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American Morning

Road to Recovery; Interview With Representative Bobby Jindal

Aired September 27, 2005 - 09:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check the headlines. Carol Costello here with that.
Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Miles. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, President Bush is now touring the area hit by Hurricane Rita. The president left Andrews Air Force base in the last hour. He's expected to get an aerial tour of the battered Texas- Louisiana border. He also plans to meet with storm victims. The trip comes one day after the president urged Americans to conserve fuel.

There is word the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, as its known, is planning to reimburse churches and other religious organizations for their help in the wake of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. That's according to "The Washington Post." Religious groups that operated at the request of officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be eligible. It would be the first time tax dollars are paid to faith-based groups.

Second-most wanted Al Qaeda member in Iraq has been killed. A U.S. military spokesman confirms the man now known as Abu Azzam was shot in a gun battle in Baghdad. It's believed he was responsible for supplying money to terror cells in Iraq.

The Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is speaking out for the first time about claims he had inside information before selling off some stock. Frist sold his holdings of Hospital Corporation of America just one month before a weak earnings report sparked a drop in its price. Frist denies having any information that was not public. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are now investigating.

And more debate expected to resume this hour on John Roberts' nomination to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. The full Senate is expected to confirm Roberts in a vote possibly as early as tomorrow. Once Roberts is confirmed, President Bush is expected to announce his choice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

So a lot of debate on Capitol Hill today and in the days to come.

(WEATHER REPORT)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk business, because of course business needs to recover here in New Orleans before really the city can get back on its feet economically, of course.

We've seen today lots of efforts. Business owners coming in to figure out at least what they've lost. Adaora Udoji has been covering this story, really seeing firsthand people who are getting a sense of, in some cases, how good it is, and in some cases how bad it is.

Good morning.

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Exactly. There are thousands and thousands of business owner who are just now getting a sense of the kind of damage that their businesses have suffered after both Katrina and Rita, and many of them are learning that there is just an enormous amount of work that's going to have to take place in order for them to recover.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI (voice-over): Scott Boswell had not one but two big dreams of restaurant grand openings. In the best of times not an easy task here in the Big Easy, but these are hardly the best of times.

SCOTT BOSWELL, RESTAURANT OWNER: Thanks for supporting us, man, really appreciate it.

UDOJI: Somehow in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's chaos, he opened "Stanley's," his second restaurant in the French Quarter. It was the only thing open for blocks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Order up.

UDOJI: But banged up around the corner, his first restaurant, the four year old smash hit "Stellas" is a mess. He had just started renovating before the storm.

BOSWELL: It was devastating for me, because, we don't have any money coming in.

Progress. Progress.

UDOJI: He does have determination, so did his mother, his sous chef and the sous chef's girlfriend. The four of them started things going. Five more workers showed up four days later and now, they're all working day and night serving up simple meals.

PAT BOSWELL, SCOTTS'S MOM: He needed to work. The people here needed food. And I said, "we can do this." He said, "how?" and I said, we just serve cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers.

UDOJI: No classic New Orleans, but good enough, especially since the generator they're using almost ran out of diesel fuel. Ingredients? They scour streets far away from the city for open stores, making daily trips, this one for $1,600 worth of food and drink. Boswell delivery trucks are not allowed back in the city. The sous chef on the grill, he flew all the way home from culinary training in France just for his friend. JUSTIN GIROURARD, SOUS CHEF: I knew he would want to open up and sell burgers, so that was a good reason to come back.

UDOJI: Others want the same thing. West of them in Jefferson Parish business owners paste on poles and lawn signs displays declaring they're open. Some big chains like Lowe's not only got up and running fast but they're selling the goods to help everyone else get going and Outback serving up steaks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joel, party of two.

UDOJI: Most of the area is roughly 70,000 businesses, though, are still abandoned. A great many of them small businesses like Boswell's that employ 20 people or so and they need everyone which, right now, is a big problem.

BOSWELL: All my employees are scattered all over the United States.

UDOJI: And getting them home is just the first step.

BOSWELL: I have to figure out housing for them, because some of their houses have been destroyed. They don't have places to live.

UDOJI: They don't have places to live or furniture or clothes.

(on camera): Did you ever think that that would be one of your main issue, was getting your employees some clean clothes?

BOSWELL: I told them, I said every day here we do things I never dreamed I would be doing ever in my life.

UDOJI (voice-over): As word of mouth travels, more hungry customers are showing up. That's their great reward in the city they love.

P. BOSWELL: One lady came and said, "Thank you. It's the first day we felt normal in 23 days."

UDOJI: Like everything else here, it's all upside down. If the general rule for a restaurant is the customer doesn't want to see how you cook then here in the Big Easy, the secret to customer satisfaction may just be show 'em how you do it. That's what makes it so good.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI: Now, in the case of Scot Boswell, he's in contact with all 25 of his employees, expecting that many of them will come back. But there are many, many, many companies that have absolutely no idea where their employees are. And a good example of that is the Royal Tenesta (ph), where we're staying. I mean, they usually are running with 500 employees. Now they're doing it with 40. They don't where some of their other employees are. They don't if they're going to come back. So it just creates an incredible amount of complication and confusion as the economy starts to get going again here. S. O'BRIEN: And if those employees have now relocated to, let's say, Houston or -- and other states, and they've got kids that they've now enrolled in schools, who they are trying to get their lives restarted, who knows how many are going to come back and how many are not.

That was a nice piece. Did you get to taste the burgers?

UDOJI: We did. They were good.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, cooked food. That sounds good.

Let's go back to Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: I'd say. That's a lot better than I was eating when I was in New Orleans last time. Glad to see the burgers.

S. O'BRIEN: I thought the same thing.

M. O'BRIEN: Glad to see the burgers, burgers on the grill. When I come back, that's where I'll be going, for sure. Thank you, ladies, very much.

Former FEMA chief Mike Brown will testify before Congress today about the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. No doubt he will be asked why he is still on FEMA's payroll.

U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal represents parts of six Louisiana parishes. He joins us now from Washington.

Good to have you back on the program, Congressman Jindal.

REP. BOBBY JINDAL, (R), LOUISIANA: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

M. O'BRIEN: Why in the world is Mike Brown still being paid?

JINDAL: There are a lot of questions we have down in Louisiana. I think my constituents are going to be very interested in moving forward. What can be done to make sure we don't have this same kind of response in the future, God forbid, if there's another hurricane or there's a manmade attack.

In the first days after the hurricane, there was just not a coordination, there was not a sense of urgency, at both the federal and the state level. Federal and state agencies, neither of them really distinguished themselves on the first days after this hurricane.

Now there were heroes -- the coast Guard, the Wildlife and Fisheries agents, local sheriff departments, local fire departments, state police. These first responders did an amazing job.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, but they did so in spite of the system.

JINDAL: You're exactly right. My office was very frustrated. So often the paperwork and the bureaucracy got in the way of people trying to save lives. And so I think there should be some very tough questions asked, not to point blame, but to say, going forward, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? How do we make sure that -- when the military arrived we had a unified chain of command.

M. O'BRIEN: I think perhaps a little blame is OK, as long as it's constructive. In this case, though, how much blame rests on Mike Brown's desk?

JINDAL: Well, I think that, obviously, FEMA didn't respond the way it should have, and as the head of FEMA, obviously, he should take some responsibility for that, whoever heads up the organization. You heard the president say that, you heard the governor say that. FEMA clearly didn't do what it could have done in those first days. We have horror stories of people looking for paperwork when they should have been focused on saving lives.

But the blame is not only on his shoulders. Again, there was enough of a breakdown. There's plenty of blame to go around. The federal and state agencies, again, did not distinguish themselves. At either level, there just wasn't the coordination, wasn't the kind of sense of urgency.

And I do want to say the military improved things dramatically. When they got there, we saw the situation improve almost overnight.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, Nancy Pelosi, who leads the Democrats on the other side of the isle, is saying this whole thing is kind of a sham, a photo opportunity, and that, essentially, Mike Brown has become a sacrificial lamb for the Republicans to sort of be done with this. Would you go along with that in any way?

JINDAL: Well, I don't think we're placing him alone to fix the problems with FEMA and with the federal and state response. I think that there's something much more organizational. I think we have to study why it was that bureaucracy took over. We literally had pilots that wanted to save people that were told they couldn't get permission. We literally had truckloads of water that were turned away. We had a sheriff that was told he couldn't get help unless he e-mailed his request in. Again, that happened repeatedly at the state and the federal levels. It's fine that we...

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, this is a sheriff who's underwater with no power and they say, oh, send us an e-mail. Got to love that.

JINDAL: Well, that's right. And at one point, I had sheriff tell me, look, if the government worked as efficiently as a private sector, more people might be alive today. One sheriff said, look, I don't have electricity, my parish is underwater. I requested help. The said to send an e-mail. When I was there in his office, I saw volunteers the first days after the hurricane. I saw volunteers from Michigan. They were told Louisiana does not need help. You'll be turned away at the state border, do not come.

I'm grateful, my sheriff was grateful, they broke the rules, they came anyway. They're heroes in this, often said, look, we'll ask for forgiveness later. We don't have time to ask for permission. What I want to know why wasn't there that same sense of urgency in the federal and state bureaucracy? Again, it's great that one or two people may have been replaced, but that's not going to solve this. We need to look organizationally at how can we change the culture of those agencies?

M. O'BRIEN: Well, it's changing the culture, but it's also changing some rules. One of the things that the president would like to do is federalize this in a way that sort of has, you know, creates, I guess, a federal militarized go-team, if you will. You think that's a good idea?

JINDAL: I think in normal disasters, we have to have local and state first responders on the ground, making the decisions. When we have catastrophic disasters, either manmade or natural, if we -- if God forbid, we had a weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear device, absolutely. You can manage a scenario where the local responders are going to be overwhelmed, the decision-makers may be incapacitated.

I think it is smart to have some kind of federal team, whether it's led by the military, led by a beefed up, a restructured FEMA or however the best way is to deliver that. Clearly in this case after Katrina, the military's presence, active and reserve -- the National Guard, as well as the active military -- did an amazing job. They're part of the resources, the chain of command. That worked tremendously well.

M. O'BRIEN: But of course, as you just pointed out, if there were federal government failings to federalize the response the next time, maybe that isn't the solution.

JINDAL: Well, no, that's right. And that's why I don't want to see a federal response in every circumstance. What I'm saying is if there's an overwhelming catastrophe, a national tragedy where maybe your local decision-makers are cut off by communications, maybe they themselves are victims, maybe your first responders don't have the ability to organize and respond, then we need to be ready. And again, the tragedy is, after 9/11, we've had four years, billions of dollars. We should have been better prepared this time...

M. O'BRIEN: You bet.

JINDAL: ... at the state and federal level.

M. O'BRIEN: You bet. We sure should have. What would be the one question, top question you'd ask him today?

JINDAL: Well, I -- the top question is going forward in his mind what could he done to create a sense of urgency in the organization that he until recently ran. What can be done to replace the bureaucracy and the paperwork with a culture that says let's save lives, let's get people out of harm's way and then figure out all the paperwork later.

M. O'BRIEN: Congressman Bobby Jindal, thanks for being back with us. Always a pleasure. JINDAL: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad?

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Miles, thanks.

As you look at some of the damage along Magazine Street, we all know that, clearly, the business districts in New Orleans have taken a big financial hit, big financial toll. But what about the emotional toll. How will people here recover psychologically? We'll talk about that ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back everybody. As we talk this morning from Magazine Street about what's happening in the business recovery, we also have to talk about psychological recovery, because that road, in many respects, might actually be a lot tougher.

Jennifer Cheavens is a psychologist. She's at Duke Medical Center. You've really been here, though, helping out.

JENNIFER CHEAVENS, RED CROSS VOLUNTEER: I have.

S. O'BRIEN: What's your number one concern, now that you've been on the ground for several weeks?

CHEAVENS: Right. Well, the number one concern is the length of time that this is going to go on for people, and the psychological symptoms that are going to start to come for people.

S. O'BRIEN: What are you seeing now?

CHEAVENS: What we're seeing now actually is a great blend of kind of devastation and despair, but with a lot of resiliency and strength. People are committed, determined. The vast majority are really showing signs of strength and resiliency.

S. O'BRIEN: It seems, though, sometimes that strength and resiliency is beginning to crack. There's been a woman who -- we've really been following her path for a long time now. Her name is Gwendolyn Garley.

CHEAVENS: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: And the other day, yesterday, we interviewed her.

CHEAVENS: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: And after being so upbeat and so tough and a survivor, she's really starting to crack. I want to play a little bit of what she told us yesterday.

CHEAVENS: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GWENDOLYN GARLEY, EVACUEE OF KATRINA AND RITA: I guess I crashed. I've been on -- in survivor mode. And today -- yesterday I just felt -- I felt weak. I mean, we was faced with no place to go. We didn't know where to go yesterday. We're out of cash.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: You know, I guess what strikes me about Gwendolyn's story -- and she's been incredibly resilient. I mean, she plucked off her roof, she went to a shelter, went to a another shelter, spent time at the Houston Astrodome, then went to Texas, had to be evacuated out of Texas. I mean, she's been everywhere and her story is not atypical.

CHEAVENS: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you -- how do you counsel someone like that?

CHEAVENS: Right. Well, let me start by saying that I've been in the Mississippi Gulfport area, and so many of the people that I've been seeing have been back in their homes, which is a little bit of a different process than what you're talking about here.

But I think the first thing for people to remember is that these are really normal emotional responses to this very bizarre natural phenomenon. And it's going to last for a while. And after time goes on, if these symptoms persist, to get checked out by mental health professionals.

One of the things that the Red Cross volunteers are doing is carrying with them local resources for folks to go in, see, is this kind of a normal reaction to what's going on , or is this something more pathological that would need a treatment?

S. O'BRIEN: We've seen people getting an opportunity to go back to their businesses along this street or even go back to their home, as we've seen in certain parishes. Does that help? I mean, sometimes it's so bad, but is there an upside?

CHEAVENS: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: There is?

CHEAVENS: Yes, I think there is. What happens psychologically for folks is that sometimes knowing, even when the knowing is terrible and unbearable, is better than not knowing at all. It's like when you have a puzzle, it's hard to walk away with three pieces not in it, right? And so going back and seeing what work lies ahead for you can really bring a sense of -- a boost to that resiliency you were talking about.

S. O'BRIEN: What about the children who have really gone through -- I mean, imagine having to float across sometimes in a little plastic tub with your parents, and sometimes being displaced from your parents for a long period of time.

CHEAVENS: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: What are you doing for them?

CHEAVENS: What we're doing for them is when we're going out into communities, where we're going and meeting with children, we're taking, you know, stuffed animals, coloring books, stickers, things like that, to get them talking and then listening to their stories in their words, and not trying to make them be adults through this, but helping them process at the level that they're at. And then, again, making referrals to local mental health providers for long-term care.

S. O'BRIEN: How long is long-term care? I mean, is there -- do people ever get over this?

CHEAVENS: I guess it depends on what you mean by get over. You know, people will build their lives. And the people that will be hardest hit psychologically are the folks who were having some psychological difficulties before this storm hit. Those are the -- you know, people who were depressed, substance abusing. Most vulnerable will be the people who will need most from us.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, it is a tough story, and a long road ahead, not just for them, but also, I think, folks like yourself...

CHEAVENS: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, who have been really helping out. Jennifer Cheavens is a psychologist at the Duke University Medical Center.

CHEAVENS: That's right.

S. O'BRIEN: Helping out here. Nice to see you. Appreciate it.

CHEAVENS: Great to see you. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles, back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad.

Coming up on "CNN LIVE TODAY" is a lot of things. And Daryn is here to fill us in on that.

Hello, Daryn Kagan.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, yes. Good morning to you, Miles.

At the top of the hour, boy, are there a lot of questions. What went wrong in the days following Hurricane Katrina? The former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, telling his side of the story this morning on Capitol Hill. His testimony live right here on CNN. It is only a few minutes away. You are going to see that live.

And a tale of two city in Louisiana, one flooded, the other dry. How did the dry city avoid Hurricane Rita's wrath? we'll explain in a little bit on "CNN LIVE TODAY." For now, back to you. M. O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Daryn.

Still to come on the program, a troubled airline comes out of bankruptcy by merging with another carrier. Andy's "Minding Your Business" with that, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: U.S. Airways and America West have teamed up. It's like a couple of ailing patients getting together, and the end result is a more healthy patient. I don't know how that works.

But Andy Serwer is here to explain the logic.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: We're going to explain all.

Let's talk about the markets first of all, Miles, go down to Wall Street, check out that Big Board. The Dow Jones Industrials up 25 points this morning. We continue to recover, at least on Wall Street, from the devastation of Hurricane Rita. The price of oil stabilizing, and we're just going to be watching energy prices going forward from here. Everyone on Wall Street certainly is.

U.S. Airways emerging from bankruptcy today. Have you heard this story before? You have, because this is the second time they've come out of chapter 11. This time newly emerged with America West Airlines. The parent company, and the entire company, in fact, will be called U.S. Airways. We're going to be phasing out the America West planes, the logos, you can see there, just as soon as they can paint them. Actually it's a process, Miles, that's going to take up to two years to change all the signage. However, in Tempe, Arizona, where America West has been headquartered, they've already taken out the America West sign.

America West actually had been a pretty healthy concern, U.S. Air has had its problem. So it will be interesting to see how these two fit together. 40,000 employees, we still have a bunch of other airlines in Chapter 11. United, Delta and Northwest, of course, so this industry continues to be in turmoil.

M. O'BRIEN: So the new airline will be U.S. Airways?

SERWER: That's correct.

O'BRIEN: And does it have a new...

SERWER: It has a new ticker symbol, thank you, LCC, which stands for low-cost carrier. Isn't that creative?

M. O'BRIEN: Why did they do that?

SERWER: It's very creative.

M. O'BRIEN: Creative, but would be hard to find.

SERWER: Yes, hard to sort of associate is what you're saying? M. O'BRIEN: Yes, an association issue, yes.

SERWER: Indeed.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much, Andy. See you tomorrow.

SERWER: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: Back with more in a moment. Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Hey, Miles, I don't know if you can hear the hum, maybe it's a roar of the generator behind me. You hear that a lot. Anybody's who has sort of taken responsibility for their own power has a big old generator -- that big green thing there -- parked in front of their building. Supermarkets still not back here on Magazine Street.

Also, in spite of all the good news on the street, in that it wasn't really very badly damaged in the hurricane, you know, they've still got a long way to go. You've got the plywood that's got to come off, and of course you have to have the inspections. You've got to get the power back as well, so a pretty long road ahead before the customers come back to the world famous Magazine Street -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN; Yes, you know, it's interesting. The picture there isn't pretty. And then every now and then you see a glimmer, like these business owner who are determined to get back to work, the restaurant cooking the cheeseburgers. It's kind of hard. I walk away not sure where the city is headed. How about you?

S. O'BRIEN: You know, I got to tell you, when I was here several weeks ago I thought it was really bad, and I think that there is definitely a sense of people who are committed to rebuilding, people who will bring the city back around anyway possible. It's not going to be next week. It's not going to be next month. But I've been invited for Mardi Gras by about 40 people, and I expect to be here -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: There will be a Mardi Gras this year, I'm told, and I'm sure that will happen. All right, Soledad, let's all go. We'll do the show from there. Why not? That sure beats working. The crew wants to go. Everybody here wants to go.

All right, everybody is shaking their head, yes, Mardi Gras, yes.

All right, Daryn Kagan is at the CNN Center to take you through the next couple of hours on "CNN LIVE TODAY."

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