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CNN Live Sunday

Army Repairing New Orleans Levee Again; FEMA Provides Update on Relief Efforts; Small Texas Town Flooded Out

Aired September 25, 2005 - 14:30   ET

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

TONY HARRIS, HOST: Rita's storm surge sent water over breaches in the levee damaged earlier by Hurricane Katrina.
An estimated 16,000 National Guard troops are now on the ground in Louisiana's hardest hit parishes and more are on the way. Nearly 2,400 National Guard troops who are helping with Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts are being shifted to Louisiana and Texas.

As we mentioned, floodwaters topped repaired levees in New Orleans' Ninth Ward by as much as two feet. Yesterday the Army Corps of Engineers has been dropping sandbags from helicopters to stem the flow. Backhoes have been moving rock and soil. And today Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen says it is just about under control.

CNN's Mary Snow joins us live from New Orleans. And Mary, does that sort of accurately describe the picture where you are?

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll tell you, Tony, one thing working in favor of New Orleans today is the weather. There hasn't been any more rain.

And I want you to take a look. This is the lower Ninth Ward, and water has been receding in this past several hour since we've been here. Earlier that truck that you're looking at, we couldn't even see the tires. Part of that cab was submerged in water. So water levels are going down.

But as you mentioned they had reached as high as eight feet yesterday. This just another reminder of how fragile this levee system is.

Talking about those helicopters that have been dropping sandbags, as you can see right over here, one of them is dropping two of those sandbags right now. Those sandbags are about 3,000 to 7,000 pounds each.

What they are doing is trying to shore up a damaged section of the industrial canal levee. This section was damaged during Hurricane Katrina. The area behind it, the lower Ninth Ward, was absolutely devastated after Katrina. Engineers patched it up. But then on Friday when the outer bands of Rita started coming in, water topped over that portion of the levee and poured into the lower Ninth Ward.

So engineers are saying that, you know, they're starting all over again. What engineers are trying to do is shore up that area and then they will have to pump out that lower Ninth Ward. They're saying at this point that could start later this week because pumping stations here are out of commission. So they have to bring mobile pumping stations in.

And they're estimating at this point that it would take about a week to get that area dry once again. And Tony, it was just last week that that lower Ninth Ward was actually dried up.

Now, as this is happening, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, is watching this situation. He said yesterday he's going to monitor it, see how the progress goes. He wants to start getting the city back on track to have people come move in.

And he wants to start in the Algiers section, which is on the west bank of New Orleans. It was not heavily damaged by Katrina. He also wants to start bringing business owners back into the Central Business District. This was a plan that had been started but had to be put on hold when Rita started making her way toward the region.

So he says this could happen as early as tomorrow. He's going to assess, see how it goes and then make a determination about other parts of New Orleans coming back in -- Tony.

HARRIS: Mary, just a quick question. That plan from the mayor to repopulate those areas not as hard hit as other areas, in particular the Ninth Ward, as we're seeing pictures there, you know, it doesn't seem to be as controversial this time around. Is that because everyone is on the same page with the plan this time?

SNOW: Well, Vice Admiral Thad Allen spoke earlier today to Wolf Blitzer, and he was asked about that. And what he said is he's OK with the plan in Algiers and for business owners to start coming back in.

Remember Vice Admiral Thad Allen had said that -- he was critical of the mayor's earlier plan, saying it was too much, too soon. What he's saying, though, is that he wants to see how it goes and that it's going to be critical that, when people start moving back, that there's a very clear plan for evacuation.

Because he points out that there's six weeks or so left of the Atlantic hurricane season, and as you can see, New Orleans was not hit by Hurricane Rita. They just got the outer bands of the storm. And they're once again reminded how fragile this levee system can be. So that is his concern right now. He says he will continue to work with the mayor as they had been last week in terms of this plan.

HARRIS: That's a good point. Thank you. CNN's Mary Snow from New Orleans for us. Mary, thank you.

Flooding and power outages, just how expensive is the damage in Port Arthur, Texas? Gary Tuchman has the very latest straight ahead.

Plus did FEMA get it right this time? We'll have a life briefing from the acting director of FEMA. This special edition of CNN LIVE SUNDAY continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: And we're going to take you to Washington, D.C., right now. As you see, the acting director of FEMA, David Paulison, is giving a briefing. Let's check in now.

R. DAVID PAULISON, ACTING DIRECTOR, FEMA: We want to make sure that we're going to do our best to get them back on their feet. So although it may not have been as devastating to all of us, to some it was very devastating.

I've spoken to our field personnel in the last 24 hours, and the response operation, I'm here to tell you, is in full swing. We have over 700 FEMA urban search and rescue personnel on the ground in Texas and more than 500 in Louisiana. And we have 118 people right there in Lake Charles, Louisiana, alone. We've got three urban search and rescue teams. And today we've rescued over 400 people from that area.

Our national disaster medical teams, we have 500 personnel in the field, and they have treated over 200 patients. And also, yesterday President Bush approved a major disaster declaration for both Texas and Louisiana.

And there's a number that they can call. We want the affected families to call and register. And that's 1-800-621-FEMA. That's 1- 800-621 FEMA. We'd like you to get registered as quickly as you can, so we can get you in our system and get you -- get you the help that you need.

I also want to compliment our state and local officials. The coordination and the smooth preparation for this hurricane has been absolutely phenomenal. I cannot compliment both Louisiana and Texas enough for their response to this storm.

The evacuations, I want to compliment. Again, I know we hear a lot of things about the evacuations, but I am absolutely convinced -- you need to hear this -- I'm absolutely convinced that the evacuation was the right thing to, with the minimal loss of life. Right now we have none reported. And the minimal injuries we had is directly attributed to that evacuation effort.

They did an outstanding job of getting people out of town, some 2.5 million people, maybe more, were evacuated from different cities.

Our top priority is going to remain the safety and security of the residents of those areas. And we're continuing to do that. We're continuing to do searches to make sure that we find everybody that needs to be rescued.

Commodities are changing rapidly. We have right now, 216 truckloads of water, had 193 truckloads of ice and 33 truckloads of meals in the Texas area. And quite frankly, we've had a minimal request for some of those commodities. We've moved some commodities into the Astrodome to use as a staging area to spread out into the rest of the area.

We've been doing surveillances of the refineries. So far what we see is minimal damage, and we hope that holds. But we'll continue monitoring that to make sure that we can get those refineries back online as quickly as possible.

We have three EPA teams on the ground. The Railroad Commission of Texas is on the ground, and the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality is on the ground surveying all of that area to see if there's any spills. And right now we have very minimal pollution that we can find at this time.

Again in Louisiana, if I can move to that state, the commodities is also fluid. As of this morning, we have 142 truckloads of water, 84 truckloads of ice, and 47 truckloads of meals in that state.

We also received a request of 200 truckloads of water and 200 truckloads of ice per day for Louisiana, and we are prepared to fill that request, and we've moving rapidly to make sure that happens. In fact, today we just received a request for 3,000 cots for Louisiana, and we are going to do that.

We are moving forward with some of the hardest hit areas of Katrina. The housing program that was announced on Friday is on track, and we've received 30,000 applications in the first 30 minutes that we announced that. We need to make sure that people sign up for that where they can get their money for rental assistance and move out of the shelters as quickly as possible -- as possible into some more comfortable living quarters.

The Army Corps of Engineers is focusing on de-watering the city. They're shoring up the levees, and once again we'll start pumping the water out of New Orleans and to get that place as habitable as quickly as possible.

Now, let me talk about returning home. We hear the mayors of the city talk about to please wait and please be patient. And I want to reiterate that until those cities are safe, until the mayors and the local officials determine those cities are safe, we would ask people just to stay where you are. Be patient. Wait a couple days to make sure that it's safe to move back into your home.

As we see in pretty much every storm that I've been involved in, most of our injuries and deaths are after the storms happen. Be careful. People are tired. They have not slept. They want to get their homes back in shape again, and we end up with people falling off of roofs, people hurting themselves with chain saws, getting cuts, puncture wounds, all these types of things.

So as you move into your home, please be careful. Be careful with generators. That's a foreign object for some people. They can be very dangerous. Don't put it in your house. Keep it outside. And don't hook it up to the supply -- to the electric supply in your house. Plug appliances in it individually.

So we want people to be safe. We want this -- this record of no deaths to remain, and so we're just asking people to be patient and be careful.

Now if I could just answer a few questions if you have any. Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In terms of -- you talked about the preparations being much better and the cooperation of the state being very smooth. There was much more pre-deployment of federal resources this time than Hurricane Katrina. Did that make a difference, perhaps, in saving lives and quickening response and how important is that?

PAULISON: I think that the life saving piece of it was primarily due to the evacuations. I think that getting people out of harm's way. In fact, I heard one -- one commentator say Rita came into a bunch of ghost towns. So there was nobody there to hurt or to kill. And I think that played into it.

Moving commodities in place is something that we've learned, I've learned particularly over the last 30 years of dealing with hurricanes, born and raised in Miami. Those commodities need to be in place ahead of time, and we've done that. And I think that will serve us very well in the next several weeks, as people move into areas, if they don't have electricity or water, we can continue to help them do that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The counties down in Beaumont were talking about (UNINTELLIGIBLE) hospitals (UNINTELLIGIBLE) White House. Today there was talk about a breakdown between the state officials requesting help and the bureaucracy in Washington. Is that a problem?

PAULISON: There was -- and I didn't hear that comment so sometimes I'm afraid to respond to things when I didn't hear the comment directly.

There was no breakdown in Washington. The requests for those types of issue don't come through here. We have moved that out to the field, and that's where those decisions are made.

We have two PFOs on the ground, and they deal with that. Thad Allen -- Vice Admiral Thad Allen, which is in Louisiana, and Vice Admiral Hereth, which is in Texas, and they make those decisions along with our federal coordinating officers.

We did get that request to move those patients, and we did move them. And Beaumont was hard hit. There's no question about it. But we're making sure that they're going to get the resources they need and the last comment I heard from him, he was very pleased with our response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You say (UNINTELLIGIBLE) The state requested stuff, and the bureaucracy was too big in Washington, there was a breakdown.

PAULISON: Well, I appreciate the comment he made and we'll take that very seriously.

Yes, you were next. Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the commodities, you said, though, that there were minimal requests (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Was that 200 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a day in Louisiana? (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

PAULISON: I guess a little bit of both. We still have Katrina victims there, and also from Rita. Louisiana got hit twice. They were asking for 200 truckloads of ice and 200 truckloads of water per way. And we will meet that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Given there is normally that equivalent on hand? (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

PAULISON: We have a lot of food in the pipelines, plus we have a lot in Texas that we're not using. So it will be very easy to move those things over. And we're also moving a lot of those commodities we had in Florida. You know, we'll do an assessment also to keep following up to make sure they need that every day and adjust our supply lines accordingly.

Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You mentioned a moment ago, Admiral -- Rear Admiral Allen. Specifically how much of a difference did it make this time that, No. 1, you were able to make the incidents of a national significance designation in advance, and, No. 2, you had already on the ground, even before the hurricane hit, Admiral Allen, who's been on the ground to command the military. Ahead of time instead of afterwards, can you just tell us, describe for us what impact those had?

PAULISON: I think having -- I don't think the designation of national significance had any play. We still responded the same. But I have to tell you having people like Admiral Allen and Admiral Hereth on the ground makes a significant -- makes it significantly easier for us to operate. Those are two commanders who know what they're doing. They know how to respond to these incidents, and it's been valuable to have both of them on the ground. Very, very thankful to have them there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE

PAULISON: I didn't hear that comment from the president. I can tell you that the Department of Defense was also invaluable in assisting us in this response. They did a magnificent job for us.

Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Earlier today your needs assessment teams were out and search and rescue personnel. We're waiting to hear from them (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Can you give us percentages for the number of grids that have now been completed and give us percentages for the area where your search and rescue teams have been needed. How much more needs to be done and when those search and rescue teams will be deployed?

PAULISON: Well, I don't have the exact details on the -- how many grids they've searched so far. I do know they were moving all of them into the affected area. And we don't make those decisions from Washington. I let those people on the ground decide when they finish their search and when to release them. So I don't have those answers. There will be another press briefing after this on the ground, and you can probably get that information from them.

Yes, sir?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Also on the preparation side, I understand you had more commodities in place ahead of time this time. Can you just tell us what kind of difference that has made in the way you've been able to help people the last day or so?

PAULISON: You know, I don't know about Katrina. You know, I was not in charge then. But we put the commodities on the ground that I thought we need for Texas where the storm was headed to go. So that's what made that decision. That's what drove that decision of how much we put on the ground was based on what I thought we would need with a Category 5 coming in, going close to Houston.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One more. One more question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: FEMA was very criticized for Katrina, and you're not -- it's still early, but you're not getting that criticism now. There has been a noticeable difference. What do you attribute that to: the military preparation, a combination of all those? What have you done differently that has made a difference?

PAULISON: Well, I -- again, I'm not going to compare this storm to Katrina. Two different storms, two different issues. I'm focusing on Rita and then the aftermath of Katrina, which I'm responsible for handling.

I can just tell you that the decisions were made -- that were made for Rita were made based on what my experience is in dealing with hurricanes, from Hurricane Andrew all the way through to the rest of them. And that's how we made decisions for this particular storm.

Now, we will go back and look very, very carefully at what happened during Hurricane Katrina. I don't have time to do that right now. We have another storm we're dealing with.

So we will go back and do it. That's very important that this country looks at that very carefully. So not only is, I'm sure, the Congress going to do that, but I'm sure there will be numerous private investigations. And we in FEMA will do an internal investigation of what -- how we responded and what worked and what didn't, what should we have done differently. That will come down the road but not today.

We'll see what worked there, and what worked in Rita, as we should do in every incident we have.

Folks, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

HARRIS: And you've been listening to a FEMA briefing out of Washington, D.C., and the acting director there, David Paulison. And frankly, a lot of what you heard in that briefing, you've been hearing from CNN correspondents on the ground in the affected areas of Louisiana and Texas throughout the day here. A lot of numbers passed around by the acting director. About 700 -- hundreds, hundreds of FEMA personnel on the ground in the affected areas of Texas and Louisiana. You heard Director Paulison praise the cooperation at the state and local levels, asserting his opinion that the evacuations in Texas and in Louisiana were the right thing to do.

Three EPA teams on the ground to check on environmental hazards. And then you heard the acting director echoing the president and calling for a go-slow approach with the population of the affected areas.

And then the acting director made a point of pointing out the decentralizing of the effort here, the rescue and recovery effort, getting folks back on their feet again. The decentralizing of the FEMA effort. More decisions being made on the ground and not in Washington.

We'll take a quick break. When we come back, we'll visit a small town in Louisiana along the Gulf Coast and assess the damage there. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: As you know, CNN anchors and correspondents have been very busy over the last few days describing the situation on the ground in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita. And we've been paying particular attention to some of the small towns affected in Texas and in Louisiana.

We're going to take you to one of those small towns right now, Erath, Louisiana. CNN's Rick Sanchez is there. He's on the line with us right now.

And Rick, give us a bit of an assessment of what the situation is like on the ground where you are.

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The assessment, Tony, is the town is under water. I mean, they really are flooded here in Erath. And when I say under water, I certainly don't mean to say the houses are up to roofs or anything, as far as we can tell. But it does seem from what I can that at least 90 percent of this town is flooded in one form or another.

The flooding goes in an area -- we have just tried to get through it, and we were standing on -- we were on real high ground because our vehicle allowed us to. We got to a point where we just couldn't go any more, so we had to turn around, obviously.

But even the mile or so that we were able to travel, we looked down the side streets. And no matter where we looked, it was just one episode of flooding, one case of flooding after another.

And the National Guard are here. Rescue officials are here, and there is a rescue operation going on as we speak. In fact, I'm looking right now behind me, and I see that there is a -- one National Guard truck and about four more behind it. And they're each getting out of their vehicles and going home by home trying to assess the situation.

We're also seeing some Black Hawk helicopters up in the area, and we assume they're trying to do rescues, as well. Although I haven't actually been up in a rescue since we have been here.

But the town of Erath, as far as I know, no one else has been here to survey for now and as far as the media is concerned. It does look like the town has really been affected by the rising waters of the Vermillion River -- Tony.

HARRIS: And Rick, this is a situation where you're talking about a city of Erath, where the evacuation order was put into effect and most of the folks in that town, we can assume, were -- are certainly gone and out of that town right now. But you're still talking about some people who stayed behind to try to ride this storm out that are in need of a rescue effort now?

SANCHEZ: I don't know how many stayed behind. It would be interesting, in fact, to find out. See if you can get his attention. You can get that -- one of the National Guardsmen's attention. It's hard, because we can't walk out and talk to people. So we have to kind of wait for them to walk by. I have a National Guard truck going by right now.

How many people -- how many people have you found in homes? What percentage of the residents would you say?

Bear with me here, Tony, I'll try and get this information, because -- I think it certainly would be important to find out.

HARRIS: Right.

SANCHEZ: What we've seen them doing so far is we've seen these guys carrying lots of pets and animals.

Only about one percent?

HARRIS: OK.

SANCHEZ: So we've only rescued a few people so far? Thank you, sir, we appreciate that information. Most of them were gone? Thank you, sir, appreciate that.

Tony, here in Erath it sounds like the National Guard troops who are out doing rescues -- as we speak, they're going next to our vehicle, say that they've rescued about one percent, which means it's a small town and a small number of people who stayed behind. The rest, he says, got out apparently during or before the flooding.

HARRIS: OK. CNN's Rick Sanchez. Boy, information on the spot. Rick, thank you.

Our coverage of Hurricane Rita's aftermath continues here on CNN. We'll have live reports from all over the region at the top of the hour after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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