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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Aired August 31, 2005 - 22:00   ET

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

AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Or it doesn't get any worse. I'm not sure which it is.
Actually, the senator, just at the end there, said quit a remarkable thing. She said, "The military is coming. Get here fast." Apparently not quickly enough, as it turns out.

Larry, thank you.

Good evening, again, everyone. It became clear today that the Gulf Coast is facing the type of crisis we expect to see in a developing country, not the richest country in the world.

It is a natural disaster combined with some very human misbehavior. Police in the city of New Orleans, 1,500 of them, have now been called off their search-and-rescue work to simply deal with the lawlessness in the city. Things spiraling, it appears, towards some sort of chaos.

Three days after Katrina hit, the magnitude of the disaster is now painfully obvious. It's clear that life will not be the same for millions of people anytime soon.

Across the region, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, lives forever changed, homeless everywhere. Nowhere is that more apparent, of course, than New Orleans, now a city of displaced people, refugees.

Many are still waiting to be rescued. Many are sick. The city they call home is no longer safe enough to live in.

There are so many difficulties facing New Orleans tonight. It's hard to know where to begin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): In a city drowning, one sentence today above all others told the story: "Hundreds, most likely thousands, are dead."

The mayor spoke those words. The dead are in houses flooded out. They are floating in the waters that own the streets. They are un- retrievable because the authorities cannot get to them, even if they had the time, which they don't. It takes all the city has to find the living.

LT. CRAIG O'BRIEN, U.S. COAST GUARD: Words cannot describe what you see when flying over this city, especially at night. Hundreds and hundreds of flashlights are signaling us, strobe lights, flares. It's a tough situation for a search-and-rescue professional.

BROWN: Three thousand rescued so far, hundreds more waiting. And they will wait again, through another night, at least. So will most of the 20,000 people still cooped up in the once-grand Superdome, now a disaster area of its own.

A convoy of buses has started taking them to Houston to the Astrodome, where they will live for who knows how long. Many weeks, certainly.

GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: I want those stranded families to know that the doors of Texas public schools are going to be immediately opened to their school-age children.

BROWN: It is an enormous challenge to evacuate an entire, large, American city, a city with few passable roads, with no power, gas, communications. But go, they must, 15,000 a day or more. The city is unlivable.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO (D), LOUISIANA: It's a logistical nightmare. But what we have done is identified shelters in other parts of the state. Communities are ready to receive these people to help them out. We've got to make their living conditions a little more decent.

BROWN: And there is this, a certain lawlessness that has set in. Looting continued today, because it's hard for police to stop it. They have nowhere to put the people they arrest. So it goes on.

BLANCO: What angers me the most is that, usually, disasters like this bring out the best in everybody. And that's what we expected to see. And now we've got people that it's bringing out the worst in. And we're going to restore law and order.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This recovery will take a long time. This recovery will take years.

BROWN: The president returned to Washington today amid some criticism the federal government has not acted quickly enough, not provided enough. How valid the complaints are will be sorted out down the road. Today was about promises.

BUSH: The Department of Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000 truckloads containing 5.4 million meals ready to eat, or MREs, 14.5 million liters of water, 10,400 tarps, 3.4 million pounds of ice, 144 generators, 20 containers of pre-positioned disaster supplies, 135,000 blankets, and 11,000 cots. And we're just starting.

BROWN: But it's not there now, not yet. What is there now is misery. The sick and the frail, the desperate. Jeffrey Williams is a doctor at Charity Hospital.

DR. JEFFREY WILLIAMS, CHARITY HOSPITAL, NEW ORLEANS: A couple have died. And a couple people have gotten worse. So we have, you know, approximately 50 people we need to get out of here.

We are running out of time, though. We don't have water. We have a number of patients who need dialysis urgently. And we can't run those machines without water.

BROWN: The Army is setting up 40 field hospitals at the airport in New Orleans. The Red Cross bringing in satellite telephones. A city isolated is trying to reconnect.

The simple truth is, tonight, New Orleans is a city of refugees, people who lost homes, lost businesses, lost jobs, lost schools. Two to three months before people can live there again, that long before there is power, maybe six months before the water is gone. Think about that. February.

MICHAEL BROWN, FEMA DIRECTOR: We understand that you don't have access to your banks. You probably don't have access to your checkbooks. You don't have access to anything.

And so, we're going to ask you, for the time being, to turn to the American Red Cross, the charities, Salvation Army, local churches, others who can provide for your immediate needs.

BROWN: Most all the misery has been caused by the failure of the levees to hold back the water. Levees failed. Pumping stations failed. The system the city counted on, has always counted on, failed. The best that can be said for now is that the worst of the flooding seems over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The good news here is that we've stabilized. Water is not rising in the city. And, in fact, since yesterday, the lake has reduced its level by two feet. Hopefully, by high tide tonight, we may not even see the effect of high tide.

BROWN: Small hope where there has been little, but even small hopes are better than none.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That is the broad picture tonight. Over the next two hours, all of the individual pieces of the puzzle that form that picture, beginning with the public safety question.

As we said, the mayor tonight ordered 1,500 police officers -- that's virtually all of the New Orleans Police Department -- to cease their search-and-rescue operations and go back to fighting crime, especially the looting. That is the sort of devil's choice the city is having to make.

CNN's Chris Lawrence is in New Orleans now with the latest developments on that. He joins us now -- Chris?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, you mentioned the danger from Mother Nature, from the flooding like that. There's another danger here in New Orleans tonight, and it's from some of the people who are still here. Right now, it is pitch black. It's still flooding here on Canal Street. The water's much higher in other areas. And there are people walking around the city with guns, armed with guns.

There has been just massive looting here in New Orleans. As I was driving in, I saw it. People smashing windows. Throughout the city, there's just been people taking things out of stores. Some of the police officers say several hardware stores have been raided. The guns were taken out of those stores.

And people are afraid. They hear something like that, you know, all this looting, how dangerous it is, and rumors get started, because there's no communication. They can't get on the cell phone. They can't find out what's going on.

We saw a lot of people just streaming out of the Superdome, where they had been holed up for several days, you know, thousands and thousands of people just living on top of each other, with very little food. The water running very low.

We saw them literally just walking down the road, entire families, mothers with their children, just walking, trying to literally walk out of the city, and very, very afraid of how they were going to get there.

And because of that lack of communication, you've got all kinds of rumors. One person told us that there was a dead body in the Superdome. Another man said several women had been raped inside there.

It's so hard to figure out what's going on, because you look around, it's pitch black. There's no communication. It's nothing like you would expect a major American city to be -- Aaron?

BROWN: Well, it's nothing like a major American city has ever experienced.

Chris, I want to try to bring you back to the public safety questions for a minute. When you're out on the street, and you're seeing this looting going on, has there been a visible police presence?

LAWRENCE: I got to say, in most cases, no. They are here. But, as one police officer said, "We don't need police here. This needs to be a military action right now." This police officer felt like this was just way too much for his police force to take on.

As I was driving in here by myself, I mean, I passed several spots that were looting. And as I passed one, I could hear two gunshots come out. I don't know if they were shooting directly at me, but people have guns. They are shooting.

That was broad daylight. And they're much more worried about it like it is now, here at night. One of the police officers told me that, you know, sometimes they'll see people and they'll have guns tucked in their waist bands, but they're not going to necessarily confront them, because, at this point, sometimes you've got a single officer, and you've got eight, ten people passing him.

He's not going to confront those men and get into, like, some sort of shoot out there on the street. These police officers are trying to do the best they can, but they tell me they're overwhelmed.

BROWN: It sounds like they are. Chris, thank you, Chris Lawrence, who is in New Orleans tonight.

It's hard to get a handle on some of this, OK? That's the truth of it. I mean, it's hard to give you a great sense of how widespread the looting has been.

We saw one report where the chief of police himself ran off some looters. And, in any case, all 1,500 police officers -- that's virtually the entire police force in the city of New Orleans -- has been told, "Stop the search-and-rescue operation and get into the downtown areas of the city, the areas of the city where the looting is going on, and deal with it." And part of the problem with that, to be truthful, is there's no place to put people you arrest.

Jefferson Parish is just outside New Orleans. It is also flooded out. Roads closed by flooding. There is some looting and lawlessness there. And we're joined by Deano Bonano, the chief of emergency operations in the parish. Parishes are like counties. I think it's probably the simplest way to put it.

Tell me, just give me a sense of how bad this lawlessness is in your parish?

DEANO BONANO, CHIEF OF EMERGENCY OPERATIONS, JEFFERSON PARISH: Well, it's not quite as bad as New Orleans. But we don't have the desperation that you have in New Orleans. Most of Jefferson is dry now. While most of the roads are impassable, the sheriffs office and the local police departments here in Jefferson are out patrolling in force.

And a good 70 percent of the population did evacuate the parish prior to the storm. We have almost a half a million people in Jefferson, and most of them heeded the warnings to get out. But we do have some problems with looting.

I can tell you, last night, midnight, when I got off duty, I went to go check on my house and actually ran four looters out of my neighborhood. So it is going on.

BROWN: Wow. Look, theft is theft. And I don't want the question here to be misconstrued to be somehow excusing theft. But do you have any sense of people who are breaking into stores because they have no food, they have no water, and they need both. And how many people are stealing guns, and beer, and sneakers, and what have you?

BONANO: I think you have more of that going on than people looking for food. The parish, believe it or not, has taken the extreme step of actually going to grocery stores and commandeering the food to feed the population, while we wait for some federal help to come in and assist us. So we're doing everything we can to feed the population that still exists here today. Most of what we're seeing are people breaking in homes and stores to get jewelry, TVs, et cetera.

BROWN: That's just crime. It's inexcusable, appalling crime.

BONANO: Right. They're taking advantage of the situation, where law enforcement can't get to many areas because the streets are blocked by downed trees and poles and know we can't get in there, so they're walking in there and taking it out on foot.

BROWN: You got a jail to put people in?

BONANO: Yes, but realize that the situation at our prison is very bad right now. We don't have running water. We don't have electricity. It's hot. That's almost near-riot situations in the prison. We're looking at a place to evacuate our prisoners out of town.

BROWN: Do you have the manpower -- do you need the National Guard in the parish to help you keep control of things?

BONANO: Absolutely. Today, you know, we are asking for more and more Guardsmen all the time. But today, we do have armed Guardsmen with M-16s guarding the major infrastructure of the parish, like the water plants, the sewer plants, and all to keep, you know, rioters from coming in and stealing what little fuel we have in this parish so we can get things up and running.

BROWN: I don't want to overstate anything here. I try not to. It sounds like scenes out of Baghdad in the first hours after Saddam fell.

Are you surprised it took as long as it did, if, in fact, you think it took long to get the National Guard in?

BONANO: I think it took longer to get the National Guard armed troops in. The National Guard was here very early with equipment and manpower, engineering battalions, et cetera, to help us restore our infrastructure.

What's taken longer is getting the actual armed troops in. And that may be a result of the fact that most of our armed troops, a lot of our armed reserves, are in Iraq. I don't know if they have the manpower to send us.

BROWN: They say they do. And that's an interesting observation. Someday we'll know for sure where the truth of all that lies.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Sir, let me ask it this way. If things stay as they are, do you believe that the parish will -- let's say, in a day or two -- be a safe -- it's obviously not going to be normal -- but will it be a safe place that will not require soldiers with M-16s on the street? BONANO: No, I do not. Part of the problem is, many of the evacuees from New Orleans are being dropped off in Jefferson. We do not have the resources as a local government to create, essentially, large refugee camps for our people, you know, that have no resources to take care of themselves.

And so those people -- they're desperate people. They're hungry. They have nothing to eat. They have no clothes on their back. They have no shelter. They're going to go out and do what's necessary to feed themselves. And the federal government ought to be in here, taking those people to some place and taking care of them.

BROWN: I apologize for a couple of these. How many people normally live in the parish?

BONANO: In Jefferson?

BROWN: Yes.

BONANO: About a half a million.

BROWN: How many people you think are there tonight?

BONANO: Of our residents?

BROWN: Yes.

BONANO: I'm going to say somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000.

BROWN: How many police officers do you have?

BONANO: Between local government and the actual parish government itself, I'm going to say somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 or 4,000, between reserve and full-time police officers.

BROWN: I think we all understand that what happened, to some degree -- I mean, it's obviously unprecedented -- and to some degree unanticipated. They talk about gaming a Category 5 hurricane hitting the area. I don't know that anyone thought it would quite play out the way it has.

Do you think that the people there are fearful?

BONANO: Well, they are now. That's for sure.

BROWN: Yes.

BONANO: They may not have been before, but they are now. You know, this is almost like a scene from a movie. It's surreal to see the landscape as it is today, with this wave of humanity wandering around on foot. It's something I don't think anybody could have in their wildest dreams fathom.

BROWN: Thanks for your time tonight. I know you have better things to do than talk to us. And we appreciate it. And, you know, everybody who's heard you tonight, I think, has a much better idea of how desperate places are, how desperate situations are, and that helps our understanding of the story.

And hopefully, ultimately, that will help people take some action to make things better. Thank you for your time.

That's Jefferson Parish, Jefferson County. Parish is a term they use in Louisiana. And that is a pretty ugly scene.

And just consider for a second, now, that's outside New Orleans. New Orleans, by all accounts, is a much, much more difficult place tonight.

Coming up, the Army Corps of Engineers trying to plug the gaps in the levees that have failed.

But first, at about 20 past the hour -- almost 20 past the hour -- there were a number of major stories today beyond the hurricane and the aftermath of the hurricane. Erica Hill joins us in Atlanta tonight with some of those headlines -- Erica?

ERICA HILL, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hi, Aaron. And we start off with one that -- really unbelievable, happening in Iraq and Baghdad. A rumor, we're being told, may have started a stampede that killed nearly 1,000 people and injured more than 400. Authorities say the crowd, which was crossing a bridge during a religious procession, panicked after a rumor that a suicide bomber was about to strike.

Anti war protester Cindy Sheehan has now ended her vigil near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq, will campaign for peace in 25 states during the next three weeks. Her tour ends with an anti war march in Washington on September 24th.

And gas gouging -- woo, let me tell you. I saw some of it first- hand today. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue says those who try it in this state will be punished. And that comes amid reports some gas stations in parts of Atlanta have pushed prices up -- actually, we saw prices above $6 a gallon.

There are long lines across the Atlanta area. Customers worried about shortages in the aftermath of Katrina. That's because the pipeline that brings 90 percent of Georgia's gas was knocked out.

And a senior figure at the Food and Drug Administration has resigned over the agency's decision to postpone over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraception Plan B. Assistant commissioner Susan Wood said her position was no longer tenable because scientific and clinical evidence, Aaron, had been overruled.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. I saw -- you probably saw this, too, in fact -- this thing's starting to spread out. There's concern that, because of the oil situation, that some airports, including yours in Atlanta, may run out of jet fuel if they don't figure out a way to get fuel in.

HILL: Absolutely.

BROWN: It is a very messy situation. We'll talk to you in about a half an hour, give or take. Thank you, Erica Hill in Atlanta.

Much more ahead on the crisis in the Gulf Coast of the United States, starting with one of the biggest problems facing the city of New Orleans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've got an engineering nightmare.

BROWN (voice-over): A nightmare of unparalleled proportion. Can the broken levees that let in the water be repaired?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to, or we're going to lose New Orleans and lose thousands of people there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This afternoon, I've declared a public health emergency for the entire Gulf region.

BROWN: Tens of thousands of people at risk. A race against time, just to keep them alive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thank God (INAUDIBLE) where we come to the shelter.

BROWN: With government shelters overflowing, churches stepping in to fill the gap.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're looking until at least the end of September and maybe much longer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just have no job, no home, no vehicle. All we have is our life. And I don't like living it like this.

BROWN: So many unknowns and so many questions. Why is help taking so long to arrive?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need help now, not tomorrow, but right now. We need somebody here right now.

BROWN: From New York, a special edition of NEWSNIGHT.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Senator David Vitter is a Republican senator from the state of Louisiana. He joins us now on the phone.

Senator, I know you're hearing a lot of this tonight, that there is a frustration that's building up, a sense that the federal government has responded too slowly and with too little.

SEN. DAVID VITTER (R), LOUISIANA: Well, we were concerned about that for days, and I think we cured that today. There's going to be a massive federal response, which is happening as we speak, all sorts of assets, including military assets, including military police, National Guardsmen, going to the New Orleans area.

BROWN: Senator, do you...

VITTER: So, hopefully, we're going to see the positive impact of that very, very, very soon.

BROWN: Senator, I apologize for interrupting. Do you think that people -- and this is understandable, when you consider how this thing played out -- simply misunderstood, particularly Monday, midday through Monday night, misunderstood the magnitude of the catastrophe that was unfolding?

VITTER: Well, I think late Monday, after the storm had passed, everybody knew it was catastrophic and essentially unprecedented. Everybody planned for that.

But Tuesday and Tuesday night, people began to understand, even having done that, we have to double or triple it. So I think that's what we're talking about. This is so unprecedented and off-the-wall, in so many ways, that, even though everyone assumed it was historic, we still needed to throw a lot more resources at it.

BROWN: How concerned are you about the law and order situation, the sense of chaos, whether it's in New Orleans -- we just talked to the emergency operations people in Jefferson Parish. They have a hell of a problem on their hands.

VITTER: Everybody's concerned about that. And a lot more National Guard, military police, others, are going into the metropolitan area because of that.

BROWN: The mayor in New Orleans has pulled all his -- pretty much all -- 1,500 police officers away from search-and-rescue into dealing with law and order, which means -- I mean, it's a terrible choice to have to make. And I'm glad I'm not the one that has to make that choice. But it does speak to the gravity of the situation.

VITTER: Sure, absolutely. Really, I think what's happening broad-brush is a huge number of federal assets, unprecedented, including military assets, are coming in for evacuation, rescue, supplies. And then a lot of other things, New Orleans police, Louisiana National Guard, MPs from around the country, National Guards around the country, are coming in for security. So that's very broad- brush, the sort of game plan, division of labor.

BROWN: It's hard to look at all of this, I think, and not have a broken heart, if you love the city and you love the area. And I know you do. We appreciate your time tonight. Thank you, sir.

VITTER: Thank you.

BROWN: We'll talk with the head of FEMA after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Quick reset for those of you just joining us. It became clear today that this hurricane recovery would be unlike anything we've ever seen. The sheer number of people that have been displaced, their lives overturned, is one piece of it. It is an enormous piece. Those who survived the storm are now facing the kinds of problems we expect in the underdeveloped world. Where to stay. Where is the clean water. Where their children will go to school. If they will go to school. Well will tomorrow bring.

For some, it will bring a 330-mile journey by bus. Thousands of people who have been living, and we put the word in quotes, at the Superdome in New Orleans will move to the Astrodome in Houston over the next couple of days. It's about a twelve hour trip. The first bus is expected about 1:00 in the morning or between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning. Getting the medical care to many who need it is another priority. A race against time.

The Bush administration today declared a public a public health emergency in the Gulf Coast region. And now plans to set up 40 medical shelters in the area. Temporary hospitals, providing 10,000 beds. FEMA, as you would expect, has placed all units of its Natural Disaster Medical System on alert mobilizing many of them. The response from the federal government another measure of the scope of what has happened. Earlier today, the president announced that Michael Brown, who is the director of FEMA, will be in charge of the federal response on the ground in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And Mr. Brown joins us now from Baton Rouge. It's good to see him.

I know you're hearing the same kinds of things from people that we're hearing today. So it won't surprise you when I ask you if you underestimated, particularly Monday, the gravity of the situation in New Orleans and the area?

MICHAEL BROWN, DIRECTOR FEMA: You know, Aaron, I anticipated that would be the question you asked. And during the break I was thinking about it, and I was just asking my staff, reminding me about when we came down here. I remember we started ramping up last Friday. And then during Saturday, I started getting the reports in from the National Hurricane Center. Sunday we made the decision to get in here and preposition assets.

And I remember waking up Monday morning and having just this gut feel that it was going to be worse than we even anticipated. I remember calling Max Mayfield that morning and talking about what kind of reports he was getting. And I just knew in my gut and my heart Monday morning this thing would continue to grow, even after it made landfall and continued to move into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

Unfortunately, I was right. So all of those things that we had prepositioned to move in for a normal disaster response was not enough. And we needed to move more equipment and more teams in. So we started doing that immediately. We then found out, unfortunately, that we were having as much of a difficult time getting in, as the people were getting out. And that's why today, the president said all hands on deck. Every cabinet department, every agency, the military. We're going to do whatever it takes. I've got the resources that I need now. And we're moving full steam ahead. BROWN: Let's work through some of that. I heard you say earlier that you ran, I think a couple of years ago, computer models on what a Cat 5 hurricane would do. That you exercised this problem over the last year. Did you anticipate that 20,000, 25,000 people would be, essentially, refugees in the Superdome? That there wouldn't be power there for them? That there wouldn't be facilities there for them? That you'd have to move them out of the area? Were you that specific in the way you worked these problems?

M. BROWN: We went from the absolutely very worst, down to what we thought would be the absolute very best conditions for a hurricane. And we did recognized that there would be people that would not evacuate, that there would be people that could not evacuate. And that we would have to deal with that. I think what we did not anticipate was that there would be quite the numbers that we are dealing with. And that we would have the logistical problems that we're having getting those people evacuated. And in addition to the levee breaks -- the levee breaks have been much more widespread than we anticipated, spreading the flooding throughout the metropolitan area, so that in essence the mayor is right, we have to, literally, shut down the city of New Orleans.

BROWN: The -- was it a mistake not to send in military police, the National Guard and military police -- there actually have been, in fairness, and all of this is with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight. But there were National Guards people in mostly doing civilian affairs kinds of work, not law enforcement kind of work. In hindsight, that seems to have been a mistake?

M. BROWN: Well, it may have been. But you know what? Tonight's not the night that we're going to deal with that. That's what we'll deal with in the aftermath, when we start doing our studies of how we can do things better. We're still focused right now on making certain that we save every life that we can that's still out there. That those people that have been rescued, that we get them to places.

And as I heard you during your introduction, talking about now we have the issues of schools. We have the issue if housing. We have all of those issues. Those are the things that we're focused on right now. And, you know, I'd be happy to come back to you later sometimes, next year, whatever, and talk about what learned and what we're going to do different. And it's getting my teams in place to do that long term recovery that we're going to have to do to rebuild New Orleans.

BROWN: That's fair enough. So, I'll put it in my date book. And we'll get back to you on the other stuff. Let's look ahead to other problems that clearly need to be solved. Basically, a major American city needs to be evacuated. Which means these people have to go live somewhere. How do we pay for that? How do we -- where do we put them? You're really going to have people living in the Astrodome for three, four months?

M. BROWN: No. I'm not going to have people in the Astrodome for three or four months. We are putting together with not only government officials but with the private sector also, of doing a massive housing project. And that's going to be -- as I think the president said this morning on the conference call that I was on with him, that there's no idea that's too crazy to not consider right now. So I'm looking at every possibly idea of how to do this. And, I suppose in the media, I don't want to tell you some of the crazy ideas I've heard, because I may actually end up using some of those crazy ideas.

BROWN: Believe me. My e-mail box, sir, is full of them. Some don't sound so crazy. On Wednesday, as crazy as they sounded on Monday. And people talk about cruise ships. using cruise ships to house people. That doesn't sound like a terrible idea.

M. BROWN: Well, in fact, I will tell you that that's one of the ideas that this very evening that we're working on. And we're talking to the cruise ship lines. And we may have something to announce in the next couple of days about that.

BROWN: What else is in the area, plausible, and not wacky in terms of how, I mean, it takes awhile to build a house, obviously. Are we going to see tent cities sprouting up?

M. BROWN: Well if we do see tent cities, that's going to be a very short-term, temporary affair. Because I just do not want tent cities out there for any length of time. But we have to be realistic. This is a catastrophic disaster. This is not your run of the mill disaster, where you have a small population where you have what's not, I mean, let's face it we have a major disaster, in a major American city that's covered 80 to 90 percent of this city. So we may have to put people in tents, temporarily. But I, personally, don't want to see that last very, long.

BROWN: We've only got you for a couple more minutes. Let me run some other things by you. Do you have any sense of an emerging public health problem?

M. BROWN: Not yet. But we have teams that are out there doing that. And I've heard the reports in the media about, you know, the contamination. And why aren't we picking up bodies right now? That's going to be a health issue. We recognize that. But our primary, and, Aaron, I just can't emphasize this enough. Our primary response right now in New Orleans, in the other parishes outside New Orleans, in Mississippi, we can't forget Mississippi, and some of those areas of Alabama, are to save lives. That's the first thing we have to do. We'll start cleaning up the water. We will retrieve those bodies, treat them with the respect they deserve, get them back to their families, and deal with the contamination issues, once we get through this life-saving mission that we're in right now.

BROWN: Do you think by, just a final question, sir, do you think by this weekend we will look at this and it will be a much more stable situation than it is right now?

M. BROWN: Well that's my objective. I mean, every disaster has a cyberspace. And we're going through the second or third stage of this particular disaster. And I've now got the teams. I've got the equipment. I've got the oomph behind me right now to get this done. And so you're going to start seeing, I mean, there will always be complaints always be concerns. But we'll see a stabilizing affect. And I think that's what the American people want. That's what they expect. I need the American people to recognize how catastrophic this is, to be patient and to work with this. We're going to start putting out calls eventually for certain types of volunteers and donations and that sort of thing. But in the meantime, recognize we're doing life- saving and life-sustaining efforts. That next phase is just about to start.

BROWN: Michael, we appreciate, as I told you earlier, your willingness to talk about all of the whole range of issues. Some of them easier than others. We know you haven't got much rest, either. And we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

M. BROWN: My pleasure, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you. Michael Brown is the director of FEMA. And he has the lead now. And I think it's important just to underscore, at least acknowledge, that in some respects they underestimated -- in some respects we all underestimated. They underestimated the catastrophe that was possible even with a Category 5 hurricane hitting a city that we knew was vulnerable. We have much more ahead in this special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT. We need to take a quick break first, and we shall. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wind is just starting to pick up.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A catastrophic hurricane.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Folks are obviously nervous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is supposed to be the easy side of the storm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not over yet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clearly the worst part of the storm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is basically like hell on earth.

ANNOUNCER: When the weather is the news, trust CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Unbelievable. Before anything can get better, New Orleans, at least in the kind of long-term way, the water has to go. It's going to take a long time. But for the water to go, the levees must first be fixed. In a city sorely lacking in transportation, communication and coordination, it is far less simple than it may sound.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROWN (voice-over): This city below sea level counts on a complex system of levees and pumps to keep it dry. They failed. It is that simple.

KATHLEEN BLANCO, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA: We've got an engineering nightmare, trying to fill the breach of the levee where the waters are pouring into the city.

BROWN: The first levee failure occurred Tuesday along the industrial canal, in the city's lower ninth ward. Homes quickly flooded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's no more. There are people on the roofs. 200 people had to be rescued. It's no more.

BROWN: The second levee to break was along New Orleans's 17th Street Canal holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. The water poured into the city through a hole two blocks long.

Another 300-foot-wide hole has appeared at the London Avenue Canal. In each case, water eroded the steel and the concrete levees from both the top and the bottom, until the structures, built decades ago, gave way.

COL. RICH WAGENAAR, NEW ORLEANS CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Two canals on the north side of the city against Lake Pontchartrain have 200 and 300-foot holes in them. Lake Pontchartrain was draining back into, in reverse into the canals and flowing back into the city of New Orleans.

BROWN: Tonight, the water level of the city matches the water level in the lake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The good news here is that we've stabilized. Water is not rising in the city.

On Tuesday, efforts to plug the holes had to be suspended in favor of rescue operations. By Wednesday, the Army Corps of Engineers said it would try again to patch the levees by dropping 15,000-pound sandbags from chinook helicopters.

WALTER BAUMY, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: We're bringing in large sandbags and other materials to try to get some initial material into the breach and close it.

BROWN: But like everything else in the city right now, logistics are challenging. They don't have enough helicopters. And they don't have enough sandbags. All they have is an idea that might work. And even that is just a start.

MICHAEL ZUMSTEIN, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: As the lake recedes, we will systematically in key places, go ahead, peel back the levee, allow it to start draining off. This gains -- this is much for effective and much faster than bumps. But we still need the pumps in order to fully drain the city.

BROWN: No one seems to know how long that might take. Too long, certainly.

SIDNEY BARTHELEMY, FRM. MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS: We have to stop the breaches in the levee. We have to. Or we're going to lose New Orleans and lose thousands of people there. I believe there are about 80,000 people that are trapped in the city right now. And if we don't solve this problem, we will lose those people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Imagine what it has been like in a city without power, without water, to work in a hospital trying to keep people alive, literally keep them alive under those conditions. I'll talk to a doctor in a moment. First, at about a quarter to the hour, time to check some of the other news of the day. Erica Hill joins us again in Atlanta -- Ms. Hill.

HILL: Hi again, Aaron. An American soldier died in an attack near Samarra today, bringing the American death toll to 82 for the month of August. It stands at 1,881 since the war in Iraq began.

Well, what Congress says best is nothing. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts took that pot shot at lawmakers, while a Reagan administration lawyer, according to just released National Archive documents. Roberts also suggested Congressman Leo Ryan who was killed while investigating the commune of cult leader Jim Jones was a, quote, publicity hound.

On the CNN "Security Watch" for you tonight, four suspects charged with planting terrorist attacks in the Los Angeles area and sources say prisons are suspected now of being recruited grounds for terrorists.

And Luis Posada Carriles, he's a Cuban-born former CIA operative. Well, now he's withdrawn his petition for asylum in the U.S. You may remember hearing about this story in the last couple of months. He now says he doesn't want to have to reveal state secrets.

Posada, who was involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, has been accused of trying to assassinate Fidel Castro. He will instead now try to remain in the in the U.S. on the basis of his military record, Aaron.

BROWN: Erica, thank you. Thank you for your work today and this week. It's been a difficult week all around.

Ahead on the program, we'll take you inside a hospital in New Orleans, give you a sense what it has been like for the medical staff and for the patients. It has been exhausting and difficult and often frustrating work. We'll take a break first. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Since Monday, Dr. Ruth Bergrgen has been working without electricity or running water, at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. She and her colleagues, God bless them, have been working around the clock desperately trying to save lives, even manually operating ventilators to keep people breathing. She joins us now on the telephone. She's been evacuating patients today. Just describe what it was like in there. Was it dark? Was it frightening to you? What was going on?

DR. RUTH BERGGREN, CHARITY HOSPITAL: During the storm itself, there was a pretty impressive howling of wind outside. And I must say that the building that we are in held together very well. The extraordinary thing was the amount of water that came in. Our windows did not break. But the water was just pouring in on the ninth floor windows and flooding the floors. And because of that, this was happening on every floor of the hospital. Flooded floors lead to dropping ceiling tiles. So it was a little bit dicey making rounds the next morning. We had to dodge large puddles of water. Towels that were mopping up the water. And ceiling tiles that were falling on our heads.

BROWN: Yes. Different, obviously -- patients are in different conditions. Some more critical than others. How do you deal with the most critically ill? Modern medicine is dependent on electricity and refrigeration and things that require power?

BERGGREN: Yes. Well at the moment, our intensive care units at Charity Hospital are operating on diesel-powered generators. We did have a period of time when the hospital had completely run out of diesel fuel. And that is the time when the ICU patients were being manually sustained by the staff in the intensive care units.

BROWN: People operating, mostly by instinct. You can't possibly have trained for this, could you have?

BERGGREN: No. And we stopped being able to have laboratory data to manage our patients on about Monday afternoon. We were able to run up and down the stairs of Charity Hospital to get some lab reports for critical things. But then by late Monday, there was no question of that anymore. I think the last thing that I did that could be considered really a medical procedure was on Tuesday morning, I performed a lumbar puncture on a patient who had cryptococcal meningitis. And since that time, we have been more or less on a first aid basis, monitoring vital signs and trying to manage blood pressure, keep people's favors down, and that sort of thing.

BROWN: Did you lose anyone you would have otherwise been able to save had the situation been different?

BERGGREN: No. Thankfully on our ward, where I've been responsible for 18 patients, we have not lost a soul. There are two people, however, that I'm still extremely concerned about. And these are young people with AIDs, who need dialysis. And I have been reminding our administrators in our triage personnel three or four times daily, to not forget about those patients on Nine West who desperately need to be moved out of here for dialysis.

BROWN: Courage comes in all sorts of different forms and all sorts of different ways. And heroics does, as well. And you've shown both. And we appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

BERGGREN: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, Dr. Ruth Berggren at Charity Hospital. Or was at Charity Hospital until it was evacuated. We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We got a little backed up here. We need to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get our first look at the beginnings of the evacuation of the Superdome, as they begin moving people on that long 12-hour drive to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. We'll take a break first. This is a special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You know many of you are just joining us at the top of the hour. A quick recap of the day for you. Today the magnitude of the crisis along the Gulf Coast became painfully obvious.

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