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Trench Rescue; Battle of New Orleans

Aired May 24, 2006 - 13:30   ET

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


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We just want to get to Los Angeles, California real quickly, pretty amazing rescue happening right now, as we're getting the live pictures. This coming to us from our affiliate. Pretty unbelievable pictures, via KTTV.
This worker right here that just got pulled out. He's just been rescued from this trench. He was absolutely -- actually when there was a collapse at this construction site -- we're not quite sure where it is; we're trying to figure that out -- this worker was buried under the dirt there. You can see actually to the side of the house where they were working.

L.A. fire got there immediately and -- all right. I'm being told Brian Humphrey -- matter of fact, I remember Brian Humphrey from when I was working in L.A.

Brian, glad to get you on the phone. We sure appreciate it. We just are looking at these live pictures via KTTV of your men responding to this rescue. And it looks like they got one worker out successfully. It looks like he's talking to rescue workers right now.

BRIAN HUMPHREY, L.A. FIRE DEPT. SPOKESMAN: Well, Kyra, the men and women you see here, a total of 50 from Los Angeles firefighters, including members of our elite urban search-and-rescue team, responded about 35 minutes ago to this residential neighborhood in the south San Fernando valley, about 12 miles northeast of downtown L.A. This area of course affected by unseasonable rain, somewhat damp soil.

We had an adult male worker about three-feet below grade when the wall suddenly gave way at about five minutes to the top of the hour. The man, thankfully, had his head and shoulders free from the soil. L.A. Firefighters arrived on scene and quickly did a speed shore of that trench wall, and have now successfully been able to rescue the only victim of this trench collapse in the Valley Glen area of Los Angeles.

PHILLIPS: Yes, Brian, that's pretty awesome, just the fact -- so there was only one worker then that got trapped when this wall collapsed?

HUMPHREY: Indeed, we're very fortunate there was only one and he was freed. This damp soil to give you an idea, weighs between 2,400 and 2,700 pounds per cubic yard. We're talking about an immense amount of force on this man's body. That's why officials at a nearby trauma center will be treating this victim from head to toe to check for any possible hidden injuries. PHILLIPS: Now it looks like I was able to see he was communicating with the firefighters, so you're able to confirm that, Brian, that he is talking, and communicating? It looks like he'll be OK? Probably just some injuries?

HUMPHREY: We certainly hope relatively minor injuries. We are concerned about the crush syndrome, that for 35 minutes all his vascular (INAUDIBLE) collapsed around his lower extremities. There could be some complications, but the nearby hospitals is waiting for this man, described only as an adult male who was trapped in this trench. Police report he has been freed. He remained conscious and alert throughout the endeavor. And we are providing him with some oxygen, possibly intravenous line and a quick and simply transport to a nearby hospital.

PHILLIPS: Brian, can you see our live picture, by chance, on CNN? Are you able to see that wherever you are?

HUMPHREY: Yes, ma'am.

PHILLIPS: OK, so I can see that they're -- are they covering up with blankets? They probably don't want him to go into shock. Are they keeping him warm and wrapping him tightly?

HUMPHREY: Kyra, the temperatures are relatively mild here today, about 74 degrees there at the location, but we are indeed wrapping him up.

But what actually the firefighters doing, is they're putting a binder around him. He's being strapped to a backboard, and these cloth strips are actually binding his body to immobile him in case he had a hidden fracture. This, along with the oxygen, an intravenous line, will make sure the man's condition stays stable until he can be taken to the nearest hospital, which is about 1.4 miles away.

PHILLIPS: So who made the call, Brian? That was an awfully quick response. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, you guys have stations located throughout this neighborhood, practically on every other block, but the call came in from another worker, and then your men and women were there?

HUMPHREY: The call came in from a nearby resident who heard somebody calling for help, reportedly another worker. And indeed trench -- we want to remind people, trench work is not something that amateurs should do, and certainly something no one should ever do alone. We did send a large number -- roughly 50 firefighters -- to the scene. These people are specialists in technical rescues such as this. The work was swift. It went well.

PHILLIPS: So was this a homeowner that was working on his home?

HUMPHREY: No, it's believed to be a worker for the home, but it's a largely residential neighborhood. This is not a formal, or commercial (INAUDIBLE). It appears to be somewhat of an impromptu trench. We have yet to determine exactly what the man was digging for. As you imagine, the follow-up for us is also working with occupational safety and health officials to determine what workplace safety precautions were in place.

PHILLIPS: Brian Humphrey with the L.A. fire department. Brian, thanks so much.

Watching the live pictures there, via our affiliate KTTV, there in Los Angeles. Once again, the research and rescue with the L.A. fire responding in the Van Nuys area. So far, looks like they've been able to rescue this worker from the wall that collapsed in that trench while he was working on a home. As Brian Humphrey said, not sure of his exact condition. The good news is, he's alert, he's talking with firefighters. But still don't know what kind of trauma that he's dealt with. We'll let you know what happens to this worker.

PHILLIPS: Well, coming up, the battle of New Orleans. Historian Doug Brinkley was sharply critical of Mayor Ray Nagin's response to Katrina. Nagin was re-elected last weekend. So what does Brinkley think now? We're going to find out, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: With hurricane season just a week away, the acting director of FEMA faces a storm of controversy. David Paulison has been nominated to get the job for real, and that gives senators another opportunity to bash FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina, and ask whether it'll be better prepared this year. Paulison's answer, yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID PAULISON, ACTING FEMA DIR.: We had, I think, 180 truckloads of meals ready to eat before Katrina. And now right now, we have over 770. With water, we had 600 truckloads of water before Katrina. Now we had 1,500 truckloads of ice. We had 430 truckloads of ice. And now we have 2,000 truckloads of ice already ready in our stock. And also, we did an interagency agreement with the Defense Logistics Agency as a backup to all of that, in case we even started depleting those supplies. We're going to have significantly larger amount of supplies this year than last year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Paulison offers what he calls a solemn process to strengthen FEMA's people, processes and capabilities.

Well, the ballots are counted, the election decided, and Ray Nagin gets another four years as mayor of New Orleans. Now what? Nagin is promising dramatic action to restore his city to its former glory.

But CNN Gulf Coast correspondent Susan Roesgen reports, some observes have their doubts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN GULF COAST CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was the week after the hurricane and New Orleans was under water. The Coast Guard, New Orleans police, even ordinary citizens were in boats and helicopters trying to rescue thousands of people trapped by the flood.

But where was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin? City Hall was equipped to be the emergency operations center. But according to historian and author Doug Brinkley, Nagin was holed up there in the penthouse suite of the Hyatt Hotel.

In the new book "The Great Deluge," Brinkley says Nagin was overwhelmed by what was happening and, worse, he says Nagin was criminally negligent.

DOUG BRINKLEY, HISTORIAN & AUTHOR: Mayor Nagin hid up on the 27th floor of the Hyatt Hotel as far away from the morass and the anarchy as possible. He was putting -- in my opinion as a historian and doing research -- his personal safety and ego over people.

ROESGEN: Through a spokesman, the Mayor Nagin declined several requests to be interviewed for this story. But he told a local TV station he has no respect for Brinkley's work.

MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS MAYOR: The guy is obviously, you know, got a way of writing. You know? And I think he can get a job at "The National Enquirer."

ROESGEN: The Mayor says Brinkley wasn't at the Hyatt Hotel with him and didn't know what went on there. "But six days after the hurricane hit, I walked up 27 flights of stairs and found the mayor in his suite, overlooking the tens of thousands of stranded refugees at the Superdome."

NAGIN: You know, I keep trying to find resources. We're making calls. We are trying to find resources all across the country. I'm screaming at the -- excuse me. I'm screaming at governor and the president. You know? And the CIA could come in here any minute and wipe me out. So, but I'm going to keep doing it. And I'm going to stay here until people are out of here and the city is safe.

ROESGEN: Nagin was angry about a meeting the day before, with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and President Bush on board Air Force One.

Brinkley says that meeting led Governor Blanco to question Nagin's mental state. And he gave CNN this audio excerpt from his interview with the governor.

KATHERINE BLANCO, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA: When we met on Air Force Once, Nagin was just - he was falling apart. I mean, he was near a nervous breakdown.

ROESGEN: But others defend the mayor. New Orleans city councilwoman Jackie Clarkson was at the Hyatt for the first few days after the storm.

JACKIE CLARKSON, NEW ORLEANS CITY COUNCILWOMAN: We all could have been criticized and we just did - there was no handbook. We just all did the best we could. So, I commend the mayor for the time that I was with him.

ROESGEN: Brinkley says Katrina called for courage and Nagin didn't show it.

BRINKLEY: I understand what courage is about. And I've written about it. Mayor Nagin, that week, had zero courage and cracked.

ROESGEN: Susan Roesgen, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Douglas Brinkley is here at CNN Center to talk about his book, "The Great Deluge," and its assessment of Ray Nagin. He joins us live actually from our New Orleans bureau. Good to see you, Doug.

He won the election. Obviously, the people of New Orleans are saying this is our man, this is the man we want.

BRINKLEY: That's right. And one has to hope that we can put some of the past behind us, but not forget it. And one of the good things about my book is that I tell what happened in that week in late August, early September. But there's an attempt here to heal. Although the Nagin jokes continue, today we're doing a mock hurricane evacuation policy and many people are asking where the mayor is, and the answer is, back on the 27th floor of the Hyatt. So it's part of history now, what he did during Katrina. But he has a chance for this hurricane season and future hurricane seasons to make sure that the city's prepared, that he's a first responder, not somebody hiding from his own people.

PHILLIPS: Are you surprised that he won?

BRINKLEY: No, it was 50/50. I think nationally people are surprised. But if you live down here, you knew it was -- it could go either way. And I think Mayor Nagin, particularly after he changed with the chocolate city speech and race became a big issue here, had a very shrewd political strategy which he executed very well. There wasn't much room for mistakes, and he made very few during the campaign.

So I think everybody was sitting down here with baited breath seeing what would happen election night. But Mayor Nagin won, and so Mitch Landrieu is trying to get on his side. And today, or I guess yesterday, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco, who have been fierce opponents, as you heard -- you played that little clip from an interview. They're trying to heal their relationship. Right now this week is about realigning one's self and trying to springboard into the future in a little more positive fashion than last year.

PHILLIPS: Well, you hit on a number of interesting issues. I have a couple of questions for you with regard to what you said. Let's start with the racial tensions. I used to live and work there. And I talked to a number people involved in politics, involved in the city, black and white. And they said they have never seen these types of -- or this type of tension between the black and white community in a really long time, that it played tremendous part in this election.

BRINKLEY: Well, of course it did. I mean, Mayor Nagin got about 80 -- 85 percent or 83 percent of the African-American vote. And he did it largely because of the chocolate city speech. Up until that time, he was not very popular in the African-American community. His nickname was "Ray Reagan." He was namely financed by conservative Republicans. You know, that speech threw race in it. Because many people lost their homes, they lost their possessions, they may be in Houston or Atlanta or Memphis.

And the one thing a lot of African-Americans felt is we don't want to lose a black mayor. We have fought through Jim Crow. We fought for years to get this group of African-American mayors. Before Mayor Nagin, you had Mayor Morial for eight years. And now to suddenly have a white face as the leader of New Orleans would not be a good thing, even though Mitch Landrieu was the more liberal, more pro- civil rights of the two candidates.

PHILLIPS: Now Nagin and Blanco came together allegedly to hammer out their differences the other day. And Nagin came forward and said he felt that the meeting was, quote, great. However, Blanco came forward and said, well, the rhetoric needs to slow down. She says that -- well, the reporter said she sounded a little annoyed in this interview. And she said I've been very angry at him, but I'm moving past that now. Doesn't she need to take a big part of this blame as well? It's sounding like she's thinking he was the only problem.

BRINKLEY: Well, I think so. But you have to realize, today's front page of the "Times-Picayune," it says, you know, every time Ray Nagin has opened his mouth, the joke in Washington is, New Orleans loses a billion dollars. If you watch Nagin's concession speech, it had no grace notes to it. It was all self-congratulatory. I think Governor Blanco does need to take that breath. She's got to work with Mayor Nagin, even though she doesn't want to, for the good of the state.

But remember, you know, she's not the person in charge of last August 29th, having all the RTA buses and school buses parked below sea level and having them drowned. She was not the one, you know, responsible for, you know, that incredible loss, which otherwise we could have evacuated the Superdome. So her frustration with that fact that he lost all of the buses and didn't do the proper things in the city of New Orleans for hurricane preparation, where she had instituted a counterflow that worked throughout the other parishes in the state and it was only New Orleans that seemed to have all these troubles. It's hard for her to heal on that particular point.

And so I don't see there -- I think their relationship's going to continue to be frosty. And when I interviewed Mayor Nagin for 47 minutes on March 15th, I asked him point blank, next election, would he vote as a Democrat for his fellow Democrat Blanco? And he said no way, he would vote for the Republican, Bobby Jindal, again. So that's coming up in a year or so and Nagin will throw his support behind Bobby Jindal, the Republican and you'll still have this friction between the two probably most well-known Louisiana leaders at this juncture. PHILLIPS: Well, let me ask you about the funds. You touched on money. I mean, there was a $75 billion housing program that we still haven't seen go anywhere, and that is in the hands of Congress right now, is that right? What is the governor doing to put pressure on Congress to get this money flowing so individuals in New Orleans can start getting their $100, $150,000, for housing?

BRINKLEY: I think she has to do a lot more and so does Mayor Nagin. You know, what's happened -- the good news was that we had a successful Mardi Gras, successful Jazz Fest, and we had an election. We're showing the world in New Orleans that we're moving forward. Now we've got to become better at our public policy. We've got to demand our money quicker.

You know, Mayor Nagin -- I hope you save this clip. During the campaign, he had said by December, there will be 300,000 people in New Orleans. That's a complete lie. There will not be. There are no homes for that many people to return, nor will there be by December. You can save this clip and watch in December and put the clip, what Nagin said during the campaign.

We've got to talk truthfully about what we're doing with this city now. There are -- hospitals are stressed to the maximum. We have no schools. Our electrical grid's barely on. There's debris everywhere. Whole neighborhoods have been essentially been untouched since last September. There are big problems here, and both the governor and mayor have to use their bully pulpit not to point fingers at each other, but to rally the nation and the world back around New Orleans again so we can start getting some work done on these houses and start getting some sort of cash flow through here. The city coffers of New Orleans are on empty now.

PHILLIPS: Believe me, Doug, just like you, we're tracking the numbers and the quotes and trying our best to hold people accountable for what needs to be done here. That's our jobs, right? Doug Brinkley, thanks a lot.

BRINKLEY: Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: You bet.

Stay with us. CNN, the most trusted name in news. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: We've got an update for you now on a developing story. We actually told you about it yesterday, that quarantine in Romania. Well, several streets are now under restricted access to some areas in the capital after domestic poultry tested positive for the H5 bird flu virus.

Joining us on the phone now from Bucharest, journalist Nicoletta Draguzin. Now, Nicoletta, I'm being told that they're quarantining hundreds of people now? NICOLETTA DRAGUZIN, JOURNALIST: Yes, we're getting in Bucharest, yes, indeed, there are three districts in the capital of Romania, where the H5 virus of the avian flu has been confirmed, dead domestic birds. And in two of these districts, there are hundreds of people in quarantine.

And the authorities here in the capital of Romania will take the same measure for the third district in the next couple of hours. So the situation is very bad in the whole country because there are 46 officially confirmed outbreaks of avian flu and other 37 confirmed cases, most of them in the central part of the country.

PHILLIPS: So you're saying 46 people now have been infected.

DRAGUZIN: No, 46 areas in the whole country ...

PHILLIPS: OK.

DRAGUZIN: ... where they have discovered the H5 virus.

PHILLIPS: Got it. OK, so there have not -- nothing has happened from human to human to this point?

DRAGUZIN: No case of human contamination in Romania. There have been six suspect cases. They were under medical surveillance, but none of them were confirmed. And there are still two people in the hospital where they're still making tests. But for them, the tests are negative also.

PHILLIPS: OK, so that's good so far, no humans confirmed to be infected. So if there -- so why are they still doing this by the hundreds? I understand that even into the night they are going to be putting more people in quarantine. Why is that? Are they just afraid that somebody could become infected and so they want to do everything they can until they make sure ...

DRAGUZIN: Yes. Yes, that's right. It's a precautious measure. They are taking these kind of measures all around the country, not only in the hospital where they confirmed the H5 virus. They are scared that the people might get infected from the dead birds which are contaminated, and that's why they're imposing quarantine.

And people are not allowed to leave those areas which are areas which are surrounded with security fences. And they stay inside for a week. This is the time for human quarantine. A week they are not allowed to leave their houses or that area in quarantine.

PHILLIPS: So Nicoletta, these 46 birds -- where were they found? Were they spread out throughout Bucharest? Were they on one farm? Is it an isolated area?

DRAGUZIN: No, there are 46 areas in the whole country. Every case that has been confirmed until now, it's in domestic birds, most of them in farms, in households and so on. So there is no case of avian flu at wild migrating birds. And that's why the authorities are in maximum alert, because they have no reason for this crises, for all these outbreaks in Romania.

PHILLIPS: All right, Nicoletta Draguzin there in Bucharest. We'll continue to check in with you as we get more information. Nicoletta bringing us a developing story, a little more from what we had yesterday with this threat of bird flu in Romania, 46 outbreaks now being reported, six suspected human cases.

Nicoletta is saying that those have not been confirmed. The human cases have not been confirmed. Two people still in the hospital as doctors try to figure out if, indeed, they have been infected. We'll stay on that story. The second hour of LIVE FROM is straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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