whirlwind romance and marriage is over for Renee Zellweger. Court papers list fraud as the reason, but provide no elaboration. The actress is asking to have her marriage to country star Kenny Chesney annulled. They were married just four months ago.

In sports, the most recent doping allegations against Lance Armstrong have been traced to cycling's governing body. The head of the organization admits to supplying testing documents to a French newspaper -- to the Forecast Center and Chad.

MYERS: Isn't that special? Yes.

COSTELLO: Interesting.

MYERS: It sure is.

Good morning.

(WEATHER REPORT)

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

Yesterday's gas guzzlers are giving way to tomorrow's fuel sippers. The big three automakers doing everything they can to make every drop of gasoline count. We'll tell you how.

And the eye of the storm through the eyes of the children.

DAYBREAK will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Time now for a little "Business Buzz."

In the wake of Wednesday's bankruptcy protection filing, Delta Airlines will not be making its next pension fund payment. But the federal pension agency says Delta is required to make that contribution. Pension plans at Delta are under funded by more than $10 billion.

As US Airways emerges from bankruptcy, watch it become an even bigger airline. A judge is to rule today on a plan to merge U.S. Air with America West Airlines. If approved, as expected, the new airline will fly under the US Airways banner.

Hurricane Katrina put high gas prices into sharp focus for many drivers. But as Carrie Lee will tell us, consumers were moving toward fuel efficient cars even before the storm hit.

CARRIE LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. With gas close to $3 a gallon, no surprise people are going for smaller, more fuel efficient cars or even gas-electric hybrids. According to a J.D. Power & Associates unit, August saw a big increase in the number of van, SUV and luxury car owners who traded for smaller cars compared to last year. In fact, the number of those drivers buying smaller cars jumped by about a third. You can see the numbers there.

Now, if the goal is just to save money, though, buying an economy car or a hybrid may not be your best bet. The average hybrid costs about $3,500 more than the regular version of the same car. And the more people who want to buy them, the less of a deal you're likely to get -- basic laws of supply and demand. So you have to figure out how much you drive and really calculate the numbers.

Now, finally, if you have your heart set on a hybrid, it might pay to wait a while. The number of hybrids will more than double over the next few years and next year bigger tax breaks for buying a hybrid will be available to some buyers. So it could make a lot of sense to hold off a little while.

COSTELLO: It could be.

A quick look at the futures?

LEE: Yes. The futures looking up today. We did see a mixed session yesterday. Oil prices, though, below $65 a barrel. Consumer sentiment for September coming out today, expected to decline because of high energy prices.

COSTELLO: Got you. And the average price of a gallon of gas has not come out yet from AAA, but I'm watching.

LEE: Yes, we'll see if we are above that $3 a barrel -- a gallon mark again. Barrel, gallon.

COSTELLO: Yes, we understand.

Thank you, Carrie.

LEE: OK.

COSTELLO: Out of the destruction of hurricane Katrina comes a ray of hope. Perhaps a lot more than just one ray of hope. Some of the children evacuated to the Reliant Center in Houston are telling of their experiences in pictures. Volunteers got involved in what's now called the Katrina's Kid Project.

Joining us live is Janine Schueppert, who got adults involved in this kids' project.

Good morning, Janine.

JANINE SCHUEPPERT, COFOUNDER, KATRINA'S KIDS PROJECT: Good morning, Carol.

How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm fine.

Tell us about this.

How many kids participated and what did they do?

SCHUEPPERT: We've had, overall, about probably 500 to 600 kids participate in the program in about the past 10 days. It's sort of dwindling now as people are moving out of the shelters into more permanent housing.

COSTELLO: And you had them draw some pictures, and we have some examples of those pictures that we want to put up on our screen so our viewers can take a look.

SCHUEPPERT: OK.

COSTELLO: And they were drawing their experiences during the hurricane, when some of them were trapped in the City of New Orleans. And we see this is a rescue helicopter rescuing people.

SCHUEPPERT: Yes. The children really sort of sat down. And at first we sort of said come and sit down and draw with us. And we instantly saw what they wanted to draw about was their experiences during the hurricane and their experiences being rescued.

For some of them, it was the first time they really got to tell their story about what happened to them during the hurricane.

COSTELLO: And, you know, it's so hard for kids to express themselves sometimes. So maybe this is the best way to do it.

Here we can see a child drew flooded streets and flooded homes. And the interesting thing, I was listening to a series of interviews with children and a lot of them think they can still go home to their old house and it's what they yearn for, not realizing that that can never be.

SCHUEPPERT: It's really one of the tragic things of the situation. You know, they've been able to draw their house and express that it's been flooded, but if you'll notice, in a lot of the pictures, the sun is shining in the corner and they think the sun is going to come out tomorrow and they're going to be able to go home. And we're trying to help them sort of work through that. And a lot of them actually are really enjoying staying here in Texas, as well. So, you know, they see the bright side of things here and they want to stay for a while, until things settle down.

COSTELLO: And, you know, Janine, we always hear these stories about most of the people who came to Houston from New Orleans don't want to go back.

SCHUEPPERT: Yes.

COSTELLO: They want to make a new home in Houston. And as far as the kids are concerned, because, you know, they have to follow what the parents say, how do they feel about that?

SCHUEPPERT: Well, I think for a lot of them they're just sort of living day to day at this point. You know, they're -- the kids are actually reasonably happy in the shelters. They have other kids to play with and experience this all with people they've gone through it with. And, you know, it's going to be difficult when they're separated from that group of kids who have known what they've gone through and can work through it with them.

COSTELLO: What will happen to these pictures?

SCHUEPPERT: We are archiving them all on the Internet now. We are making a quilt out of them that we sort of hope to auction off to raise money for evacuee children. I got an interesting e-mail this morning from someone who said, "I hope you're taking great care with this material. You have captured, your group, the visual history of what happened after the greatest national disaster from the lives and eyes and hearts of children." They said this is Smithsonian stuff.

And I hadn't really, you know, thought that big on it. We, you know, we really wanted to capture a permanent record, but, you know, it is really sort of capturing it all. We are taking great care with all of the original art, to archive it.

COSTELLO: Oh, and, you know, Janine, you never know, it might end up in the Smithsonian one day.

SCHUEPPERT: Exactly.

COSTELLO: Janine Schueppert, thank you for joining us live this morning.

We appreciate it.

Now for a follow-up on a story we told you about yesterday.

Scientists and trainers were able to coax two of the wayward dolphins out of the Gulf of Mexico. We told you eight dolphins were washed out of their tank at the Gulfport Aquarium during hurricane Katrina. Well, now Tony and Jackie, the dolphins, are now living in a hotel pool. They're over at the Holiday Inn. The rescuers will go back out this morning to try and retrieve the others. And so far they're doing fine.

Still to come on DAYBREAK, rebuilding the Gulf Coast. President Bush promises it will be done, but how much will it cost us and how much will it cost him politically?

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