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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown
Nursing Home Flooded, 30 Bodies Found; Security Forces Grapple with How-To of New Orleans' Mandatory Evacuation Order; Political Storm In Wake of Slow Relief
Aired September 07, 2005 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: At the top of the hour more than a week after Katrina tour through the Gulf Coast of the United States, we are still just beginning to learn, just beginning, how bad it really was. The real devastation still lies hidden under water, under roofs, behind walls.
But it is not staying hidden, 30 plus bodies found in a nursing home, a few bodies reported in a warehouse on the docks outside of New Orleans. County the bodies to give numbers and names to measure the tragedy is just now beginning.
Two more things the water is hiding, a deadly cocktail of contamination, including E. coli, lead, gas, oil, chemicals. Its not safe to touch, let alone drink, and it's all going into Lake Pontchartrain.
Empty houses are joined by empty stores and businesses. A city empty of jobs, 400,000 people, it is believed from the Gulf Coast states, are now lost in America somewhere looking for jobs. But the major story that is breaking tonight is the sort of story that we suspect we'll be repeating again, and again, in the days and weeks and probably months to come. Bodies, a large number of bodies, found today.
CNN's Soledad O'Brien is live for us tonight, in New Orleans -- Soledad.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSNIGHT: Aaron, good evening to you. The DEMORT teams, or the Disaster Mortuary Operations Response Team, is in the scene today with a big refrigerator right outside that nursing home, in fact, St. Rita's Nursing Home. And inside, 30 plus bodies, we're told, confirmed by the sheriff, who says it was just an utter tragedy.
Unclear exactly what happened. The sheriff told us that somewhere between 40 and 50 of those nursing home patients got out, were safely evacuated. And we don't know if inside, left inside, those bodies include any of the staffers who may have stayed behind to help out some of the patients or if indeed it is only the elderly patients inside.
A terrible tragedy, when you look at the pictures, though, it makes sense. It almost looks as if that nursing home was plopped down, you know, in the middle of a big lake. The water today, about three feet high, we're told probably got as high as eight feet, maybe even higher. When you look at the cars parked around and see the debris and the grass on top of those cars, no surprise to think that the water got to at least eight feet high. A real tragedy for this parish, St. Bernard Parish, the hardest hit.
I asked one of the deputies, give me an estimate, give me a percentage that you would say is the homes damaged in this community. He said, I would put it at 100 percent, utterly devastated -- Aaron.
BROWN: Just quickly, Soledad, two things. How far from downtown New Orleans are we talking about?
O'BRIEN: You know, that's an interesting question, because the way we've had to get there, I'd say about three hours far. Obviously, with all the debris and all the distance, they told us though, while the people who had been rescued were brought to Chalmette Slip, and they could see. They knew nothing, they were completely cut off from communications. But they could look across and see the fires burning in downtown. And they were so afraid and they didn't know what was going on.
So, it is close, obviously, but also today, with the roads cut off and the debris everywhere and you have to take a ferry to get there, it is very, very far. And that's complicated their recovery, complicated the repairs that need to be done. Complicated just getting supplies into them. They have a huge road ahead as far as rebuilding goes, Aaron.
BROWN: Soledad, they do. And there are going to be more days like today, I'm afraid. Thank you for your long day, Soledad O'Brien, down in New Orleans and she'll be on "American Morning" 7 o'clock Eastern Time, tomorrow.
As we have just heard, New Orleans is a very deadly place and it is surrounded by other deadly places. But despite that there are still some people who will not leave no matter how often they are told, no matter what the language is that is used to tell them. They just stay there. Here, tonight, CNN's Christaine Amanpour.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SR. CORRESPONDENT (voice over): (INAUDIBLE) So many bodies, just loosely covered, still lie in the open, threatening to spread disease like wildfire through the watery graveyard that is the city of New Orleans.
The mayor wants everyone out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice on radio): There is a martial law declaration in place that gives us legal authority for mandatory evacuations.
AMANPOUR: So, as they have done for eight days, wildlife and fishery teams, those with the boats from all over the country are going house to water-logged house.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ho, inside? AMANPOUR: But as Texas Game Warden Derek, Iden knows, this mission is about to get a whole lot more difficult.
(On camera): How do you physically remove people from their houses?
DEREK IDEN, TEXAS GAME WARDEN: I don't know. That's something that is going to be determined. If they don't want to come out on their own, you know, their own free will then -- I don't know, it's going to be hard.
AMANPOUR (voice over): On dry land, National Guard units from across the country are faced with the same dilemma. Some residents sit with their bags packed, waiting to be evacuated. Others are loaded into trucks and driven off. But many of the estimated 10,000 remaining residents still don't want to leave their city. And so far, this Guard unit, from Oklahoma, tells the Simpson family it is not yet under orders to force them out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know have exactly when, or how they're going to do it yet. As soon as we get the information --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When y'all get the information, y'all come tell us because I don't want to all the rough stuff and stuff, you know?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
AMANPOUR (on camera): The fact is, neither the National Guard troops we spoken to nor the water rescue people know quite how they are going to force residents to leave their house. What exactly does mandatory evacuation mean and how are they going to make it happen.
(On camera): But officers from the California Highway Patrol, who drove two days to come and help people here, are determined to enforce the mayor's order.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police, open the door.
AMANPOUR: With five minutes to gather belongings, this man and his wife reluctantly emerge. Just moments earlier insisted they were going to stand firm.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're roofers and carpenters and we're waiting to rebuild. It's our city. We're not going to abandon it.
AMANPOUR: Inside, they have electricity, food, and water because they're neighborhood was not badly damaged. But the highway patrolmen on this block are undeterred. And a few minutes later, heaving with sobs and sadness, the woman joins friends and neighbors on a truck mounted with armed guards. None of them resisted, nonetheless, the residents of this block say they are heartbroken.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'd like to remain so we can put this city back together. We love this city. I don't know what else to say.
AMANPOUR: From surviving the flood to refugees in their own country, not knowing where they're going or when they'll return.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Now, the police chief said on "CNN Tonight" that they are not actually yet doing mandatory, in other words, forced evacuations. They're not yet going in and kicking doors down and dragging people out, if that's what it comes to. Because, he says, there are still enough people to actually want to be rescued. They're concentrating on that, first, before they start making people leave.
They are already saying that they're not going to come around, for instance, on boats anymore with food and supplies, for those who are still there. They're trying to persuade them to get out -- Aaron.
BROWN: Well, forgive me, there is a bit of a disconnect here, because if you look at the pictures you just showed us of these California Highway Patrol guys, in the second instance, with the woman who didn't want to leave, it sure looked to me like they were forcing her out.
AMANPOUR: Yes, and therein lies the dilemma. Yes, but it wasn't like there was resistance. It wasn't like there was any necessity to handcuff or drag people out or whatever. They were unhappy. They didn't want to go -- and that, to be honest, is the crux of this problem, right now.
Because many people we've talked to, the law enforcement, the emergency people who are going to have to enforce this are very squeamish about making people leave their own homes. They say this is America. People don't want to leave their homes. We understand that, we don't want to make them leave their homes and we don't know how we're going to do it, if we're forced to do it. But on the other hand, we're told that there is a health emergency and the city needs to be evacuated.
BROWN: Well, I don't envy that task, at all. That's a hard thing to do. Thank you, Christiane Amanpour in the city tonight.
A question of rescuing survivors and who did what and when, came up at the Pentagon today after a newspaper report, quite a stunning report this morning, suggesting that two Navy pilots were reprimanded for rescuing survivors of the hurricane without prior permission. Here's our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAMIE McINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): On Tuesday of last week, when the flooding hit its peak around New Orleans, two Navy pilots from this helicopter unit based in Pensacola, Florida, diverted on the way home from delivering critical water and supplies, to help rescue more than a dozen people trapped on roofs of houses and apartments.
But even though the motto on the pilot's shoulder patch is, "So others may live", they were chastised not cheered upon their return to Pensacola. A Navy spokesman said, the air operations chief felt it was necessary to remind them they had a logistics mission they needed to complete so others could do their parts of the operation.
When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saw an account from "The New York Times" in his morning clips, headlined, "Navy Pilot Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded", he immediately ordered his top military aide to get to the bottom of it.
A senior Defense official told CNN, he was troubled by the impression that someone would be punished for saving lives. He asked for a much clearer understanding of what he knew could not possibly be accurate.
The Navy insists the pilots were never reprimanded, nor removed from flying duties. In fact, they went on to rescue more than 100 people that day. Still the incident illustrates a key question about the military response. To what degree did the military stick to a plan that was inadequate and how quick was it to improvise creative solutions, such as air drops of supplies from helicopters?
DONALD RUSMFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: No war plan survives the first contact with the enemy. Operational leaders must always be ready to adjust.
McINTYRE: By late Monday night, flooding New Orleans was widespread, as reported by CNN and other television networks. But Pentagon officials say their review will focus on what they see as a critical window of about 30 hours that begins Tuesday night, a day after the levee broke. That is when the Pentagon says the real extent of the massive flooding was clear and when officials concede there may have been a chance to better adapt the plan to the magnitude of the disaster.
LT. GEN. JOSEPH INGE, DEPUTY, U.S. NORTHERN COMMANDER: I think it was pretty adapted, Jamie, but I won't go further than that, because there will be great reliving of this instance in the months ahead, and time will tell.
McINTYRE (On camera): As for the two Navy pilots who got a talking to from their commander for taking matters into their own hands, well, they're being described now as heroes. A Navy official says that given the number one priority is saving lives their actions are to be commended. Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: The population of Houston Astrodome and the area around the Astrodome, there are a couple of buildings around the Astrodome, where people are staying, dropped today as New Orleans refugees found other places to go. According to the official figures there are now fewer than 10,000 people living the dome complex; down from about 16,000 earlier in the week.
And while nobody can say the conditions there are ideal, for many, it has become home, of sorts. Here's Keith Oppenheim.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This thing right here. This is all my family, right here. This is all of them.
KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Like everyone else in the Astrodome, Demira (ph) Stephenson and her family don't have much real estate, just a bunch of cots on a concrete floor. But in that confined space, Demira and 20 of her relatives, that's right -- 20 -- are living side by side.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the cot my mother lays on. My li'l niece lays on this one. This one, me and my husband and my kids lay on it. I got two laying on one bed.
Demira is the mother of three small children. Her entire family is from New Orleans. Many of them rescued by helicopter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is good to see your family, instead of hearing about bad news, that this person that way, and that person that way. Because they have a lot of family members in here, can't find half of their family. But all our family is right here on the cot, all of them. We aren't missing no body, everyone is here, right now.
OPPENHEIM: They feel relief, but also stress. This family has been here for a week. It's not easy adjusting to a massive shelter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have no privacy. It is like, if you want to go and take a shower, you have to take a shower with a whole bunch of women. And you can't take a shower. You are just used to being in the shower, just you and yourself. But you got to do what you got to do to take a shower. If you don't take a shower, you'll be dirty.
OPPENHEIM: Demira is worried about her sister, Crystal, who is nearly nine months pregnant. There is a clinic here and hospitals nearby, but still, Crystal is nervous.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a lot of drama going on in here at the same time. So I definitely don't have my baby around almost 1,000 people. That's not good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to walk you over to medical.
OPPENHEIM: But Demira says, one thing that is good, is the way they're being treated by hundreds of volunteers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometime they'll put money in your hand and ask you, do you need anything? Are you OK? Or, if the kids are all right, do they need medication and stuff like that. It's basically good. It's just that it is nothing like your own home. You want to be in your own home.
OPPENHEIM: And now this family's goal is to find a home and Demira says it won't be in New Orleans. It will be in Houston. Keith Oppenheim, CNN, Houston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Still ahead tonight, the politics of disaster. After the president's visit to the hurricane zone, a storm of protests in the capitol. Break first, from New York and around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We wondered last night just how interested the country really in what went wrong, if the country believes something went wrong in the days after the storm and the flooding. There is the politics of it and there is policy. The policy part, really understanding the decisions made, who made them, why they were made, that's going to take some time to understand. Politicians will investigate that, so will reporters. In the meantime, in Washington, one side attacks, the other plays defense. The way it always is. Here's CNN's Ed Henry.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED HENRY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Thousands likely already dead. Water so toxic, New Orleans may face a public health crisis. How is Congress responding? Democrats want the FEMA director's head and are ripping into President Bush.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: When I said to the president that he should fire Michael Brown, he said, Why would I do that? I said, because of all that went wrong. With all that didn't go right last week. He said, what didn't go right? Oblivious, in denial, dangerous.
HENRY: Republicans want to shift blame to local and state officials in Louisiana, who happen to be Democrats.
REP. TOM DELAY (R), HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: The emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up. And it's the local officials trying to handle the problem, when they can't handle the problem, they go to the state. And the state does what they can do and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government, they ask for it, and it's delivered.
HENRY: Both sides are coming together to approve another $52 billion in relief, on top of the $10.5 billion already allocated, unprecedented for a hurricane. But neither side seems ready to tackle the tough questions about why initial help took so long to get to victims.
Republicans launched what they call a by-partisan probe of Katrina, but didn't consult with Democrats beforehand, leaving even GOP strategists wondering whether the investigation will carry any weight.
Democrats stole a page from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" with Senator Harry Reid demanding that the Katrina investigation include questions about whether the president's vacation delayed relief efforts. STU ROTHENBERG, POLITICAL ANALYST: The president's job approval numbers are bad. Iraq is bad. The gas prices are bad. I think this has emboldened Democrats to really take the president on at the moment.
HENRY: So far, the attacks do not seem to be hurting the president. The latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll shows only 13 percent of the public blames Mr. Bush for what went wrong in New Orleans; 38 percent blame no one. While 25 percent say it is local officials. Democrats insist they are focused on legitimate questions. Such as whether Bush administration changes to FEMA hampered relief efforts.
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: What I'd like to do is get it back to the level of competency and leadership that it had during the Clinton administration. When it was independent, when the director had actual experience in dealing with disasters. And when he had a Cabinet rank, level, so that there was no doubt that when a disaster struck, he was able to marshal all the resources of the federal government.
HENRY: But Democrats may run the risk of overplaying their hand.
ROTHENBERG: The problem is if the questions turn into lectures and turn into what appear to be partisan attacks that would be dangerous, I think, for the Democrats.
HENRY: But one senior Democrats says the party has no such fear. We have to pound the president even harder, he said. A sign that, while Americans may be coming together, Congress is not. Ed Henry, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: While early last we raised the question of what the response to Hurricane Katrina said about how safe we are, as a country, four years after September 11, come this Sunday. After billions of dollars spent on homeland security, what does Katrina tell us about how we could deal with a different sort of disaster, a terrorist attack? Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Imagine you're a member of al Qaeda, watching what happened in New Orleans last week. What would you be thinking?
STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS: What I'd be thinking is that America is obviously woefully unprepared to deal with any catastrophic event, whether it is man-made or whether it is a natural disaster. That this superpower, when it comes to taking a blow, can't take a blow.
GREENFIELD: Steve Flynn has spent years thinking and writing about how America should deal with terror attacks. His conclusions are not comforting. FLYNN: I think Katrina has showed us that we aren't better off when it comes to dealing with large-scale attacks.
GREENFIELD: Four years and tens of billions of dollars later, some of what plagued the rescuers in New York were on painful display in New Orleans. Communications collapses, responders without a clear picture of the disaster, or directions to handle it. But while September 11, was literally a bolt from the blue, Katrina was a disaster in plain sight for days, whose potential consequences were known, literally, for years.
Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins put the question bluntly.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: How is it possible that almost four years to the day, after the attacks on our country, with billions of dollars spent to improve our preparedness, that a major area of this nation was so ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophe.
GREENFIELD (on camera): There will be no shortage of hearings and task forces and media investigations to try to answer that question. But part of the answer does seem clear. The response to the attack of September 11, was a classic bureaucratic response, aimed at a direct immediate threat. And part of that response may have left the country less able to respond to threats less dramatic, but much more probable.
(voice over): Consider the central response of Washington to the terror attacks, the creation of a new Cabinet-level department, the Department of Homeland Security, with 180,000 people. That's the biggest new department since the Defense Department was created in 1947, with an annual budget of $30 billion. That department's focus, understandably, was terror.
But that meant that when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was placed in the department, it's traditional focus, natural disasters, was played down. For instance, as "The Wall Street Journal" reported on Tuesday, officials in Shelby County, Alabama, were permitted to use department funds to buy chemical suits, but not to fund an operations center to improve communications during tornadoes. Shelby County, Alabama is not exactly a prime terrorist target, but it has experienced 20 tornadoes in the last half century.
Moreover, getting funding may have a lot more to do with political clout than actual need. The highest per capita recipient of Homeland Security money is the state of Wyoming, where every police officer, coroner, and sheriff's deputy in the state has a Hazmat suit. But less dramatic needs, like the levees protecting New Orleans, got a small fraction of what they required.
And the terrorism mindset drove decisions even after the hurricane. "The Journal" also reported that New Orleans residents could not be evacuated by air until FEMA had rounded up air marshals and screeners to check for possible terrorists aboard these flights. The clearest example of find the last crisis, not the current one. 9/11 should have told us that we live on the edge, as a modern society. And terrorists can take advantage of that. What Katrina has told us is, Mother Nature has told us, you live on the edge and if you don't make prudent investments, lots of lives and property can be unnecessarily lost.
GREENFIELD: Maybe we can chalk part of the problem up to simple human nature, faced with a horror, as searing as it was unimaginable, maybe it was only natural to push massive money and effort to keep it from happening again. It may be, however, that in opening our eyes to the unthinkable, we were blinded to the dangers posed by the familiar. Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Those are the questions that are going to dominate the debate, or at least should, in our view, dominate the debate for many, many months to come.
Still ahead on the program, an avalanche of garbage. What do to with the thousands of homes and cars and buildings and junk -- a lot of junk -- the hurricane left behind. A break first, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: It looks like a slot machine. The national price of -- the national average of gas, though, just about steady today, about $3.04 cents on average. I don't know who pays the average, but if you did that's what you paid.
The barrel of oil, the cost of a barrel of oil dropped again today. Dropped quite a bit yesterday. Dropped a buck and a half today, down to $64.37, if you want a barrel of oil, that's what you'll have to pay.
Whether it is the streets of New Orleans or a beachfront in Mississippi, the one thing storm hit areas have in common is junk. Everywhere you turn there is junk. So much so, that you wonder where it all came from. And if you're trying to rebuild your life, you're wonder where it will all go. Ted Rowlands is in Mississippi for us tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A garbage truck in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi is making its first run since the hurricane. It's only picking up regular trash, but it is a welcome sight for Ron Ron Labotte (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's getting real stinky.
ROWLANDS: The amount of debris left by the hurricane is staggering. Thousands of homes are flattened or damaged. Vehicles line the roads, and businesses are in ruin.
KAY NORRED, DISASTER RELIEF WORKER: We're just at those beginning stages of getting those plans worked out.
ROWLANDS: Kay Norred was sent from Florida to help the relief efforts in Mississippi. She says getting the debris out needs to start as soon as possible.
NORRED: It's going to be horrible for the citizens to have to live amongst this, because the longer this sits, the food that's in here will rot.
Then you've got rats living in here. And then as the debris is removed, the rats have nowhere to live, so they go into the homes and the houses that are nearby.
ROWLANDS: In 1992, Hurricane Andrew left behind six million tons of debris which took more than two years to remove. The cleanup for Katrina could take even longer, unless a greater, more urgent effort is put into it.
Just trucking the debris out of many areas will be difficult. Many bridges connecting coastal towns are gone. Railroad tracks are mangled, roads are washed out.
One option is to burn some of the debris. Another is to find existing landfills or create new ones large enough to handle it.
WILLIAM MOOMAW, DIRECTOR, TUFTS UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF THE ENVIRONMENT: It might be an old strip mine, or it might be a site specifically designed for taking solid waste. There's going to have to be a lot of engineering and a lot of building in order to make these suitable for this material that will be coming, because we've just not had hazardous waste on this scale before.
ROWLANDS: People like Ron Labotte are trying to get their homes and lives back in order.
RON LABOTTE (ph), HURRICANE SURVIVOR: Next you come, we'll have another pile here waiting for you, you know.
ROWLANDS: Given the magnitude of the destruction, it's clear that everyone will have to be patient.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROWLANDS: The task ahead here in Mississippi is monumental. Then in a few weeks, or at some point, the same task will be playing out in New Orleans. It's not only going to take some time, it is going to take millions and millions of dollars to get rid of all of this junk - Aaron.
BROWN: Do people in Mississippi - the people you talk to every day, and have for the last week - feel, in a sense, neglected by all the attention that has gone elsewhere?
ROWLANDS: We haven't found that. Occasionally people will say, ah, we haven't heard about Mississippi much. But then in the same breath they'll say, thank God we're not in New Orleans. And more people come up to us and say that they feel bad for their neighbors in New Orleans. And really, they think that the attention is justified.
BROWN: Good for them. Thank you, Ted. Nice job. Ted Rowlands in Mississippi tonight.
Eventually a new city will arise from the Mississippi Delta. Joining us to discuss the future of New Orleans - and we believe it has a future - one of its native sons, Walter Isaacson, who now runs the Aspen Institute, and used to run this network and this anchorman.
Nice to see you, Walter. Your heart broken?
WALTER ISAACSON, PRESIDENT & CEO, THE ASPEN INSTITUTE: I'm definitely heartbroken. It's very, very sad. But as you said, I do think the city will come back. And there are lots of us who are expatriates from that city, love that city very much. And they'll plan to rally around the city and do what we can to help it come back.
BROWN: We talked a bit about this last night, and I suspect will for a long time to come.
It's - you can come up with a plan to build buildings. That's sort of easy, actually. I mean, it takes money and time and the rest.
But rebuilding the soul of New Orleans is a complicated piece of business.
ISAACSON: It is. In fact, the stories next week and the week after will be how easy it will be for the buildings. Because most of the buildings in the French Quarter and in the central business district and in the warehouse district, they're pretty much OK. They're there.
The parts of New Orleans that most people know and most people, visitors go see, those buildings are OK. And that's not going to be the problem.
As you said, what's going to be the problem is recreating the magic of the city. And the even more complex thing is taking what was magical and beautiful about one of the world's greatest cities and restoring that, but maybe getting rid of some of the things, or many of the things, that were not good about the city - the sort of torn social fabric that we saw.
BROWN: That's where I wanted to go next. This was going to be one of those wandering questions you used to chide me about.
But in all of this there was peeled back something about New Orleans that was really quite unpleasant - an abject poverty in the city. You look at some of these pictures, you can't imagine how people lived that way.
In that sense, I wonder if there is any magic left at all. ISAACSON: Oh, I think there's magic to the city. And I think everybody who lived in that city, you know, from various parts of the city, from the lower 9th Ward to Uptown, all had a special feel for New Orleans and I think still do.
I think you saw some social pathologies there. But, you know, you have segregation and racism and problems in any major American city. I think the ones in New Orleans came to the surface because of the flood.
But maybe - and I hate using bad metaphors. Maybe you should - tied you for that as well, but you didn't do it as often - but it might flush out some of the pathologies. It rises it to the surface.
And we can say, let's build, let's take this as an opportunity to build this city, where we get the social fabric right, where we get some opportunities for all.
We have a city that can really work and that can restore the magic of being what was and will be, you know, one of the world's great places for creativity, for music, for art, and one of the great ports of the world.
Something - you know, New Orleans has given a lot to the world and a lot to this nation. It's given its port, its economy. It's helped ship the grain out and ship the oil in and refine the oil, but also created jazz and created great music and created great food.
And that came from a magical mix of people in the City of New Orleans. It came from the fact that you couldn't just have a homogenous group. You had to sometimes have a very complex layers of society there.
And the question is, can you get a city back that can be as creative and as good? And I'm sure you can, and do it where you have a better education system, where you have less crime, where you have less corruption and you have a better social fabric.
BROWN: One more, and not a whole lot of time either.
Is there in the city, do you believe, the leadership - the political leadership, the leadership in the business community and the tourist community, whatever you call that - to rebuild the special New Orleans?
ISAACSON: You know, that's what we've talked about for the past week, those of us who love New Orleans. It's not a place where a lot of Rudy Giulianis march forward, take charge, roll up their sleeves. You don't see the great leadership.
But you do have the passion, you do have the love, you do have the sensitivity. And I suspect the leadership will emerge.
BROWN: It's good to see you. I confess, I've thought a lot about you this week and how you must be seeing all of this. I know how you feel about your city. Thank you. ISAACSON: Well, we love the city. We lost our house, but, you know, we didn't lose the soul of our city.
BROWN: Good to see you, Walter. Thank you, sir. Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute.
Still to come on the program, on the road to recovery. A special report from a NEWSNIGHT team that will make its way across the Gulf there in Mississippi tonight. And they're coming up. And a wing and a prayer and maybe a resurrection for Catholic schools in the City of New Orleans.
We take a break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: It's easy to forget that this disaster extends well beyond New Orleans. In places like Gulfport, Mississippi and Biloxi, and in many towns that are just small dots on the map, the crisis, while not the scale of New Orleans, has destroyed thousands of homes, killed hundreds of people and changed in some ways almost everyone it touched.
In Pascagoula, Mississippi tonight, NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen.
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BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, PASCAGOULA, MISSISSIPPI: This is Pascagoula, Mississippi, home to 28,000 souls. All but a handful survived the hurricane winds, the 22-foot surge of sea water. But the city was half erased.
The white shoe part of town, where Republican Senator Trent Lott had his home. The blue collar part of town, where the shipyard and refinery workers lived.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pascagoula - the south part of Pascagoula was totally devastated by this hurricane. I would guestimate that probably 80 percent of the houses in Pascagoula had floodwaters in them.
NISSEN: Now, the 58 police officers in Pascagoula, all of them still on the job and working 12-hour shifts, are dealing with a flood of a different kind - an overwhelming amount of relief supplies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're sending generators, chainsaws, clothing, diapers, food. You name it, it's coming in here.
NISSEN: Pascagoula has no one staging area right now for donated supplies. A local Baptist church is serving as one distribution point.
But police here say officials don't have the manpower to offload incoming trucks, the ability to sort and label supplies, the means to distribute the contents, or any real idea of who needs what, except that thousands need just about everything. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hardest part is going down and seeing people's lives all over the street, seeing people's lives piled up in front of their houses. And they're pulling everything out of their houses onto the streets - carpets, rugs, furniture, everything - because nothing is salvageable, absolutely nothing.
WARREN LUSHE (ph), HURRICANE SURVIVOR: It was a pretty place.
NISSEN: Still, on Belair Street, Warren Lushe, age 84 and a World War II veteran, was on a mission to salvage something, helped by his daughter who had driven down from Pennsylvania.
The water had marked its growth on his wall, giving everything he and his wife owned a putrid veneer of mud and sewage, turned family photos into inky blurs, ruined his old Bible.
But he had his American flag up, was trying to keep his spirits up.
Over on 12th Street, Douglas Francis (ph) had his flag showing, too, or what was left of his flag on what was left of his home.
DOUGLAS FRANCIS (ph), HURRICANE SURVIVOR: Everything we own is up under there.
NISSEN: He, too, was trying to keep his spirits, his strength up.
FRANCIS: Oh, that was a brighter day. That was a brighter day.
NISSEN: FEMA is here. They had a dispatch, a fleet of 18- wheelers with emergency relief - food, water - which is being distributed at the county fair grounds. But there's been virtually no communication, coordination between local authorities and the FEMA team.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of them will stop by the station to download some information from the Internet or use e-mail or something. So I know they're here.
Now, what their organizational plan is, I'm not sure yet. I've been told they're going to set up at a local high school.
NISSEN: And people in Pascagoula, he says, are desperate for more than just emergency aid - for housing, tents, trailers. So are people in the next town and the next.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The further west you go, the worse the devastation is. We got the edge of the hurricane here. And you can see what the edge has caused.
NISSEN: But that gives Pascagoula the edge, he says, in recovering.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to rebuild. Eventually we're going to rebuild. It's going to take time. This is a beautiful area, and it was a beautiful area before the storm. It's going to be a beautiful area again. It's just going to take time.
NISSEN: So much time. So much time.
Beth Nissen, CNN, Pascagoula, Mississippi.
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BROWN: Officials in Louisiana estimate that 135,000 public school students and 52,000 private school students have been displaced by the hurricane.
Schools from Florida to California are welcoming the displaced students, doing their best. But New Orleans had 108 Catholic schools, and those schools are starting to regroup.
Here's CNN's Delia Gallagher.
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DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, NEW ORLEANS: You're looking at a school. A handful of teachers. A principal in charge. A plan, and a prayer.
The faculty of Saint Elizabeth's is holding its first meeting since Hurricane Katrina. The building is in Kenner, Louisiana, the staff in Baton Rouge, just starting to regroup.
CHARLOTTE RIZZO, FRENCH TEACHER: With all of us, is so grateful to know that we found each other, and that the archdiocese is behind us, that our students are out there looking for us, and we're looking for them.
GALLAGHER: They joined hundreds of parents and teachers to discuss the future of New Orleans' 108 Catholic schools and their 50,000 students.
Ann Gogarty, a third grade teacher with a teenage daughter, says it all boils down to one thing.
ANN GOGARTY, THIRD GRADE TEACHER: You know, from high school to elementary school, we need to know where to put these kids.
GALLAGHER: Inside the hall, tearful reunions and solemn faces.
FATHER WILLIAM MAESTRI, SUPERINTENDENT, NEW ORLEANS CATHOLIC SCHOOLS: And we are going to open some of the ...
GALLAGHER: Addressing the crowd, Father William Maestri, the superintendent of the New Orleans Catholic schools.
MAESTRI: I guess what I want to say to you as parents is, please don't panic.
GALLAGHER: Father Maestri outlines a broad recipe for revival - temporary satellite classrooms, evening sessions at local Catholic schools where some students would attend from three to nine at night. And online programs parents can use to home school younger children.
MAESTRI: We have to stop thinking of school as brick building, buses, teams and all of that for right now. In some instances, that's not going to work, because that's not there.
So, what we have to ask is, how can we provide Catholic education to you where you are?
GALLAGHER: Another aim, to keep the people who make up the New Orleans Catholic school system together.
MAESTRI: That's a great concern to us. And that's why we want to get up as quickly and as safely and as competently as we can. We realize that the longer families and teachers stay in another setting, the more likely they are to stay there.
GALLAGHER: People I spoke to sounded reassured, like Gaynell Gaines and her nine-year-old son Quentin, who'd been sleeping in their car for more than a week.
GAYNELL GAINES, NEW ORLEANS PARENT: I feel relieved. I feel relieved. There is hope. So, anybody who has their children in Catholic schools, there is hope for the New Orleans Catholic schools.
I can actually come out with a smile. There is hope.
GALLAGHER: Hope, too, from the teachers of Saint Elizabeth's, whose students are scattered across the country.
RIZZO: And we will do whatever it takes. Whatever students come, we will teach them. And we will pray and we will have mass, and we will go on as though this didn't happen to us.
We will feel it, but we will go forward.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bigger and better.
RIZZO: Bigger and better.
GALLAGHER: Late this afternoon, Father Maestri took me to Saint John's high school in nearby Plaquemine.
MAESTRI: You have space over there. And all you would have to do is simply take portable classrooms - portable classrooms, which are very easy to bring them in and begin to fill them in here. And you could run a regular school.
GALLAGHER: Where the children of New Orleans can start to feel like regular kids once again.
Delia Gallagher, CNN, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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BROWN: Ahead on the program, will Katrina's ferocity be matched by the country's generosity, the drive for donations? Break first. This is NEWSNIGHT.
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BROWN: Before this is all over - it's going to take a long time - billions of dollars will be funneled into the hurricane zone. The administration is asking Congress for nearly $52 billion more. It's already asked for $10.5 billion, and that's been OKed.
Money is also coming in from overseas. Japan is contributing. So is Ireland. And it's certainly coming in from all across America.
Here is CNN's Gerri Willis.
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GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK: On the floor of the world's biggest stock market, the focus today wasn't on making money, it was on giving it away.
The New York Stock Exchange donated $1 million to the American Red Cross.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Americans are more generous than ever before, giving more than half a billion, some $556 million in the 10 days since the storm ravaged the Gulf Coast.
TRENT STAMP, CHARITYNAVIGATOR.ORG: The giving today is twice as much as we saw after September 11th, in the 10 days following that disaster, and three times what we saw for the tsunami in the 10 days after that disaster.
WILLIS: And the need ...
STAMP: The need is overwhelming.
WILLIS: Most people have given to the Red Cross, a total of $439.5 million. Another $50 million has gone to the Salvation Army.
Across the country, corporations are ponying up. Wal-Mart has given $17 million. Housing lender Freddie Mac, $10.1 million.
Today the money is being used to feed and temporarily house the survivors. But as time passes, money will go to rebuilding the houses, churches and entire neighborhoods that Katrina washed away.
The good news for donors - many charities are taking steps to show how they are distributing aid, a response to concerns that funds intended for relief after 9/11 didn't all get spent on disaster victims.
STAMP: They had basically too much money, and they ended up spending it on other causes, improving their infrastructure, preparing for their communication efforts for the next disaster. And that angered a ton of donors. BONNIE MCELVEEN-HUNTER, CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN RED CROSS: We honor donor intent. There is nothing more critical for an organization than development of trust and integrity.
And we have total fiduciary responsibility to honor the intent of the donor. And every penny that is given specifically for Katrina will go to those recipients.
WILLIS: Ultimately, the need for donations may continue for years, even decades, with spending by charities alone exceeding $5 billion. But that contribution will be a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost, much of which will be picked up by the federal and state governments.
Gerri Willis, CNN, New York.
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BROWN: In morning papers last night we left unanswered a great and important question. We can answer it when we come back.
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BROWN: OK. Time to check the morning papers. Actually, it would have been better to wait about 30 seconds to check morning papers, but that was not an option presented to me.
The "Washington Post" - somebody wasn't giving time cues down here - Bush requests $51.8 billion, Bob - more for relief. GOP leaders launch inquiry on Katrina preparedness and response.
It's going to be a great story for a long time to come. Not the politics of it, which honestly bores me, but just the policy. Who made what decision? When they made the decision, why the decisions were made.
That stuff's really important, because these things are going to happen again. And they're going to happen without notice. The next time - well, I don't know that, but I suspect it.
"Washington Times" - most expensive gasoline in the nation? It's D.C., $3.38 a gallon. Maryland is third at $3.26. Not a lot of difference between first and third, as it turns out. Sort of like the American League West.
The "Oregonian." Economy will survive storm. The nation may see setbacks, but not a recession.
Four hundred thousand jobs, though, is what they're talking about. We talked about this with Ali Velshi earlier. That is a lot of jobs.
We mentioned this yesterday, that Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan - this is "Stars and Stripes" - dies yesterday. He was 70 years old.
And I rhetorically asked, I wondered if Dwayne Hickman were still alive. He was Dobie Gillis and starred with Mr. Denver.
So, I get down to my desk and what do I have? An e-mail from Mr. Hickman saying, yes, I'm alive. Can you imagine sitting at home, minding your own business, watching TV, and some guy says, I wonder if he's alive?
We're glad to know he is.
United's new start. United Airlines will wipe out - to wipe out replaced stock resolved (ph) $26 billion. So, United's still flying. Your frequent flyer miles - this shape. Take this picture for me, Chris (ph). I love this picture. It's a great shot of a soldier and an evacuee in New Orleans.
One more quick picture. You've got to - quickly here. It's another shot from the area, a school student. What other kind of student would there be?
And then just a nice shot. The "Chicago Sun-Times." The weather tomorrow in Chicago - cantankerous.
So are the producers tonight. We'll wrap it up, our portion. But our coverage continues 24 hours, after the break.
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BROWN: Larry King talked to the actor Sean Penn, who was in New Orleans. That'll be part of the next hour of our 24-hour coverage of the hurricane and the recovery.
Catherine Callaway is at CNN Center in Atlanta, to take you through the next few hours. We'll see you tomorrow at 10 o'clock Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us.
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