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American Morning

Mardi Gras Returns to New Orleans; Katrina: Six Months Later

Aired February 27, 2006 - 07:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Boisterous and bawdy. Mardi Gras returns to New Orleans, proving this is a city battered, but not broken. We revisit the Convention Center.
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: We want help!

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M. O'BRIEN: Where scenes of suffering and chaos shocked the world. And to Slidell, north of the city.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's one of the worst things I've ever seen.

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M. O'BRIEN: Decimated by Katrina. Today, still struggling for survival. And fighting for help from a government that let them down.

From the air and on the ground, assessing the recovery in the Gulf, six months later, on this special edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning. I'm Miles O'Brien, reporting live from Slidell, Louisiana. Four-thousand homes here still uninhabitable. We'll talk to some of the residents and the mayor in just a little bit -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And, Miles, we're at the Convention Center in New Orleans, and of course lots of Mardi Gras celebrations going on here. Let's show you some of the parades and actually some of the partying as well. Indimian (ph) was a big parade here. Let's roll some videotape where you can see the Blues Brothers in town actually partying in the Big Easy, Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi, of course the late brother of John Belushi, the original Blues Brothers. Dan and Jim were the grand marshals at last night's Indimian Parade, about 2,200 riders on 33 floats celebrating the 43rd anniversary. The theme there the legend and the lure of gold.

And after the parade, the floats rolled into the Convention Center, which is where we are, of course, because that's where the big ball as being kicked off.

There are many people, of course, though who say, while some people say let the good times roll, maybe the good times aren't here, and maybe those good times should not be rolling.

So a closer look now at why we are here, not only covering the Mardi Gras, but covering the story of the Gulf coast six months later.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Life goes on, you know? You got to get back to what you normally do, and that's what we're doing.

S. O'BRIEN: We return to the Gulf Coast six months after Hurricane Katrina decimated the region to see what's changed, what's improved, what's gotten worse, and where there's been progress or no progress. People are back, only a third New Orleans, but they seem determined and hopeful. Katrina was a great equalizer, making rich and poor, black and white, all victims.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It used to be a house there, like right around the corner down there, where I used to get my hair cut at. The house is still in the middle of the street.

S. O'BRIEN: Over the next few days, we'll visit the hardest hit places, place now rarely mentioned, like Pass Christian, Mississippi, where a town essentially vanished.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One day, I went out to jog and the street was gone.

S. O'BRIEN: We'll explore communities in Slidell, Louisiana where folks are returning and stores are reopening, and where you'll notice trailer after trailer perched just yards from where homes once stood.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The trailer is getting very small, very small. But it's a roof over our heads.

S. O'BRIEN: We'll explore communities like Renaissance Village, where strangers are neighbors now in tight-fitting rose of trailers.

We revisit some now infamous places, like the New Orleans Convention Center, a symbol a suffering from grief, a place now scrubbed top to bottom and given new life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the engine that runs the city.

S. O'BRIEN: And the levees, we'll get a bird's eye view and an update on just how secure they are now, and how strong they will be in the future.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those levees will probably hold a cat one. Another cat three, they definitely won't hold.

S. O'BRIEN: And finally, a look at the new normal, the baby steps, time taken to rebuild, a roof, a cafe reopening. And Mardi Gras. Some feel it's a sign of progress. Others say it's an insult.

(END VIDEOTAPE) S. O'BRIEN: Miles is not far from where I am, about 30 miles away. And, Miles, I'd be curious to know what the folks in Slidell, Louisiana think overall of the celebrations here in New Orleans, because certainly New Orleans is getting the bulk of the attention. Do they think Mardi Gras needs to go on, the folks you've talked to, or do they think that, in fact, it's a little bit of an insult?

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, it's a little bit of both actually, Soledad. On the one hand, everybody in this part of the world is a big believer in Mardi Gras and the carnival season. It's as important as Christmas or any other celebration that you would have throughout the course of the year, Thanksgiving. Whatever the case may be, it's an important part of the calendar.

Having said that, all of the attention on New Orleans does bother people here somewhat, because they are hurting, in many respects, just as much here; 10,000 homes here total -- 4,000 of them can't be lived in.

You're seeing some of the trailers here on this street. This person here, this man who is a police officer for Slidell, did some work on his home, has moved back into his home. He called up FEMA. He said take the trailer away. They said, call us back in a year. So the new worry here is maybe these trailers will never go away. Interesting.

But in this town, this city, they are taking incremental steps and trying to savor whatever progress they're making.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to Piccadilly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, thank you very much.

M. O'BRIEN: These days in Slidell, a cafeteria opening is something to celebrate, a mayoral photo op even.

MYR. BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL, LOUISIANA: It's just another movement, the city forward. You know, we've been kind of stuck in the mud for a while, but things are now happening, businesses coming back.

M. O'BRIEN: When we first met local legend and Mayor Ben Morris a few days after the storm, he was numb, barely able to process what happened to his city.

MORRIS: It's one of the worst things I've ever seen.

M. O'BRIEN: Now the former Army colonel sounds like he's in the middle of a long, hard campaign, where victory is measured one business, one government trailer, one mail truck, one day at a time.

MORRIS: Every day, it gets a little bit better. It's agonizingly slow, but it's moving.

M. O'BRIEN: The reminders of what once was Slidell are everywhere, a place where families and dreams flourished.

MORRIS: This is Salmon (ph) High School.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Salmon High School is beyond a cleanup. Bulldozers will soon mow it down.

MORRIS: If you kind of visualize what was going on here before, you know, it makes it not easy to really talk about, because it was a neat place at one time, full of kids.

M. O'BRIEN: Kids like Koy Nguyen (ph). This was his first post- Katrina peek inside the old high school, and it was an eye full.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The piano has, like, floated down on to the floor. It used to be up there.

M. O'BRIEN: Slidell is still littered with debris, and it threatens to clog an important drainage canal. The federal government promised to clean it up, but so far, it has not followed through.

Meanwhile, a key pumping station designed to keep the city dry remains in disrepair. That project tied up in red tape.

MORRIS: The process that we've gone through to get to where we right now defies logic. And -- but it defines bureaucracy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the mayor, like so many here, is still rebuilding his own home, trying to focus on what might be instead of what was.

When we saw him six months ago, he offered us a brave face.

MORRIS: This is just a bump in the road. A very bad bump in the road!

M. O'BRIEN: And while that might have been more wishful thinking than anything else, that is how they're getting by here, constantly adjusting their expectations to match a grim reality.

MORRIS: Normal is a new definition. We haven't figured out what it's going to be yet, but we're getting there. And the city is looking better, a little better every day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: In about 25 minutes, we'll talk to the mayor, Ben Morris, live. He'll be with us, and we'll ask him why he thinks this is the forgotten city. We're doing our best this morning to try to change that, at least in some small way.

Now, Soledad, I had a chance to be a member of a krewe last night. This is my first Mardi Gras.

S. O'BRIEN: I heard about that! Yes, how was it?

M. O'BRIEN: You know, well, this is the way to do Mardi Gras, I've decided. You get up there on the float there. There you see Walter and Parado (ph), and there I am...

S. O'BRIEN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Throwing beads at the camera there. And you know, I didn't quite understand this whole thing until I did it. There's something intoxicating about being on that float and people saying, hey, mister, throw me something! And the beads just -- the whole city lit up with excitement. It really was interesting. It's such a psychological boost. And I have never...

S. O'BRIEN: I like your bead-throwing technique, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: I was doing the frisbee routine. What do you think? I don't know.

S. O'BRIEN: That is pretty much what it looks like. Hey, what was the theme of the float that you were on?

M. O'BRIEN: The theme was "all that jazz," but we didn't do any of all of that jazz stuff. We just threw beads, and it was truly amazing. I'm not a big parade person, but this parade is something, and it is truly interactive in every respect. Without the crowd, it doesn't work; without the floats, it doesn't work. I really enjoyed it. And the Bacchus krewe couldn't have been more extraordinarily nice to us, because we were, after all, interlopers on their float.

We'll have more of our trip through the streets of New Orleans tossing beads in my fine pink garb there!

S. O'BRIEN: Did they let you keep the outfit?

M. O'BRIEN: They actually let me keep it, yes. And I was thinking about wearing it this morning, but I wasn't sure if that would be appropriate.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, we're talking about Hurricane Katrina and the recovery six months later. The man who is in charge of the Gulf Coast recovery, Donald Powell, is going to join us, give us his assessment just ahead.

Ad we talked to a woman who spent many a night here at the Convention Center, let her walk through again. First time since six months since she's been back, and get a look how she feels six months later as well.

That's ahead this morning -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad, the mayor of Slidell, Louisiana is a guy who doesn't mince words, and he's had some choice words for the federal government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We'll get a status report from him in just a few minutes as AMERICAN MORNING special edition from the Gulf region continues. Stay with us.

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S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. You can see behind these stats certainly a lot of the damage, a lot of the recovery, a long way to go for many people.

Donald Powell is the man who, essentially, is charged with a very big task, and that task, of course, is overseeing the recovery of the Gulf Coast.

It is a big, big job. How do you think it's going six months out?

DONALD POWELL, FED. COORD., GULF COAST REBUILDING: Well, I think there's much to be done, Soledad, but I think there have been some things, some progress made. Schools are open. Hospitals are open. Most of the infrastructure is in place. The ports are working. The refineries are up. Gas-gathering systems are going. Oil production is up. So there's many, many things that have done right -- been done right.

S. O'BRIEN: When I walk around here -- and I spent a lot of time here right after the hurricane struck -- I'm struck by how much better it looks. I mean, they talk about how they're really ahead of schedule for cleaning up.

But then you go into places like Pearlington, Mississippi and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. You go into the Ninth Ward, you go into St. Bernard Parish, and literally, to me, it looks as if there's no progress. I mean, maybe you see a FEMA trailer here or there, but it really does not look any better.

POWELL: I was in Mississippi yesterday and I was in the Ninth Ward yesterday. A point of reference, I was -- I've been down here maybe six, seven, eight, maybe half a dozen times, a dozen times. And I think you have to make sure that your point of reference was your last visit. So there has been progress that has been done, but, clearly, there's much to be done.

S. O'BRIEN: My understanding is that there's something like 126,000 trailers that need to be delivered to -- and 45,000 of those trailers have been delivered to people. So there's a bunch of people who are still waiting for FEMA trailers.

POWELL: That's true.

S. O'BRIEN: What's the delay? I mean, can you tell me when the people who are waiting for a trailer are going to get one?

POWELL: I cannot. The folks at FEMA are better equipped to answer that.

But what I can tell you, that there's been in excess of 700,000 people that have been provided shelter, homes since the hurricane. S. O'BRIEN: How do you deal with the flood issues? I mean, people will say, I don't know whether to rebuild because they tell me my house now has to be 25 feet above flood level. I mean, that's a huge problem. So it sort of slows down the recovery and the rebuilding if you don't know what you're going to have to do before you can rebuild.

POWELL: Sure. Well, the most important thing is for our people to be safe. I think we would all agree that it's important that people be safe, and that any construction be out of harm's way.

The flood maps will be out sometime at the end of March, first part of April, so people will know what those flood maps indicate.

S. O'BRIEN: There are people in Renaissance Village, we got a chance to take a look. It's clean as a trailer park goes. It's perfectly fine. They're not giant, fabulous trailers, but they're serviceable, but they're supposed to be temporary housing. And if they don't know where they're going to go, how can you possibly have it be 18 months long temporary housing?

POWELL: Well, it's important that, again, that the flood maps be out where people can see those, so they will build and build out of harm's way. I'm convinced that the flood maps will be out shortly, and that people will begin to start construction of new homes after the plans have been developed by the local people, and that's important. The plans need to be developed at the local people where the housing -- where people can be safe.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, we were in St. Bernard Parish, and you can see where the cypress trees have died. But clearly -- and they all died way before Hurricane Katrina, because salt water got into the marshes, which killed off everything, which meant that they had left protection.

What happens environmentally? I mean, what's going to be done to see if there are ways to protect these regions, which are so beautiful, but, now, completely unprotected?

POWELL: Right. Environmental issues are very, very important to this issue, as well as other areas. And there are a lot of people that are directing their energies to making sure that the environment is clean and safe.

S. O'BRIEN: Chairman Powell, or Director Powell, I know they call you both, thank you for talking with us.

POWELL: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: I certainly appreciate it. I know you have a big job ahead. Good luck. And we'll continue to check in with you.

POWELL: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: We've got much more coverage of course. In a little bit, we're going to talk to a woman who spent a lot of time here at the Convention Center, four terrible days. She'll talk to us about her experience. And of course tomorrow, we're here all day. 6:00 a.m., we start our coverage Eastern Time, going through 1:00 in the afternoon, right here on CNN, on Fat Tuesday. So that's all ahead -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad, in just a little while, we're going to check in with the mayor of Slidell, Louisiana. He's really concerned -- well, we got a lot of issues, of course, post-Katrina, but one of them is what happens when the spring rains come? He has a pumping station that doesn't work, and he's got several canals and bayous that are clogged with debris, can't afford to clean it up.

We'll check in with him in the place he calls the forgotten city, in just a moment.

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(MARKET REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: You know, it's cold here, and I'm enjoying a very warm cup of coffee, courtesy of Michelle McClaney (ph), who happens to be right over there in her house, watching AMERICAN MORNING.

Wave to us, Michelle. Thank you very much for that delicious cup of Joe. We are really appreciating. She's an American morning fan now, I think, for life. We'll have to get her a CNN mug.

There she is! She's watching us right now.

Thank you, Michelle. We appreciate that.

Very hospitable people here in Slidell. They're actually -- at first, they were a little bit suspicious when we fired up the generator. Then when they realized we were hear to tell America about Slidell, they were quite happy we were here.

The mayor feels the same way, because he says he feels a little bit forgotten amid all the talk about New Orleans. We'll talk to him in just a little bit.

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