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Nancy Grace

Law & Order Breaks Down in New Orleans

Aired September 02, 2005 - 20:00   ET

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

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, in New Orleans, law and order break down: shootings, looting, continued carjackings, armed gang roam the city`s flooded streets. Tonight, the law is stretched to the limit. Thousands are feared dead, thousands more seek shelter, looking desperately for the ones they love that are now missing, and the flood waters covering three states.
Good evening, everybody. I`m Nancy Grace, and I want to thank you for being with us tonight. Tonight in New Orleans, thousands dead, thousands homeless and missing. Across the Southland, 30,000 troops deployed in the largest military relief effort in U.S. history. Chaos rules, law and order the victim.

The New Orleans mayor says he`ll take all means necessary to stop looting, arson, gunfire and mayhem as his citizens die. The city under water.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I`m -- I`m just stressed out right now. I`m tired. I need a bed. I need a bath. I`m just overdue for everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I want to go straight out to CNN`s Karl Penhaul, joining us from New Orleans. Karl, what do you see?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I`m at the international airport tonight, Nancy, and throughout the entire day, this airport and the skies above New Orleans have been abuzz with helicopters of all the sorts you can imagine. There have been Army helicopters, Navy helicopters, Coast Guard helicopters, civilian helicopters, all with one mission in mind, to head into New Orleans, to head into the worst flood-ravaged areas and pluck out more of those hurricane survivors and bring them back to dry land here at the airport.

As we flew over today in an Army Blackhawk helicopter, we could see many people still on the balconies of their homes, still on the roofs of high buildings. We saw some people paddling on planks of wood through the flood waters. Some were lucky enough to have boats and were trying to paddle their way out. In other areas, helicopters were simply landing on overpasses and hauling off survivors there.

In fact, we headed out to the university campus, and the last people standing at that campus were, in fact, a group of New Orleans Police Department officers, and they said that they`d spent the last five days and nights securing a landing zone, and they estimate that they helped more than 3,000 ordinary citizens to get on helicopters and to get out of that flood zone. But they say it`s like a war zone out there. They say it`s chaos, and they are obviously very hard-hit by this whole situation, as everybody is.

As one of the police officers was coming back with us on that Army helicopter, he broke into tears, and I said to him, Nancy, What`s wrong? What`s up? And he says, I can still see the faces of the babies and the old folk in my mind, and went on to tell me how in those five days that he was helping people, he saw elderly women die before his eyes because they simply couldn`t get help in time to get out, Nancy.

GRACE: As Karl Penhaul is telling us, there in New Orleans, we`re going on a full week now, people still stranded on roofs, on balconies, no food, no water.

Joining me now from Waveland, Mississippi, CNN correspondent and anchor Anderson Cooper. Anderson, what do you see?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Nancy, the devastation continues to be block after block and house after house. I`m on a different street tonight, but you know, frankly, you could go left, you could go right, and you`d find the exact same thing. They`re finding some more bodies. They found more bodies yesterday. We were with them two days ago when they found six bodies in the space of about an hour, people left in their homes who drowned in their living rooms, one woman just left on the street by her neighbors, left to rot for 48 hours, to decompose.

Finally, they took her body yesterday and they took the bodies of the four people, those two mentally disabled children, they took their bodies out this morning, and I was there to see it.

GRACE: Anderson, are you seeing help arrive there in Mississippi?

COOPER: Yes, there is help. I mean, there has been help, you know, at various levels from the get-go. There are these guys from Virginia, Virginia Task Force 2 of the Urban Search and Rescue. They are just doing -- I mean, they`re doing God`s work here. They`re working around the clock. They don`t have much water. They don`t have much food. I mean, these guys are just the salt of the earth, and the women, too. I mean, it`s just tremendous what they`re doing.

Some National Guard troops arrived yesterday. We`re seeing some more today. We occasionally see helicopters fly over. We don`t see them land too much. But you know, there`s a lot of outrage here, Nancy. There`s a lot of anger. And people are wondering, like, you know, yes, they`re saying, Oh, we got 40,000 troops mobilizing -- future tense. You know, We got 400 troops coming -- future tense. If they`re not here now -- and people are wondering -- you know, they`re saying, What is going on? Where are the people?

GRACE: You know, Anderson, you and I are both, and especially you, are asking politicians tough questions, but I`m not hearing any answers. Help me out.

COOPER: I know. What we`re hearing is responses. You know, that`s the Washington thing, responses. They respond to the question, they don`t answer the question. It`s the oldest, you know, game in the book. And it`s very frustrating.

And I mean, we have people here in Waveland who are able to watch our broadcast or hear our broadcast because they`ve evacuated. They have driven into Waveland to come up to me and say, You know what? You got -- you guys on the media, you got to keep asking these tough questions, because what all the politicians are saying is, You know what? Now is not the time for finger-pointing.

Well, my response is, When is the time to ask these questions? You know, it seems to me the time when -- the time is now, when the world is watching. It`s not six months from now, when people have sort of forgotten this and aren`t paying attention, but Waveland is still destroyed. You know, the time is now to ask these questions and the time is now to get these answers.

GRACE: You know what, Anderson? Frankly, I don`t give a fig what the rest of the world thinks or who is watching or thinking what, but the questions that you are asking is putting on the heat. As every hour passes, Anderson, you`re seeing it. I`m sitting here in a nice, air- conditioned studio. You`re there. You`re seeing it. People are dying by the hour. So if you don`t ask now, Anderson, then when?

COOPER: Well, it was funny. I talked to a politician today, a senator, and you know -- and he`s very nice, and I respect a lot of what he`s doing. He has suffered personally a loss in this. But I asked him, you know -- you know, were resources deployed to Iraq that, if they weren`t deployed to Iraq, would they be here? And he said, you know, That`s just a question the media is asking.

And you know, I actually said to him, You know what? That`s not a question the media is asking, that`s a question Charles Kierney (ph), a guy who came up to me today white-hot with anger, whose home has been destroyed -- that`s the question he wanted me to ask.

You know, people are just frustrated they`re not getting answers, and I get that. And you know what? It`s not even frustration, it`s anger. You know, people aren`t frustrated -- a lot of politicians will tell you, Nancy, Well, you know, I understand the frustration of people here. People aren`t frustrated, people are dying -- people are dead and people are dying in New Orleans, and that`s not -- you know, it goes much deeper than frustration. It goes to the core.

GRACE: Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The hardest was rescuing everybody off the boats and pulling together as teams, tying sheets together, pulling people off with their pets, hearing children crying at night, hearing whistles in the background, flares going up, and you can`t do anything about it. All you can do is hope and pray that somebody got to them. But we made it through.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s still good people in the world. I want to say thank y`all. Thank you. Thank you. I never, never can stop thanking you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I want to go out to Houston`s Astrodome. Joining me now, CNN reporter Sean Callebs. Tell me about the Astrodome. Is it filling up?

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, it is completely filled, and it has been now for going on 24 hours, Nancy. For days, we heard from FEMA, as well as Red Cross and other charitable organizations here, that the Houston Astrodome would be able to hold 24,000 evacuees coming from the New Orleans area. Well, last night around midnight Eastern time, the buses stopped. They were still rolling in, hundreds of people waiting in line here to get inside. However, the fire marshal said at about 11,000 to 12,000 people, they were cutting it off, simply too dangerous. And at that time, they told these buses -- people who had been on the road for 9 to 12 hours -- that they had to go somewhere else, Dallas, San Antonio, the city of Huntsville, Texas.

However, in the hours after that, leading up to the morning, something was worked out that allowed all of these evacuees to stay in this area.

There is the Reliance (ph) Arena to my right, the Reliance Center to my left. They are putting 11,000 cots in those two facilities. So even though people had to stay on the buses last night -- clearly, a lot longer than they wanted to -- they are being housed here. However, the Reliance Center and Arena, Nancy, that is going to be something very, very brief. They`re talking 24 to 36 hours. Then they want to get these people out, on to the other large facilities. They want to hold 25,000 people in San Antonio, 12,500 thousand in Dallas -- Nancy.

GRACE: Sean, explain to me the conditions there at the Astrodome. At the Superdome, all hell`s broken loose. There are people that are dying. There are mounds of human waste. People are trolling. Mothers are there with multiple children that trying to protect their children from people there in the Superdome. What`s the Astrodome like?

CALLEBS: To explain what the Astrodome is like, you really have to set the stage for what these people endured before, during and after the storm blew through the area. Now, not just what you talked about -- the waste, the stench, the water, the darkness. We`re talking about -- we`ve had numerous reports of violent criminal acts -- assaults, stabbings, gunfire going off in the Superdome.

So when people came here at first, you know, it`s close to 100 degrees here during the day, but to the people who were arriving here, it was like paradise. Inside the Astrodome, air-conditioning, clean cots, clean restrooms, clean showers. They were given the opportunity to put on clean clothes. They got hot food for the first time in days.

Now, the situation has deteriorated over the past 24 hours simply because it is so crowded on the floor. Some people are showing frustration. However, an overwhelming number, Nancy, we have talked to, said this is light years better and they cannot thank the people of Houston and the people of Texas enough for what they are doing.

GRACE: Take a listen to this victim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we got on the bus, this is where they were taking us. And you understand, they weren`t letting us in. Were they going to just let us out on the streets?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s mayhem, man. I mean, it`s a little better. It`s a lot -- oh, really, it`s a lot better because, you know, the service is better, you know? But I mean, it`s nothing like home.

ROBERT LEWIS, SURVIVOR: It was nothing short of a landfill. That`s pretty much where we stayed. It was horrible. Human waste, animal waste, rodents, anything you could possibly imagine, that`s what we had to deal with before coming here. We had already figured that it wasn`t going to be that night that we got here, so we had to sleep in that area.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: I want to go back to my friend, Anderson Cooper. Anderson, any idea what the death toll is there?

COOPER: No. They don`t know. I mean, frankly, you know, I`ve seen personally six bodies. That was two days ago. I know they found, I think, like, four bodies yesterday. I don`t know the count for today -- just in Hancock County. They`re simply not saying.

Nancy, if I could, someone just came out to me. They saw we were broadcasting. And he just wanted me to get his message out. All day long, people come up to you and they want to get messages out to their loved ones. This is -- if someone named Douglas Stump (ph) is listening from Gilford (ph), Connecticut, Jeff Brownsberger (ph) wants you to know that he`s alive. His name is Jeff Brownsberger. He lives in Bay St. Louis. He`s alive. The message is for Douglas Stump in Gilford, Connecticut.

We get this all day long, Nancy. It`s a pretty hard thing to see.

GRACE: Anderson, send them to Elizabeth (ph), my producer, and we`ll run them on the bottom of the screen, OK, friend, everybody that gives that you that. If you -- I know you don`t have time, but just try.

Anderson, it`s not about finger pointing. I`m thrilled that we can help in Iraq. I`m thrilled that the U.S. can give all around the world. But I`m stunned that our own people are suffering this way. And it`s not about finger pointing. Tell me, are the people there getting the food and water finally?

COOPER: Yes. I mean, they`re getting some water. They`re getting some food. And as I said, I`m not -- you know, I`m not finger pointing and I`m not blasting the federal government. You know, FEMA has been here from the get-go. As I said, these guys from Virginia Urban Search and Rescue -- I mean, they`re -- you know, they`re doing amazing work.

But it`s not enough. I mean, there`s no -- I don`t think anyone will tell you it`s enough. And it`s frustrating when you see -- you know, day after day, you still don`t see more help coming, and you see helicopters passing you over and they`re not landing here.

GRACE: So you`re telling me that there are still people on balconies, there are still people on roofs. I know there are in New Orleans. But what I don`t understand, Anderson, is we see air drops of food and water in other countries, and I don`t understand why that`s not happening there. Or is it and I just don`t know about it?

COOPER: I haven`t seen it, if it`s happening. And I know a lot of people ask me, Why aren`t there air drops of food? And I think -- I think we asked the FEMA people that two or three days ago, and they said, you know, they`re looking into it, that`s a possibility. But you know -- you know, people don`t want possibilities. They want something happening now. And you know, I understand that, and it`s -- I don`t have the answers for them. I really don`t. And it`s a hard thing to see.

GRACE: Anderson, it`s becoming too late for a lot of people. It`s becoming too late. If people show up tomorrow or the next day, it`s too late. They`re dead.

COOPER: Yes. Well, you know, I mean, here in Waveland, what`s done is done. I mean, they`re not -- you know, people have been found alive. They`ve rescued, and now they`re finding people who are dead, and they`re still making the searches.

I can`t tell you -- you know, I was real happy -- I`ve been thinking about this family that I saw, you know, drowned in their homes. I saw them 48 hours ago. And every day, I`ve been going just to check, has somebody come to pick them up, because just the thought of them just laying in their home for me, it`s something I can`t get out of my mind. I was so pleased that the coroner came today. Some police from Florida came and helped pick up those bodies and got them out of that house.

GRACE: Anderson Cooper, reporting from Waveland, Mississippi. Thank you, friend. We`ll all be right back. Please stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO (D), LOUISIANA: When hoodlums victimize and inflict suffering on people at their wits` end, they`re taking away our limited resources, whatever resources we have to save babies, to save children and to save good people. I have one message for these -- for these hoodlums. These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, if necessary. And I expect they will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE WILLIAMSON, PILOT, AIR EVAC. LIFETEAM: It`s kind of hard for us to believe and imagine that here we`re trying to help people, we`re trying to save lives, and we have, you know, these individuals shooting at us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Welcome back. I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us. I want to go straight to Biloxi, Mississippi. Standing by, CNN correspondent Ted Rowlands. Ted, bring me up to date.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Nancy, President Bush came through this neighborhood in Biloxi today and got a firsthand look at the utter destruction here and took a fly-over of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. And people looked up for a bit, after sifting through their rubble in their homes, and acknowledged it. Some are frustrated, as you might imagine, with the lack of food and water available still on this Friday.

But you know, to be honest, we talked to a lot of people here, especially the old-timers that lived through Camille, that say that this was a hurricane that nobody predicted, in that nobody thought there could ever be anything like Camille, which was in 1969. And so when Katrina came in here and just completely leveled these homes, which withstood Camille no problem, they say they were surprised, and they almost give a pass, to some degree, with the response, the initial response, because they think it`s a 100-year hurricane, and that to expect the federal government to have the National Guard waiting just outside the borders of every state for every hurricane for the last 100 years just is not going to happen.

So we`ve met a lot of people, especially the old-timers, that really aren`t as upset, and sort of say, you know, Mother Nature was taken for granted by us. We didn`t evacuate. We almost were killed, and our neighbors are dead. And I think that they believe that a lot of people who planned the disaster responses took it for granted that they could never see anything of this magnitude in this large of an area.

GRACE: Here`s another survivor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I`m kind of shocked the way they reacted. I mean, going into the hospital, shooting people and all that, in a time like this or like this situation, and they reacting like this. So I don`t want to be around them.

MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We`re talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here. I`m, like, You got to be kidding me! This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get the [deleted] moving to New Orleans! That`s their thinking, small, man, and this is a major, major, major deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: It is so major that it is hard to take in Katrina`s damage. Families ripped apart by Katrina are begging for help. If you are missing a family member or you want to post a name on CNN`s safe list, send the e- mail to hurricanevictims@cnn.com. We want to help you.

Tonight, one case in particular. Dannica Daigle, 15, e-mailed us looking for her grandmother, Wendy Stevenson, from Kiln, Mississippi. Dannica last heard from her grandmother Sunday. If you have any information on grandma Wendy Stevenson, please e-mail Dannica at dannidaigle@yahoo.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Thousands believed dead, thousands missing and homeless. Katrina.

Welcome back. I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us.

I want to go straight back to New Orleans. Standing by, CNN reporter Karl Penhaul. Karl, what is the morale like there? Karl, can you hear me? I`m worried about my satellite with Karl Penhaul. We`ll be right back at New Orleans.

I want to go to Ted Rowlands. Ted, what is the morale like there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mix minus (ph). I don`t have mix minus, guys. We`re going to need...

GRACE: OK, mix minus means he can`t hear me, but I can hear him. I`ll now go to where the heat`s being turned on, to Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. Jamie, this is not about finger pointing, this is about saving lives. What has our House of Representatives and Senate done for us?

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, they`re not playing much of a role, but I think you`re going to see the Congress asking a lot of tough questions in the months ahead about how this happened.

You know, what this is really about is leadership. And let me just put aside something -- my own analysis, as somebody who looks at this, all the sides of this story, as I`m covering it. And let me tell you that this is not about the troops in Iraq not being here. There are plenty of troops in the United States. And it`s not about -- from my perspective, I don`t see any evidence this is about racism or a lack of concern.

These are decisions -- all these decisions about how they form this response are made by compassionate, smart people trying to make the right decisions. But the result has been something that has clearly fallen short. And that`s a very significant thing we heard today from President Bush, an acknowledgment, the first one, that this response is not adequate.

GRACE: Very quickly, back to Karl Penhaul. I`ll try it again, there in New Orleans. Could you tell me if flights are arriving with supplies, Karl?

PENHAUL: Flights are arriving with the evacuees on the helicopter flights. But what that`s doing, Nancy, curiously enough, is creating another problem in itself because in the last few minutes, talking to emergency officials here at the airport, they say that there are now 8,000 evacuees here at the international airport in New Orleans, and that`s creating a bottleneck. They can`t get rid of these evacuees fast enough to outlying areas, to other cities in other states. And so that`s causing a problem, a drain on resources, a drain on food and water, Nancy.

GRACE: Karl, Karl, we`re going to try to hold onto you. We`ll all be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOPHIA CHOI, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Hi there. I`m Sophia Choi. And here`s your "Headline Prime Newsbreak."

Seven thousand National Guard troops and tons of food and water are finally reaching thousands of stranded people in New Orleans. The convoy rolled into the city this morning. The meals ready-to-eat will be the first hot food many people have had since Hurricane Katrina struck on Monday.

A massive evacuation effort is now getting under way in New Orleans. A caravan of buses arrived there today to ferry people out of the water- logged city. And the Air Force plans to airlift 10,000 people to San Antonio. Now, in addition, airlines will fly out 25,000 stranded residents.

President Bush saw the devastation along the coast firsthand and acknowledged the result of relief efforts there are unacceptable. He promised to crack down on crime, rush food and medicine to the region, and restore power.

Tonight, the president will sign a $10.5 billion aid package approved today by Congress.

That`s the news for now. I`m Sophia Choi. Now back to NANCY GRACE.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAY NAGIN, MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS: I don`t want to see anybody do anymore goddamned press conferences. Don`t do another press conference until the resources are in this city.

And then come down to this city and stand with us, when there are military trucks and troops that we can`t even count. Don`t tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They`re not here! It`s too doggone late.

Now, get off your asses, and let`s do something. Let`s fix the biggest goddamned crisis in the history of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The mayor of New Orleans.

Welcome back, I`m Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us.

More devastation than we can even imagine. The mayor is correct. I want to go to Rick Sanchez there in New Orleans.

Rick, tell me what you see there today.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We`ve been seeing so much, Nancy. And so much frustration still, because I went out on a boat yesterday, Nancy. I went into the waters. I looked at home after home, thousands of homes, 40,000 homes in Jefferson Parish and Orleans Parish.

And we went through those homes. And you`d stop the engine just so you could hear once in a while, and you`d hear people screaming from windows and from inside buildings. You couldn`t see them, but you`d hear the voices of children.

And those children would be crying out and saying, "Help us, we`re inside here. Please, help us get out."

It`s tough. It`s tough knowing that there are people in those buildings, people in those houses tonight, still, who are not getting out, because, in many cases, it`s too difficult to get to them and because the resources simply aren`t here.

GRACE: I want to go to Congressman Bobby Jindal, representative of the first district of Louisiana.

OK, thanks, Elizabeth. We`re getting hooked up to him right now. These are his constituents we`re talking about.

Rick Sanchez, can you tell me about the patients that have been evacuated to the airport?

SANCHEZ: Oh, it`s been very difficult here, as well. You`ve got some thousands of people who are just inside this terminal right now.

It`s hot. It`s uncomfortable. And a lot of these people were hot and uncomfortable and sick to begin with before they got here. They`re being brought here from hospitals. They are being brought here as well from many of those homes that I`ve just described.

They`re trying to pluck them up -- pluck them as fast as they possibly can to bring them here. But it`s really a work in progress, Nancy. A lot of these folks still don`t even know whether they`re going to San Antonio, whether they`re going to Dallas, whether they`re going to Houston, or some other venue that perhaps has not yet been determined.

GRACE: You know, Rick, at least they`re alive and they`re going somewhere. What about these people that you`re hearing still barricaded in their homes, yelling? They may not make it. I mean, what do you do when you hear that?

SANCHEZ: Oh, it was so tough. You know, if you`re a parent, and you have children, and you see these parents -- we came across an elderly woman yesterday. She was in her house, and she was on the top floor.

And when our boat came up to what was her front porch, we heard her screaming. And she said to us, "I`m here, and I want to get out, but come for me tomorrow, because, next door, my neighbor has babies in the house. So leave me, get them immediately."

So we went and fetched some of the folks who were out here with the swift water recovery units. And eventually, they were able to get out there. They found 15 people in that home, and many of them were children.

We never saw them, Nancy. We only heard their screams. You could imagine the effect that has.

And, of course, while we were out there, we also saw -- you know, it`s difficult to say it -- but souls, corpses, human bodies floating on that river. It was difficult to see. And I asked some of the officials, I said, "Why aren`t you recovering the bodies?" He said, "Because we`re barely able to get to the living, and that`s really our priority."

It`s tough. It`s rancid. It`s a difficult situation at best. I would certainly describe it, Nancy -- and I`ve covered an awful lot of hurricanes. I was in Hurricane Andrew for months. This is worse than Andrew. This is as bad as I`ve ever seen anywhere in the United States.

GRACE: I just can`t get over hearing those people there in the house yelling out for you when they heard you going by like that.

Two people are joining us right now by phone, Elizabeth tells me in my ear. It is Glade and Michelle, a husband and wife. They are barricaded in their home in New Orleans.

Glade and Michelle, can you hear me?

GLADE, TRAPPED IN HOME IN NEW ORLEANS: Yes.

MICHELLE, TRAPPED IN HOME IN NEW ORLEANS: Hello.

GRACE: First of all, we are praying for you. We are praying for you. Tell me, what`s happening?

MICHELLE: We are doing a whole lot better than listening to the people you`ve been talking about. So much of this is new to us, because we`ve been here without power and communication, that we don`t know what`s going on. And so that`s part of the reason why we are barricaded in our house.

GRACE: Why are you afraid to leave your home?

GLADE: Well, we get calls from all across the nation about the lawlessness that`s going on, and the police officers turning in their badges, because they`re getting shot at. And just, when we walked home -- we do little neighborhood things and sharing, pool resources, and we`re about half a block away.

And as we came back to our house, we saw the first New Orleans police car that we have seen since last Sunday, its rear window shot out. And I saluted the policeman, and he looked totally devastated, as driving by the house.

And, you know, it`s every man for himself back here. And I think the whole city has that same feeling, if you`re not under water.

MICHELLE: This morning, we had seen three policemen in flak vests riding a backhoe.

GRACE: Why did you guys decide not to evacuate?

GLADE: Well, that`s an odd thing. I think we`re both survivors. My dad was a pilot and a colonel in the Air Force, and Michelle`s a surgeon. And we thought, you know, we can do something.

And if it`s floods, we go to the second floor. And if it really floods, we go to the third floor. And at least we`ll be here to help.

But when it seems like the citizenry is shooting at the citizenry, it`s hard to put your life in danger more than it already is.

GRACE: How long can you stay there? How much food and water do you have?

GLADE: Well, we have water, not any city water. We`ve got gallons of water, and the gas service is still here. I don`t know how long that will be on.

GRACE: Hold on, Glade and Michelle, not everybody knows what city water is now. Now, I do. City water is what`s pumped to you. That`s been treated that comes through your pipes. What do you have, well water or water that you`ve saved up?

MICHELLE: Well, bottled water.

GLADE: Bottled, right.

MICHELLE: And water, what you saved in your bathtubs before it got cut off.

GLADE: Right.

GRACE: You`ve got water saved up in your bathtub?

GLADE: Right.

MICHELLE: Yes. You have your hurricane supplies, and you fill your bathtubs up before the storm hits.

GLADE: And we get little bits of information, because we have a battery-operated radio -- I mean, television that we turn on sporadically and see what`s going on. And after a couple of press conferences, we turned it off. We don`t want to see that. We want to see some real news.

GRACE: Tell me something. How do you feel when you hear politicians -- who was it, Ellie, was it Hastert?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Dennis Hastert.

GRACE: Dennis Hastert say it doesn`t make sense to rebuild New Orleans.

GLADE: You know what? This is America. We all stick together.

MICHELLE: New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in this country. It has survived all the wars. It has so many wonderful things.

I`m a transplant from Pennsylvania. And there are so many wonderful things about New Orleans. When people are down, and somebody would say that, it`s...

GLADE: It`s amazing. It`s amazing to hear those words from somebody, especially in a position of influence like that.

GRACE: Glade and Michelle are barricaded in their home in New Orleans and thought to call us tonight. Glade and Michelle, we are praying for you.

GLADE: Thank you.

MICHELLE: Thanks.

GRACE: I want to go back now very quickly to Sean Callebs. Sean, when you hear stories like that, you must have a million stories of your own.

CALLEBS: You know, we`ve heard Anderson talk about the widespread death and devastation he has seen during the tremendous effort that all the CNN staff has done.

When the people come here, they have been through the worst. When they come here, they are traumatized -- we`ve talked to physicians -- people suffering from anxiety disorders, depression.

What we are hearing from the thousands and thousands of people that come here, they`re trying to find their loved ones. They`re trying to find out what the situation is, like back in Louisiana. They haven`t seen TV. They haven`t had power. They have talked to their friends, and they`ve heard about the looting. They`ve heard about the shooting.

People are terrified. We talked to a gentleman earlier today, David White, 53-year-old gentleman from New Orleans. And he left the city with his wife and four of his five children.

His 20-year-old daughter chose to ride out the storm. He got a frantic call from her Tuesday afternoon at the convention center, and we know what the convention center was like a couple of days ago.

She told him she was in -- water was up to her chest. She was screaming. She was petrified. She was terrified. The phone cut off. And he has not been able to find her since.

He is a wreck. Every bus that comes in, every group of evacuees, he goes up and checks it out. And that is a situation that is playing out a thousand times over. Almost everybody here we have talked to is trying to reach a loved one, to say, "Yes, I`m here," or trying to find a loved one, saying, "Where are you?"

It`s just something -- it just goes on and on, from dawn till dusk.

GRACE: To Rick Sanchez there in New Orleans. Rick, do people there really believe that help is on the way?

SANCHEZ: Well, all they can do is hope. And today, when they saw the troops, 1,200 of them arriving, and the president says 1,200 more are on the way tomorrow or the day after, there did seem to be at least some sense of calm from some of those people I talked to who made it downtown. I didn`t go downtown today, so I didn`t get a sense of that myself.

I think people can only hope, at this point, Nancy. And it`s tough. The federal government -- let me tell you, from covering hurricanes, one of the most difficult parts of this is, logistically.

The people who have the most intelligence, the people who know this town the best, are the least capable because of the numbers and the resources to take care of it. That`s the locals. The local police officers, the people who really work here, know this town, they know every nook and cranny of this place.

The feds come in from all over the country. The first thing they have to do, the first obstacle is just to get a lay of the land. Sometimes they sit around and have meetings for an awful long period of time...

GRACE: Oh, good lord.

SANCHEZ: ... before they`re able to get out.

GRACE: Meetings, meetings, press conferences, meetings, what...

SANCHEZ: The real question is, for those of us who`ve covered this, you probably don`t know a single meteorologist -- because I`m sure you`ve met many of them -- who haven`t told you over the last 10 years when you asked them, "What will be the worst hurricane that will hit the country? What`s the worst scenario?"

And every single one, to a one, will tell you, Nancy -- I`m sure you`ve heard this in the past -- it will happen the day New Orleans gets a huge hurricane because of Lake Pontchartrain. This is not a secret. This is something every one of us in this business has known. Why people didn`t prepare for that eventuality is maybe the question in the end we all need to ask.

GRACE: Right. We`ll be right back with Rick Sanchez in New Orleans. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAGIN: God is looking down on all this. And if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price.

Because every day that we delay, people are dying. And they`re dying by the hundreds, I`m willing to bet you. We`re getting reports and calls that are just breaking my heart, from people saying, "I`ve been in my attic. I can`t take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don`t think I can hold out."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: The mayor of New Orleans begging, begging for help.

Welcome back. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to go straight out to Rob Marciano, CNN weather anchor. Rob, what have you seen?

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, I was in Biloxi, Mississippi, which got more hit with the storm surge than the flooding. The flooding that hit Biloxi moved in, moved in quite quickly, but also moved back quite quickly, and we were left with the damage very similar to what you saw in the tsunami-ravaged area last year, so basically a 25-foot wall of water moving onshore and taking everything in its path.

It looked like the place got nuked. And what was most disturbing for me, aside from the victims that had survived and the look of desperation in their eyes, was walking around knowing that lives were lost, smelling the stench of the rotting bodies, and knowing also that this could have been prevented, certainly across southwest Mississippi.

I mean, the National Hurricane Center did their job and did it well. There are hurricane warnings well in advance of this thing. Mandatory evacuations were issued south of I-10. And for anybody to stick around there is just ludicrous.

The folks in New Orleans, it`s a different scenario. The topography is much more difficult to get out of, especially for the infirmed, especially for the poor. But I hear this mayor of New Orleans spouting off. Why didn`t he take school buses and get everybody out of there?

It`s frustrating. The most frustrating thing for meteorologists is that the warning was there to get out and not everybody got out.

GRACE: To Renee Rockwell, Renee, this is your family, your home.

RENEE ROCKWELL, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, I know. And just the little contact that I`ve had, as far as with the legal community is, I`ve spoke again today with a friend of mine who is a chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court.

She now has over 90 people in her home, from seven months to 90 years old. There are people on oxygen, people in wheelchairs.

But she told me the story today, Nancy, and things that people aren`t even thinking about. Another chief justice, Chet Taylor (ph), who used to be a Louisiana state trooper, went in the Supreme Court building today, covered by the SWAT team, mind you, because of all the outbreak, went in to check to make sure that the files were there.

You got to think about that. Think about evidence that could be lost. Think about people that are going to be delayed going to court, because everything`s just so wiped out.

And then you look at the mayor, who`s furious, because he can`t even get his people out. Today is Friday, Nancy, and you can see the frustration.

GRACE: You know, Penny Douglass Furr, the factors that have contributed to all of the lawlessness, that`s why a lot of people did not evacuate, Penny.

PENNY DOUGLASS FURR, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I understand that, Nancy. They want to protect. Those are the things they`ve had for years. It`s their entire life. They`re there.

I knew people from Hurricane Andrew that basically started their life that day. Everything was gone, birth certificates, all of their childhood pictures, everything.

But my fear, Nancy, is, this is something we knew about. We had almost a week to prepare for this, from the time this went across Florida. What would happen if we had a terrorist attack? Would it take our government a week to get to us? Would we just stay in our homes and die, while we waited for them to respond?

This is the frightening thing to me. This is in our country. This should not be happening here.

GRACE: I want to very quickly go to Ron Berry with the Better Business there in Louisiana. What do they do now, the business owners that have lost everything?

RON BERRY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, COUNCIL OF BETTER BUSINESS BUREAUS: Well, these business owners are in a terrible position. And they, of course, have got to check with their insurance company to see if they can recover anything there. They`ve got to look for federal aid and hope they can get it quicker than these victims are getting aid now.

GRACE: You know, back to Rob Marciano, it`s not over yet. Hurricane season is not over yet, Rob.

MARCIANO: No, not by any stretch. We`re actually just about halfway through. We`ll peak it out around September 10th and then gradually slack off, but the next month promises to be very active.

As a matter of fact, Dr. Bill Gray (ph) out of Colorado put out a statement, I think today or yesterday, saying that, yes, it`s not going to be any better during the month of September.

Right now, I`ll tell you that we do have a couple of disturbances and one tropical storm out there. At this point, Maria doesn`t look like it`s going to come anywhere close to land, but, rest assured -- or don`t rest -- you can bet that there`s going to be plenty of tropical storms and hurricanes that will head this way in the next month.

GRACE: Oh, gosh.

To Sean Callebs, very quickly, there in Houston. As night begins to fall on the Astrodome, what`s the mood?

CALLEBS: Well, let me show you. Can I have that sign for just one second, please?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, sir.

CALLEBS: This is happening all the time. This family just came up to us. They`re carrying this sign around. It says Annabel Brooks. It is this lady`s 60-year-old sister-in-law. They have not seen her since everybody evacuated during the flooding.

They are staying with a relative, but they`re carrying this sign around because they know people that evacuated here. And they are trying to get the information out, because they want their friends to see this, and say, "Wait, we know what happened to Annabel," and it has happened before.

But it gives you an idea of just how desperate this family and so many others are. Annabel also has four children and a number of grandchildren with her. At this hour, they have no idea -- Nancy?

GRACE: Tonight, a special appeal for help. Jackie Levine, an independent producer at my other home, Court TV, caught with her son, Jordan, in New Orleans during the hurricane. Jordan is gone. His mom, desperate to find her son.

Jordan Levine is 17, 6`3", 230 pounds. If you have any info, call Sandy Bachom, 917-716-8541. Help us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Devastation in the Southland. Take a look at the stories and, more important, the people who have touched all of our lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please, anybody knows anything about any of my family members, please, help them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The eye of the storm was the last time I talked to my husband and my kids told him that they loved him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know y`all worried about us, and we`re OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re scraping, we`re alive, but we`ll get over this and we`ll get on with our lives.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where are you guys going?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nowhere, nowhere I`m going. I`m lost. That`s all I had. That`s all I had.

GRACE: It`s incredible. It`s devastating. There is no more New Orleans, the New Orleans that we knew is gone. Incredible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRACE: Thank you to all of my guests, but my biggest thank you is to you, for being with us, inviting us into your homes. I`m Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. Our hearts, our minds, our souls in the Southland.

See you on Monday night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. Until then, good night, friend.

END