The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour this Friday, the ongoing suffering and misery from Hurricane Katrina. We'll have reports on the major events of the day, including President Bush's trip to New Orleans and the other devastated areas; talk to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, air the criticism of the relief effort and its leadership; and hear the analysis of David Brooks, Tom Oliphant and Clarence Page. Non-hurricane news will be at the end of the program tonight.

NEW ORLEANS

JIM LEHRER: The National Guard moved into New Orleans in force today to secure the streets and bring aid. At the same time, exhausted hurricane victims continued their exodus out of the city. And President Bush toured the hurricane region, as federal efforts faced intense criticism. We begin our coverage with a report on the situation on the ground. Spencer Michels narrates.

SPOKESMAN: We're going to actually fly now back towards the levee area --

SPENCER MICHELS: This is New Orleans, a major American city in near-total collapse. Into the breach today rolled a huge contingent of National Guardsmen, charged with alleviating the unimaginable suffering of thousands of people, angry, exhausted and trapped.

SPOKESPERSON: Children died, people died in that Superdome, and you don't know nothing about it.

SPENCER MICHELS: Already-terrible conditions in the flooded metropolis worsened overnight. Thousands remain stranded without food, water or shelter.

WOMAN: Come get us, we're not leaving yet.

SPOKESMAN: These survivors have made up makeshift camps on top of this.

SPENCER MICHELS: Amid the deathly slow exodus of citizens came more scenes of horror and devastation: Dead bodies floating in choked streets and lying on sidewalks. Early this morning, an earth-shattering explosion in a chemical depot rocked the area along the Mississippi River east of the French Quarter. Giant licks of flame and belching smoke rose, illuminating the black sky in a city without light.

Officials at all levels scrambled to alleviate the massive suffering of people still remaining in New Orleans five days into an unprecedented crisis. Gov. Kathleen Blanco told the Guardsmen to restore order to the lawless city; she also gave them a chilling authorization.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so.

SPENCER MICHELS: But the mayor, Ray Nagin, blasted both the state and federal response in an interview with WWL-Radio in New Orleans last night.

MAYOR NAGIN: It's politics, man, and they are playing games, and they are spinning. They are out there spinning for the cameras. They don't have a clue of what's going on down here.

SPENCER MICHELS: The Guardsmen will reinforce a New Orleans Police Department stretched to the breaking point, trying simultaneously to keep order and rescue those still trapped.

One priority for the troops: Evacuating desperately ill patients from several New Orleans hospitals without power for days. Charity Hospital, just blocks from the Superdome, is itself in critical condition. Yesterday, gunfire prevented evacuations there. Doctors inside say patients are beginning to die.

Evacuated patients are being collected at the airport and shuttled to other medical facilities around the South.

SPOKESMAN: The convoy with relief supplies has arrived --

SPENCER MICHELS: It was midday when the first large-scale relief convoy plowed its way through fetid waters to deliver food, water and other supplies to the thousands at the New Orleans convention center, an angry group of refugees who had essentially been neglected.

MAN: We got four dead bodies here. There is a dead body on the interstate; there are seven dead bodies here.

SPENCER MICHELS: Four mobile morgues were set up by FEMA. There have been estimates that thousands have died in the city. The situation at the Superdome remained desperate. Evacuees recounted scenes of awful squalor.

MAN: Every day it's more unbelievable. The smell of the garbage -- it's like genocide, a modern type of genocide to put 10,000 people in a place that's worse than dogs or animals.

SPENCER MICHELS: Supply and evacuation efforts are proceeding at a slow pace. Officials expect that as security improves, so shall the joint operations' tempo.

Though the water has stopped rising in New Orleans, and has receded in places, it cannot be pumped out of the city until the levees are patched. The westward migration of Orleanians continued today as well. But thousands of refugees who have now left Louisiana by bus for Houston's Astrodome found no room there.

MAN: I'm up the river without a paddle.

SPENCER MICHELS: Initial plans to house 25,000 people there proved overly optimistic. About 10,000 are there now. At this point, refugees are now being redirected to Dallas and San Antonio. Biloxi, Mississippi, is a ghost town today. Its streets are empty; its floating casinos uprooted from the moorings and flung onto the beach.

Biloxi Fire Chief Steven Scott found his three-story home crushed under a casino.

STEVEN SCOTT: It looks as though it just washed it up on shore. And it looks like that corner of it just went over the house and just demolished it. There is nothing really left. We are finding bits and pieces, and like broken trophies, broken cameras. We are just taking that up and just excited just to find something because this is all that was left of what we had, was here, and there is nothing more left.

SPENCER MICHELS: Chief Scott is not alone. Universally those who have experienced the devastation have said they never have seen anything to equal it.

JIM LEHRER: Late today authorities in Louisiana said one bus carrying evacuees flipped over killing one man. There was no indication when officials will have a complete count of those who died in the hurricane. But there was good news today about one of the missing. "Fats" Domino'sagent reported the rhythm and blues legend was rescued from his New Orleans home on Monday. The agent said he's stressed- out, but safe.

President Bush acknowledged scathing criticism of federal efforts today and he promised to make it right. He made stops in Alabama, Mississippi and New Orleans. Back in Washington, Congress moved to begin paying the hurricane costs.

Ray Suarez reports on the president's day and the growing debate over how the hurricane's been handled.

RAY SUAREZ: Five days after Hurricane Katrina crashed into the Gulf Coast, President Bush got his first close-up look at some of the most severely damaged areas, viewing the Mississippi coastline by helicopter, devastated downtown Biloxi by motorcade, and the washed-away surrounding neighborhoods on foot, where he stopped to console two sisters who lost their home.

Before leaving Washington this morning, the president accepted some of the criticism that's been leveled at his administration for its response to the crisis in New Orleans.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: A lot of people working hard to help those who have been affected, and I want to thank the people for their efforts. The results are not acceptable.

RAY SUAREZ: But just after arriving on site, the president defended the efforts of his relief coordinator, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Again, I want to thank you all for... and, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA director's working 24... (applause) they're working 24 hours a day.

Again, my attitude is, if it's not going exactly right, we're going to make it go exactly right. If there's problems, we're going to address the problems.

RAY SUAREZ: Back in Washington, however, members of the Congressional Black Caucus called the Bush administration's response to Katrina slow and unacceptable.

SPOKESMAN: I, for one, have not been very impressed with FEMA to date.

SPOKESPERSON: I'm ashamed of America. I'm ashamed of our government.

RAY SUAREZ: Nevertheless, there was unanimous agreement this afternoon as the House of Representatives followed the action of the Senate last night and quickly approved $10.5 billion for emergency relief. Republican Whip Roy Blunt agreed the people of New Orleans waited too long for assistance.

ROY BLUNT: I hope lessons have been learned, that we have to respond more quickly, that we have to respond in the right ways and be sure our priorities are right.

Public safety in New Orleans probably should have been the first priority, sadly, instead of a rescue effort, to be sure that that was maintained.

RAY SUAREZ: This afternoon, President Bush viewed still- submerged New Orleans, but only from the air. The president spoke afterwards at Louis Armstrong International Airport, ten miles west of the city.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This is a devastating storm. This is a storm that is going to require immediate action now. I'm pleased to report, thanks to the good work of the adjutant general from Louisiana, the troops that have been called in, that the convention center is secure.

One of the objectives that we had today was to move in and secure that convention center, and make sure the good folks there got food and water.

The caravans, the bus caravans are continuing on as is the airlift. The people in this part of the world have got to understand, and by the way, we just came from the 17th Street Levee. A lot of folks are working hard to repair that levee. They've been working around the clock, 24 hours a day.

People from -- people from the federal government and the state government and local government are working to fill that breach. The mayor has been telling me, not only by telephone but here in person how important it is that we get that breach filled and get that pump station up and running.

And we went there to inspect the progress being done and the people of New Orleans have got to understand there are a lot of people working hard and they're making good progress.

JIM LEHRER: The First Lady also toured part of the hurricane region today. Laura Bush met with storm victims who have taken refuge in Lafayette, Louisiana. She said the recovery effort there has been more than adequate, but she said it's clear the region will need volunteer help for months to come.

Mrs. Bush also welcomed offers of aid from around the world. More than 50 nations have said they can help with the hurricane cleanup. They include Asian nations ravaged by last December's tsunami, among many others.

And private donations passed $200 million today. The Red Cross alone reported it's getting 100,000 calls a day. The U.S. and European governments agreed today to release 60 million barrels of crude oil and gasoline; that's to address shortages caused by the hurricane. In response oil futures fell nearly $2 to close at $67.57 a barrel. Gasoline futures also fell for the first time this week.

UPDATE - HURRICANE KATRINA

JIM LEHRER: Now Jeffrey Brown gets the latest on New Orleans's struggles. He spoke a short time ago with Peter Slevin of the Washington Post who's been traveling throughout the city.

JEFFREY BROWN: Peter, yesterday you told us there was no evident organization and no one particularly in charge. How does it feel today?

PETER SLEVIN: Today there's still very little evidence that there is a coordinated effort. It's hard to find anyone running the show. Relief is coming in a trickle and not in a flood, but that said, there has definitely been progress made in getting people out of the city. There are fewer people stranded on the interstate-- although there are still plenty-- and they've made some progress over at the convention center, which was the scene of some pretty terrible conditions as recently as this morning.

JEFFREY BROWN: What was going on there at the convention center today?

PETER SLEVIN: Today the National Guard has moved in and provided significant security over there so that it feels like a safer place, but there are still thousands of people camped out all around the convention center. No buses have come for them yet. Apparently not enough buses can be provided.

And so what the Guardsmen are now doing is trying to set up water and food stations so that people can be at least somewhat more comfortable five days into this calamity.

JEFFREY BROWN: Is this increased presence of the National Guard visible as you drive around the city generally?

PETER SLEVIN: It is... I tell you, it's modestly visible. It doesn't feel as though there are Guardsmen on every corner. In fact, the police presence in some ways, I think, has diminished, maybe because parts of the city are actually quite a bit safer than they were when the looting and the mayhem was worse, which was a couple of days ago.

JEFFREY BROWN: What about the convoys bringing in supplies, have you been able to see whether they're reaching the people most in need?

PETER SLEVIN: The convoys are getting to people who need help. There does seem to be quite a lot of water being distributed on the interstate, under the interstate where there are still significant numbers of people gathered. They have been delivering MRE's -- meals ready to eat -- the military meals to people, because they're aware, the authorities continue to be aware that they can't get people out as fast as they want.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, I understand you were at the airport this morning and I gather that has been turned into something of a field hospital and evacuation center. Tell us about that.

PETER SLEVIN: Yes, the transformation of the airport in the last 48 hours has been nothing short of stunning. Yesterday morning, it was still a fairly sleepy, out of the way location that was still operating on emergency power, but they got the power back and someone somewhere realized that helicopters were going to be a very efficient way of getting people out of the city and then to a place where they could be sent out.

But to walk through there last night and this morning was to walk through a combination hospital and rescue ward and nursery. You had volunteer nurses and doctors from FEMA who were treating people who had been rescued from hospitals and nursing homes, assisted living facilities.

People were coming in having been rescued from rooftops by the Coast Guard and needed a lot of help. They had... they set up mash tents, just like the ones on the TV show, in Terminal D and were running critical care units and hurrying to get people out of the city as fast as they could.

JEFFREY BROWN: You also met today with some members of the Baton Rouge Fire Department working in New Orleans who were making rescues by boat. Tell us about that.

PETER SLEVIN: You know, I did do that; I was curious to get farther away from downtown, where so much of the action has been lately, just to see what's going on in the rest of the city. I drove through the garden district and the rather upper-crust uptown area of New Orleans and things were actually relatively normal there.

I drove the other direction on I-10 and I came to a group of 21 crews connected with the Baton Rouge Fire Department who were running rescue operations by boat in the Ninth Ward, which is the part of the city that is in the deepest water. They had just set up their randomly-- it looked like a good place to start working-- three days ago, and since then have pulled more than 900 people out of their houses.

JEFFREY BROWN: Peter, finally, you know the president is visiting the area today. Have you been able to assess the attitudes of people on the ground there towards him and federal and state officials at this point?

PETER SLEVIN: In a word, people who are still in New Orleans, people who are stranded here, are furious. They simply do not understand how it is that a city that was known to be below sea level, that was known to be at a risk for a hurricane, ended up in such dire straits.

They talk about the mayor and they point out that, in fact, he's not even here; he's off in Baton Rouge, albeit doing what he can, and they wonder where on earth is the federal government, because everyone here is convinced that it is only the federal government, it is only the Army, that can come in here and start fixing the place up.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Peter Slevin of the Washington Post, thanks again.

PETER SLEVIN: You're very welcome.

FOCUS - GOOD NEIGHBOR

JIM LEHRER: Now, as the evacuations from Louisiana continue, Saul Gonzalez of KCET- Los Angeles reports on how Houston's newest arrivals are coping.

SAUL GONZALEZ: This was the scene outside Houston's Astrodome this afternoon: Newly arrived hurricane refugees from Louisiana receiving emergency medical assistance from paramedics and doctors. These people are just some of the tens of thousands of hurricane victims who have fled to Texas seeking help and a safe haven.

As they arrive, the refugees are desperate and confused, not sure of their final destination as authorities redirect them to other Texas cities.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Do you know where you are going to end up?

IVY CURTIS: We don't know -- we don't know what is going on.

SHIRLEY MARTIN: This is how we live.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Nobody has told you anything.

IVY CURTIS: No. They just told to us come here.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Come here -- to this parking lot in Houston?

SHIRLEY MARTIN: Actually, I think it was supposed to be the Astrodome.

SAUL GONZALEZ: That where you are now.

SHIRLEY MARTIN: Well, they say it is full capacity so I think they are trying to get another -

IVY CURTIS: They're supposed to be trying to get more buses --

SAUL GONZALEZ: Many here have stories of a long and miserable bus ride from Louisiana.

BRIAN HARRIS: Got a lot of sick people on the bus, you know, people sick, they are aggravated - they ain't had nothin' to eat - I got a mother on there, she ain't had nothin' to eat all night. She's a diabetic the lady been walking in all that sloppy water in New Orleans, you know, that came from sewers and stuff. And she got cuts on her feet, you know. Just ain't nothing being done.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Those who aren't sick or recovering from their journey are looking for missing loved ones, friends and family members who they were separated from in either the hurricane or the chaos of the evacuation.

Karen Baily is searching for her son, mother-in-law, and a close friend. She says she simply wants to receive word that they are okay.

SAUL GONZALEZ: How did you get separated?

KAREN BAILY: Well, they stay in the Slidell area so when we evacuated, we evacuated at different times. And we all got out, we all got separated. So we have no idea where Darryl is, we don't know if he is with his wife. And we haven't heard from anyone since last Saturday.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Joy Armond has been separated from the most vulnerable member of her family, her new son Isadore.

JOY ARMOND: My baby is missing. He was last seen at University Hospital Level 3 nursery.

SAUL GONZALEZ: How did you get separated from your baby?

JOY ARMOND: Well, because I had him prematurely I went in and had him at six months and he have to gain weight to come home. I'm just devastated right now. I don't know where he is. I'm hurt, put it like that, I miss him.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Yet even as newcomers from the disaster zone try to find food, shelter and loved ones in Houston, other refugees who have come to the city are already thinking about how to rebuild their lives. They will have very little to start with.

SHELLY ANDERSON: Well, I mean, we thought we'd be going home so we just brought a couple of changes of clothes. And, I mean, eventually we have to get some supplies to, you know, eat and wash, do laundry, so.

SAUL GONZALEZ: But everything that's in the back of this truck is --

SHELLY ANDERSON: That is what we have.

SAUL GONZALEZ: -- everything that you own right now.

SHELLY ANDERSON: That's right; that is it.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Shelly Anderson and her two daughters have called the disaster relief shelter on the outskirts of Houston home for the last week. In the days ahead she hopes to open the door on a new life in a new city.

SHELLY ANDERSON: Yesterday we went to the library, got on-line, applied for -- I'm a nurse so I applied for a temporary Texas license, you know, going to start planning for tomorrow so we can livefor the next, I don't know how long.

SAUL GONZALEZ: And planning for that tomorrow involves a job and a roof over your head.

SHELLY ANDERSON: A job, yeah. And I'm blessed that I can be able to get one as soon as a license comes in. And you know, then into school once we find out where we are going to stay, you know. And probably relocate and not go back.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Not go back to Louisiana?

SHELLY ANDERSON: No, no. Not to New Orleans.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Three parking spaces away, refugee Daniel Robinson, a proud man, is trying to deal with guilt and anxiety as he faces uncertain days ahead.

DANIEL ROBINSON: I got five kids with me. We don't have nowhere to go.

SAUL GONZALEZ: That is a lot of responsibility for you.

DANIEL ROBINSON: And I'm not doing nothing sitting around. As a man in the house, I'm not even providing for my family, you know. And that's what is really hurting me the most.

SAUL GONZALEZ: Feeling that powerless.

DANIEL ROBINSON: Helpless, this is -- gave us a wake-up call because we lost everything we had, we owned. And we can't go back to it -- we have nothing to go back to. It's just sad, man, sad.

SAUL GONZALEZ: For thousands of hurricane refugees in Texas, the long, harrowing trip from Louisiana is probably nothing compared to the journey they have ahead of them.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: Now, Margaret Warner has a Newsmaker interview with the chief of the government's efforts to end the flooding in New Orleans.

MARGARET WARNER: Lt. Gen. Carl Strock commands the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Corps is the agency in charge of repairing the ruptured levees and draining the City of New Orleans.

Gen, Strock, welcome; thanks for coming here.

What kind of progress are you making? It's been four days since these levees began to rupture; how much progress are you making fixing them?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: After the levee breaks actually there is considerable good news there. We feel like the situation is stabilized. The flooding essentially is over and now we are in the recovery effort of the flood. We have isolated the levee break areas and we are beginning to repair those areas. So we are having great success with that.

MARGARET WARNER: Now there were three levees that were breached. Are you having to repair them all?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: There were actually a number of levees that were over top. The ones we are really focused are the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal. And we are repairing those. That is the real focus of the effort right now.

MARGARET WARNER: And are you trying to, are you blocking them off from the lake or are you actually also, are you repairing them on the sides?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Let me explain, there are really four things that are afoot here right now, afoot here: First of all, it's very difficult to get access to the site for even assessments and so what we've had to do is do a three-pronged approach from the sea, from the air and from the land.

And our objective was to work all three of those, and whatever achieved success first, would be the one that we eventually went with. In fact, all of those are happening. We are building causeways from the land. We are bringing sandbags and other material in from the air to place into the breach, and we're also from the seaside, off the barges driving piles.

We're driving piles across the face of the canal that leads to the levee break to stanch the flow of the water.

MARGARET WARNER: And so how long do you think it will be before the levees are at least fixed enough that you can start trying to get the water out?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Well, we are really there now. As it turns out, the geography of the city is such that there is a high side on the Mississippi and then Lake Pontchartrain is actually lower than the Mississippi River. So the gravity naturally pulls toward the lake. And that is how the drainage system is designed.

So what we will do is use gravity where we can by deliberate breaches of the levees to drain the water back into the lake. At the same time, then, we'll get back into the pumping plants that were inundated and bring those back on-line and then put the pumping on to complete the job.

In fact, the levees that we're working on now, we've sort of stopped work to a degree. The pile-driving we've done across the face of the canals, we want to be sure that we still leave a trail for the water to leave. So we've only driven those piles about 70 percent across the face of the canal, because the lake levels have dropped sufficiently that it's not draining the city. We want to leave that like it is because we can use that avenue to pull water out.

MARGARET WARNER: So you are saying at this point the water in the city is almost going to be higher than the water in the lake.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: That's correct.

MARGARET WARNER: And you will be able to use gravity and have it go out.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: That's correct.

MARGARET WARNER: Which that isn't the normal condition, right?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: No, it is not. Usually the city is dry and below the lake level, yes, ma'am. So what we are doing, then, is, the importance of that point is that we don't want to complete that right now because there may be additional activity. The lake may rise again. So we want to be able to put that barrier in if we need to.

But we want to use that opening to our benefit now to drain the waters out of the lake. So we are really in a pretty good position right now.

MARGARET WARNER: And one other question, because I read in one article that the pressure of the water also makes it just very, very hard to repair the breach. Is that right?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: That's correct. There are two types of pressure: Hydrostatic pressure which is stable and doesn't really bother us. But the pressure of moving water is enormous. And in fact, and I mentioned three different approaches -- air, land and sea -- the fourth approach is letting nature take its course and really that, the combination of those, what has worked, nature taking its course means the water that was pushed up into Lake Pontchartrain by the storm can only go out so quickly.

It's like a large bathtub with a very small outlet. And so that lake level is gradually receding. We knew that at some point the lake level might actually drop before we got the breach closed.

While the water is flowing through the breach, it's very difficult to put anything in the breach that would make a difference. Now that it has stabilized and it is relatively slack water, putting things in the breach works very well.

MARGARET WARNER: Maybe I missed your answer on this, but how much time before you think that you can really start draining water out of the city in a serious way?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: We are doing that now. I should say the Corps of Engineers works through the private industry. We let contractors, we bring contractors in. So we mobilize contractors and they work doing the job here.

We are actually in the process of draining levees in St. Bernard Parish, which is over to the east of the downtown, and also in Jefferson Parish, which is a little bit to the west. So we are actually doing that where we can.

I should tell you that the lake, the levee system around New Orleans is actually 13 separate levees, about 300 miles of levee. And not all of those levee cells broke. It is really the ones around Orleans and Jefferson Parish.

Unfortunately the downtown, heavily populated area of it broke. But in the majority of the levees we would characterize it as minor flooding, and we have about four areas that are significant flooding like downtown.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm going to try one more time to pin you down on any kind of timeframe.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Okay.

MARGARET WARNER: Another general with the Army Corps of Engineers, I think a Gen. Crear, said late today, thirty-six to eighty days before the city was drained, is that it?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Gen. Bob Crear is on the ground, and he works for me, commander at the Mississippi Valley Division. He has a better sense for what is going on. One of the reasons that I'm reluctant to commit on these timings is because if I say something that Gen. Crear has to be committed to, I have got to be very careful about that. This is a very complex thing and there are many variables and sounds to me like Gen. Crear has done more analysis than I've learned about.

But the challenge we have is that how quickly it takes depends on how well the pumps work, are the intakes clear. Can we get the power back to the pumps? As I said, by making nature work for us, we will deliberately breach the levees. If we breach a hundred-foot section of levee it will drain very slow but it is very low risk. We could breach a thousand foot of levee that will drain quickly but there is a risk. And the risk is if something else comes in, if we have a flood on the Mississippi that dumps water into Lake Pontchartrain, you have another flood event, and we have an open levee, than we've got a problem.

So what we have to do is a risk analysis to determine how many, how large in terms of levee breaks to make. And that will determine the amount of time it takes.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, today you had a press conference and you said, you all knew that these levees, these miles and miles of levees were really not built to withstand a storm of this magnitude, explain that.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Well, that's correct. When we design a flood protection system, we look at the probability of an occurrence that we are designing against happening.

In this case we designed on what we called a two- to three-hundred year event, an event that only happened that frequency. The way that comes down to probabilities, there is a 99.5 percent chance that that event will not happen or a .5 percent chance it will, so a very low probability event in our estimation.

And unfortunately, what we have is that .5 event percent that has struck us in that cycle.

MARGARET WARNER: And so what these levees were designed to withstand is a Category 3 hurricane, is that right and the aftermath but not anything higher?

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: That's right. It would equate to a Category 3. In fact, this levee system has endured a number of Category 3's and similar type events. We knew coming in as we saw the Category Four and Five hurricane approaching the coast, with a possibility it would make a direct hit on New Orleans, that the prudent thing to do was to evacuate.

So I would say there is a positive aspect to that. And that is that the decision makers made an informed decision about the level of protection afforded by these projects. So we did the right thing to evacuate the city.

MARGARET WARNER: But unfortunately hundreds of thousands of people either couldn't or wouldn't evacuate.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: But unfortunately, it was not as effective. Had they not made that decision, we would have a far greater catastrophe on our hands.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Gen. Strock, thanks, thanks so much.

LT. GEN. CARL STROCK: Thank you, Margaret.

FOCUS - WIPE OUT

JIM LEHRER: We go now from Louisiana to Mississippi, the other major target area for Hurricane Katrina. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television has spent the last two days for the PBS program Religious and Ethics Newsweekly; here's his report.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One local air force veteran said it looked like it's been carpet bombed. Biloxi's giant casinos employed 10,000 people and drew millions of tourists. Katrina took out Biloxi's biggest monuments and its smallest, not even the dead were spared.

Less than a week ago this was a neighborhood of some of the sturdiest, stateliest oceanfront homes in Biloxi, homes that have withstood hurricanes for well over a century. Today they lie in a vast wall of debris. Police aren't sure that all of their occupants escaped or evacuated in time.

This morning Christine Fox came to keep her friend Ida Punzo company. Punzo rented a top floor apartment, about all that survived in this old home. They have been spending the days guarding against looting with plenty of time to think about the narrow escape.

CHRISTINE FOX: We are all right. We are still alive and darned grateful to be alive.

IDA PUNZO: We could feel the waves roll up and hit the bottom of the house that lower floor. And hit the back of the house and it would, the you could see the walls just rattling. And we were sitting in the hallway on a cooler. And I felt -- I felt the floor drop and that is when we started running to the back of the house.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: They managed to escape through the back door.

CHRISTINE FOX: We are very proud people. And we don't ask anybody for anything. And we would rather not have than to ever ask anybody. But the last week, almost, we've had to find places to sleep, ask people for water, beg for food. We've had to depend on other people, walking by. It's very humbling.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Humbled and grateful for their lives, survivors have spent the five days since Katrina in long, long lines for life's most basic necessities -- for gasoline -- and for a hot meal or to see if the Southern Baptist Convention which got here early tapping a vast volunteer corps from throughout the Southeast. Vernon Boteler is the team leader.

VERNON BOTELER, Southern Baptist Convention: Now I understand that our president has said that they were going to send 400 trucks into this area. That would be great. But we haven't seen it. All we've seen is people in need.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For water and ice it is another long line.

Loud cheers greeted the truck's arrival, just in time for a rain shower which almost seemed to go unnoticed. Slowly supplies and help are beginning to arrive from outside the region, until now many communities and neighbors have had to make do with what little they had.

At the Main Street Missionary Baptist Church people came in to give food as well as get it.

ALPHONSE GRAVES, Church Deacon: Whatever they got, the canned goods, they are bringing everything. We open it up, and we cook it for the rest of the people.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The church's sanctuary was demolished by the storm but on the day Katrina hit as the water rose, the upstairs community room became a different kind of sanctuary.

ALPHONSE GRAVES: We had a whole lot of elderly people in the church that we had to bring from the bottom stairs up to the top floor. So, you know, me and the rest of the pastors.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Biloxi's high school is the main shelter, perhaps the only one in town. There is some water and food, but no electricity, and for a lot of desperate people no information.

OLDER WOMAN: I'm looking for my daughter and grandchildren.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: With phone service almost nonexistent, many survivors sought desperately to reach family members.

MAN: They don't know, so...

WOMAN: So I could see that my family and my girls-- I have one in Virginia-- and the rest of my family is in California, my mom and everybody.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Joseph Brooks was among the lucky ones. In the school parking lot, he managed to borrow a cell phone, and-- small miracle-- get through to a sister in Missouri.

JOSEPH BROOKS: She told me I ought to get down on my hands and knees wherever I'm at or was at and thank god that I'm still sitting here, talking and alive.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In a city preoccupied with survival it will take time to fully grasp the scope of this tragedy. It will take a lot more time to repair it. For months, perhaps years, relief work will take the place of casinos as Biloxi's economic lifeline.

FOCUS - BROOKS, OLIPHANT & PAGE

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Brooks and Oliphant, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, joining them tonight is NewsHour essayist and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, Mark Shields is off.

David you said in a column this week that natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, exposed the basic fault lines in American society. Your thesis, please sir?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, what you get is you get these meteorological storms and then these political storms because in the moments of extremists people see who is up and who is down, who is at fault and who is suffering. So, for example n 1897 there was the famous Johnstown Flood, a pond owned by millionaires including Andrew Carnegie flooded the town of Johnstown. The public anger over that helped spawn the Progressive Movement.

Then in 1927 the great Mississippi Flood which flooded New Orleans. And there you have first of all, you had great demand for the government to get involved in disaster relief which had not happened much before then. And that helped lead the way to the New Deal. You also had the situation where the town fathers flooded some of the poorer and middle class areas to relieve some of the pleasure on the rest of the city and then reneged on their promises for compensation for the people who had their homes destroyed.

The anger over that, helped lead to the rise of Huey Long, the populist governor.

So what you get is moments of extremists, people see the power inequalities, the poor suffering the rich benefiting and then they react. And so you get these political reactions.

JIM LEHRER: And okay, move it to Hurricane Katrina and what we are seeing down there now.

DAVID BROOKS: I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it is like leaving wounded on the battlefield.

So there is just -- in 9/11 you had a great surge of public confidence. Now I think we are going to see a great decline in public confidence in our institutions. So I just think this is sort of the anti-9/11 as one of the bloggers wrote.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that, Tom?

TOM OLIPHANT: I would say the fault lines are much deeper than that. I mean, on the one hand there is no question that we can see now with our own eyes the two Americas of which John Edwards began speaking a year and a half ago.

Deeper than that, I think, is the anger that is going to come from the realization that virtually all public policy, state, local, federal, where this area is concerned, has been against the public interests for decades. And the realization that government is one of the reasons we have government has been violated by virtually everything government has done for decades.

JIM LEHRER: And you are talking about the New Orleans Gulf Coast area.

TOM OLIPHANT: Before, during and after. So -- that's why I wonder whether we will actually move forward after this or whether recovering from the shock is going to be the principal job of society.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think that, what do you think about the shock of recovery here for all of us?

CLARENCE PAGE: I think my colleagues are making some excellent points here. And the only question to me is how big the quake is going to be. For one thing we have seen that the national agenda shift dramatically over this to the domestic side.

I think there was -- a number of shocks happened here. People saw as David mentions the -- what we used to call the underclass really, the lower class of New Orleans, the folks with the most disenfranchised -- those who are left out of the master emergency plan because the master plan was centered on evacuation.

And some how somebody forgot that one hundred to - one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people would not have cars, would not have easy access to transportation, would be sick elderly, infirm, a variety of problems, and then all these other backup problems involving Superdome, involving people getting the word that there would be food and water over at the convention center.

They got there, there was nothing, not even somebody with a clipboard and a megaphone. Everything just broke down for the folks who needed help the most. And when governments cannot provide for those who need help the most, it makes everybody else feel less secure.

What about the folks on the highway, you had to go 50 miles away just to get some gasoline, to get food, water, no matter what class you were. Things just didn't work as well as they were supposed to.

At a time when we are supposed to have a new Homeland Security Department, post 9/11, this is more than a decade after Hurricane Andrew shook up Bush 1 right before the '92 election, and folks complained about the response of FEMA and Washington then. Have we learned anything?

And then finally, a lot of folks are looking at TV and saying is this America -- I was looking, I was reminded of Haiti, which I have been to twice in the last five years and I was reminded of a citie soleil, the worst slum in the poorest island country in this had this hemisphere as I was looking.

That is not the sight of New Orleans that we like to think about. But it is what, 62 percent of New Orleans is black, about a third of them are below the poverty line. We don't like to think about them a lot here in America. But we got to think about them. And maybe people will think about them now.

JIM LEHRER: And you think, David, they will think about them, not just about those folks in New Orleans but the whole country now? You think that is a possibility that this has exposed more than just New Orleans?

DAVID BROOKS: This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.

Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the '70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.

TOM OLIPHANT: And we're still feeling it. I mean there are at least three more shocks yet to come on top of everything that has happened to this hour. One, sadly, is going to be the body count which we haven't had.

JIM LEHRER: I just dread that moment. Don't you dread that bulletin, when it's going to come on the wires?

TOM OLIPHANT: Right. And then apologize for including this in the same thought but the next one is going to come when the bill is added up -- not just to clean this up but to repair and rebuild the right way.

JIM LEHRER: And find new lives for all these people who are not going to come back.

TOM OLIPHANT: And then the third shock will be the impact -- this is a regional disaster with immense national implications right away because of the impact on energy and on the economy. So everything that we've tried to absorb to absorb to this moment is about to be greatly exceeded by what we have yet to absorb.

JIM LEHRER: Clarence, President Bush has caught a lot of criticism, his administration has caught a lot of criticism, is that fair?

CLARENCE PAGE: Well, the buck stops there. Frankly, there was a breakdown at all levels. The city didn't respond as well as we would hope for -- a city that has been below sea level for a long time.

JIM LEHRER: Since Day One.

CLARENCE PAGE: Thank you, you think they might have thought a little more about how many people wouldn't have transportation, who couldn't get to the buses that they had there, the few buses that were there. At the state level, what did happen with the National Guard? There's got to be some kind of commission looking into that.

JIM LEHRER: Last night I interviewed the head of FEMA and he said Michael Brown, and the president praised him today, sir, I'm not -- and I asked him about the National Guard. He said well, by Sept. 4, we'll have 30,000 here. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, we could put 30,000 people anywhere we want to -- the U.S. Military can.

CLARENCE PAGE: You think so.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. And I interrupted you, sorry.

CLARENCE PAGE: In the wake of the tsunami disaster where we seemed to be remarkably able to bring a lot of aid halfway around the planet why couldn't we bring more aid within twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight hours to New Orleans, and that is where the buck stops with the White House insofar as the Department of Homeland Security, the new setup for DHS and FEMA.

That was supposed to improve matters, has it improved matters since Hurricane Andrew, it doesn't look like it.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, I think the key task for someone in my line of work at a moment like this is to try to analyze whether what counts is the president himself or whether the president himself is emblematic of something else.

And at this point I don't think there is any question that Bush is emblematic of this larger, deeper failure of government. I don't think he's any worse than government in general has been. I don't think he's any better.

And as a result, I see him more as a symbol of what has gone on for years, again, and it's not one party or the other party or one ideology or another ideology; government has failed here. And what Bush didn't do before the hurricane or didn't do right away after the hurricane is only emblematic of that failure.

JIM LEHRER: You think?

DAVID BROOKS: First of all, I'm hesitant to judge the government because a week ago I couldn't have picked Michael Brown out of a line-up.

JIM LEHRER: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: But to reiterate the point I made earlier, which is this is the anti-9/11, just in terms of public confidence, when 9/11 happened Giuliani was right there and just as a public presence, forceful -- no public presence like that now. So you have had a surge of strength, people felt good about the country even though we had been hit on 9/11.

Now we've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people feel ashamed and part of that is because of the public presentation. In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand immediately the shame people felt.

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his politics quite often.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are furious right now.

CLARENCE PAGE: Including the -- up in New Hampshire, the union leader, the Washington Times, Toni Blankley wrote a critical editorial about President Bush today. These are the kind of things, this transcends party lines.

We are talking about the institution of the presidency and the sense of well-being across the country. I personally didn't appreciate Rudy Giuliani so much in my life as I appreciated him this week in his absence.

There was an absence of a Rudolph Giuliani that you had on 9/11 who was that figure who seemed to be taking charge and empathizing, caring right there with everybody else and really articulating the crisis.

TOM OLIPHANT: Let me take the other side here, in other words, to try to understand how deeply implicated Democrats are, who helped straighten the Mississippi River when it shouldn't have been straightened, who did their part to neglect the wetlands south of New Orleans that are supposed to help provide natural protection. The symbol of this in a way -

JIM LEHRER: The wetlands are pretty much gone around New Orleans.

TOM OLIPHANT: And government is deeply implicated in all of that. And maybe the symbols might be some of the politicians in Louisiana today who are Republicans, sale Billy Tauzin, who used to be a Democrat. And it is really hard to discern the distinction in terms of the behavior.

In recent years Louisiana politicians have been trying to raise the alarm a little bit about the situation but the fact of the matter is in allowing public policy to serve private interest as opposed to the public interest, there is no partisan responsibility.

DAVID BROOKS: The other issue is why are there so many poor people in New Orleans, why is Raleigh booming, why is Houston booming, why is Atlanta booming but New Orleans has not boomed? And in part, it's because of the corruption of the government that has been part of the charming New Orleans for decades.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah, I want to pick up on something you said, Clarence, it was in passing about the shame that people felt in looking at these pictures and saying, you know this is in New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States of America.

CLARENCE PAGE: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: And everybody feels that.

CLARENCE PAGE: Everybody does. This is something, you know, I was asked, do you think the very fact that most of the misery was shared by poor black folks will make it easier for Americans to ignore, and I said no, I think just the opposite because this was going out to the whole world.

This is indicative of our image of ourselves as Americans, our ability to help each other in times of need -- that transcends the ideological arguments and also as I mentioned that notion that if we can't take care of the least of these, how well can we take care of ourselves or our own families -

JIM LEHRER: But you think that is the message that is coming out?

CLARENCE PAGE: I feel like that is a reason why you are going to see a lot, you are already seeing a lot of negative reaction across party lines on the way things work and President Bush himself finally coming out today saying unacceptable. I mean that is the strongest language he has used all week. I mean, he is in moving in the direction of where he ought to be.

TOM OLIPHANT: I think just to be optimistic for a second, maybe there is another metaphor that may work, and that is, admittedly, this disaster has had a racial color to it that we could all see. But there is an interest in Slidell and Metairie just next to New Orleans that is the same as the interest in poverty-stricken New Orleans. And perhaps once again there is that, the makings of a coalition that crosses racial lines and not just party lines. People in Slidell and Metairie have suffered awful things this week too.

CLARENCE PAGE: And Mississippi.

TOM OLIPHANT: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see any reason to be optimistic?

TOM OLIPHANT: I guess in that things are going to change now. You know --

JIM LEHRER: They have to change.

TOM OLIPHANT: This will be another, it is not a tipping point -- it is like a bursting point, people are going to go off in all directions -- just in narrow political terms, a month ago Rudy Giuliani would have had trouble getting the Republican nomination. Now he would win in a walk if there were a primary held soon.

On the Democratic side you're going to see people like John Edwards talking about poverty which they hadn't been talking about. You are going to see people all around the country talking about poverty, people -

JIM LEHRER: -- as they would not talk about during the election.

TOM OLIPHANT: Exactly. In the '70s people said I want to get that decade over with. And they had a change. And I don't know what it is going to be but something will change.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Well, we will leave it there. Thank you all three very much. Clarence, good to see you, thanks for being with us.

Good to see you again, Tom.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: In the non-hurricane news of this day: Negotiators in Iraq met quietly to fine-tune the draft constitution. A Shiite leader said there might be minor changes to try to win Sunni support. In Basra, 5000 Shiites marched in favor of the constitution; they said it means freedom and justice. In Ramadi, Sunnis condemned the draft; they said it gives Shiites and Kurds too much power.

Three more U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the first two days of September. For the month of August 84 Americans were killed, up sharply from July. Nearly 1900 have been killed since the war began in March of 2003. Also today, an American soldier was killed in Afghanistan.

Russian President Putin marked the anniversary of the Beslan siege today with a warning. He said there was no guarantee against future attacks. Mourners flocked to the site where pro-Chechen gunmen assaulted the school one year ago. More than 300 people died, half of them children.

Back in this country, machinists at Boeing went on strike and the company immediately halted production of commercial airplanes. The walkout involved more than 18,000 workers in Seattle; Wichita, Kansas; and Gresham, Oregon. The dispute centered on pension and health-care issues.

U.S. unemployment in August was the lowest in four years. The Labor Department reported today that jobless rate slipped a tenth of a point to 4.9 percent. Employers added 169,000 jobs. However, the report was done prior to Hurricane Katrina wiped out thousands of jobs.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 12 points to close at 10,447. The NASDAQ fell more than six points to close at 2141. For the week, the Dow gained half a percent; the NASDAQ rose 1 percent.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice Labor Day Weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.