David told me about some of these stories, and I ran across some of them today and decided to stick them all together.
NPR : Reporters Give Voice to Post-Katrina Desperation
Others are also pressing senior public figures for specific answers. On National Public Radio Thursday afternoon, Robert Siegel questioned Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff about the dire conditions for thousands of people who were not allowed into the New Orleans Superdome but were directed instead to the city’s convention center.
Chertoff said aid workers were confronted by a “double catastrophe” – a hurricane followed by a flood that complicated the delivery of supplies. But he said several times that any refugee from the flood who got to a “staging area” like the Superdome — and presumably, the convention center — would have food and water.
When Siegel asked him again about the convention center, Chertoff said, “You know, the one thing about an episode like this is if you talk to someone and you get a rumor or you get someone’s anecdotal version of something, I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place…”
But Siegel bored in on the nation’s top homeland security official, “But, Mr. Secretary, when you say that there is — we shouldn’t listen to rumors, these are things coming from reporters who have not only covered many, many other hurricanes; they’ve covered wars and refugee camps. These aren’t rumors. They’re seeing thousands of people there.”
Chertoff said he was unaware of it. Immediately after that conversation, however, NPR correspondent John Burnett austerely set out precisely what he and producer Anne Hawke had witnessed. After the interview was taped, a spokeswoman for Chertoff called back. She confirmed Burnett’s report — and said supplies would be directed to the convention center.
There are links to Siegel’s and Burnett’s reports on the NPR page. Also, Anderson Cooper ripped Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) a new one for going on and on with a long list of thanks and congratulations to other politicians and how Congress is going to pass a supplemental aid bill. Rather than accept all the back-slapping and congratulatory shout-outs, he replied:
Here Cooper interrupted: “I haven’t heard that, because, for the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi,” he said sharply. “And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.
“And when they hear politicians slap — you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there’s not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?”
I saw the live news conference by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rep. Elijah Cummings ended his statement with a Bible reading (“I was naked, and you clothed me,”)and after finishing, remarked “God cannot be pleased.” It was rather ironically and pointedly directed at President Bush, from one Christian believer to another. The state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans share some measure of responsibility for not making sure in advance that their most vulnerable and poverty-ridden people could have gotten out before the storm hit, or right after. But the Feds bear the brunt for the slowness of the response, because some of the assets they needed in the area could have been headed to staging areas in the days before the storm hit, so they would have been within range wherever Katrina made landfall.
