Democracy Disaster: The Story of Katrina Demonstrates How Linked Government is to Life and Death and How, in this Crisis, it Didn't Work. 

by VALSIN A. MARMILLION
State Legislatures, 32 (7) (July-August 2006):  48-50. 

Americans like their headlines juicy. So the topics of representative democracy or federalism rarely make the cut for interesting news. While Katrina was the biggest story in years with an angle riveting for a political scientist or historian, it was all but untold in the context of federalism. In one event you had the agony and ecstasy, miracles and tragedies, political intrigue and suspicions, with life hanging in the balance--all in the glare of a world press picking through the debris. This was not your typical story about federalism.

At first, many people wanted to tell the story of Katrina as a tale of two cities, New Orleans and New York after 9/11, New Orleans and San Francisco after the great fire. But this is a tale of two contexts--personal and statistical--that demonstrates how clearly linked government and federalism are to life, death and survival in 21st century America.

Hidden under the rubble a year later is a sad tale of failure and collapse, not just of a city, but of our system of democratic federalism. FEMA, the federal agency empowered to act in a disaster, imploded, its future uncertain. The governor of a state asks the White House to "give us everything you've got," and the feds later say that the request lacked specificity. And the self-described "lone-wolf" mayor of New Orleans comes face-to-face with realities of governance that he never faced as a former business executive. One universal failure would rise above the rest: the collapse of cooperation and communication that could support E Pluribus Unum, one cooperative answer to a complicated disaster. USA TODAY laid out the riveting personal context in a Nov. 11, 2005, article by Jill Lawrence, "Behind an iconic photo, one family's tale of grief." It explored the mishaps and missteps that destroyed Lillian and Edgar Hollingsworth's lives.

"When she saw the picture in the newspaper, she couldn't speak. There was her front porch, bare of the hanging spider plants she had taken down for the storm. And there in the arms of a soldier lay her husband, emaciated and unconscious, hooked up to oxygen and fluids. It was 17 days after she had kissed him goodbye, 16 days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, 15 days after the floodwaters rose to fill the bowl that is New Orleans. 'I just held the paper and looked at it for a while. I was hoping they had rescued him.'"

The photograph Lillian refers to was taken by Bruce Chambers of The Orange County (Calif.) Register. It became a symbol of all that went terribly wrong in the wake of Katrina.

"Lillian and Edgar Hollingsworth lived a modest version of the American Dream. She was a secretary, and he worked at an A&P warehouse.... Like many city residents, the Hollingsworths did not drive much outside town.... On Sunday morning, Aug. 28, she went to the airport to get the [rental] van, only to be told there were no vehicles available. Families across New Orleans were scrambling to come up with plans. The Hollingsworths decided to take refuge with relatives who had second floors ... but Edgar refused to go."

"'I'll be just as safe here as I would at [son] Wesley's house,'" Edgar said. "The storm's not going to hit. It's going to go around, the way all the others did.'"

Unlike a large American corporation with thousands of well-trained managers to deploy in an emergency, Louisiana had only a small cadre of senior staff in the governor's office to manage the worst disaster in American history. Having just revised evacuation plans following a scare from Hurricane Ivan, the state reworked its population movement strategy, called "contra flow," and nervously waited news of hurricanes plowing the warm Gulf waters.

Louisiana officials had warned for years that the state was extremely vulnerable and it was only a matter of time before "the big one" would hit. In fact, just five days before Katrina landed, Governor Kathleen Blanco led an entourage of local, state and federal leaders on a tour from New Orleans to the most hurricane-prone regions of the state to build citizen unity for efforts to halt coastal erosion. The consequences for not acting were too dire to imagine--for Louisiana and the nation.

At the opening of hurricane season on June 1, 2005, the Save America's WETLAND campaign created a dramatization of flooding in New Orleans' French Quarter, hanging 18foot sections of blue tarp from balconies to demonstrate what the streets would look like if flood waters rose to the height scientists predicted after a direct hurricane hit on the city. Kids in orange life preservers mimicked the way New Orleans could be lost if the federal government failed to protect the city. It was a prophetic display.

"[Lillian] told her neighbors across the street that Edgar was staying behind, but she made few other preparations. She didn't take any valuables with her. She packed a change of clothing and assumed she'd be back in a day or two. She gave her husband a kiss and left. At that moment the Hollingsworths joined a group that eventually numbered in the tens of thousand: families divided by Katrina.

The next day the storm came and the water rose. Wesley, his mother and his girlfriend stayed dry in Wesley's second floor apartment, even as water lapped at the rooflines of single-story houses across the street. But they didn't feel safe. 'We were just lucky for the time being. But we didn't know when our luck was going to run out,' Wesley says."

From the moment the storm ended, they started trying to make contact with Edgar. But they couldn't get back to the house and the phones were all out.

Rescuers came by in boats and said they'd return, but they never did. On Thursday, a neighbor floated by on a flatboat and said he'd be back for them. He kept his promise. Late Thursday afternoon, the party arrived at a staging area at Interstate 10 and Causeway Boulevard. They expected to find buses ready to take them to shelter. Instead they found thousands of people and no buses. The Hollingsworths waited all night and through most of the next day in the heat and chaos. They finally boarded a bus so crowded that Lillian had to sit on the floor until a young woman offered her seat. They did not know where they were headed."

Katrina hit, and Americans viewed the unfolding saga. Every major news organization set up shop at hotels in New Orleans. The U.S. Geological Survey reported some appalling news. The protective chain of Chandeleur Islands was ripped asunder. Louisiana had been losing approximately 24 square miles of land a year to erosion. But when Katrina hit, it lost nearly 200 square miles of land in two days.

New Orleans and Lake Charles were hit hard, and smaller communities along the coast that were in the storm's eye, were completely destroyed

The unthinkable had happened.

"The Hollingsworths called the Red Cross to try to locate Edgar. They called an emergency number announced on the radio station. They called a number crawling along the TV screen. But they didn't hear back from anyone."

Volumes could be penned to explain what went wrong in the midst of this tragedy. The media pounced on the notion of "if" not "how" to rebuild one of America's unique major cities. Questions about governance in the wake of the two storms--who did what, when, how, by what authority--had few answers. And blame was directed everywhere. One thing was clear: The system had broken down at every level of government and the nation was ill prepared for natural disasters of this magnitude.

"On Tuesday, Sept. 13, Captain Bruce Gaffney led a National Guard unit from San Diego through the Hollingsworths' neighborhood. It reeked of mold and sewage. The wrought-iron security gate at the [Hollingsworths'] front door was locked, but the door was cracked open a few inches. Sergeant Jeremy Ridgeway spotted part of a leg and called to Lt. Frederick Fell, the platoon leader. 'You could see his heart beating through his chest, he was so emaciated,' says Peter Czuleger, 55, an emergency room doctor with the Orange County team. 'One of the Guardsmen said, 'He looks like he has AIDS.' I said no, this is what someone looks like who has not had food or water for 10 days.'"

Louisiana called on civic leaders to help direct recovery efforts through new foundations and commissions. "Katrina fatigue" was highlighted in the national press. Hurricane survivors suffered from anxiety disorders. Layers of government were acting without some of the local and state elected officials having a say. There was a period when orders were coming from all levels of government and the democratic process took a back seat. The storms gave rise to a national dialogue about whether our system of federalism is effective. As they did to the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, the storms peeled back the veneer of a nation with festering problems. Federalism and democracy were in conflict as people scrambled to find fixes.

"Lillian stared in shock at the picture of her husband on the front page of The [Baton Rouge] Advocate. They called the newspaper and got the California photographer's name and phone number. He told them where Edgar had been taken. They rented a car the next day, drove the 120 miles to New Orleans and sat with him for 20 minutes before he died."

People across the world gave generously to aid the victims of Katrina. National foundations and think tanks poured into Louisiana offering expertise and advice about everything from urban planning to dietary needs of evacuees. Local and state officials were overwhelmed with the onslaught, just as they had been with the tragedy. Airports were filled with thousands of people, many clad with specially designed storm-related organizational logos. Animal rescuers mingled with mental heath providers, school teachers with EMTs. Criticism rang out that offers for help were not being processed, and that great ideas were not accepted. In reality, the vessel was not big enough to take it all in, to process highbrow ideas and the on-the-ground offers of help. At first, there was a sense that the federal government would broaden the capacity of state and local officials, but again, the rhetoric rarely matched the need, complexity and challenges of the events unfolding daily.

"'Everyone failed the people,' Gaffney says. 'The soldiers and the poor people had to bear the brunt of everybody else's failures."

Reality for Louisiana has changed. Without visitors, the New Orleans region loses an average of $15.2 million per day in direct tourism income. The Lake Charles region loses an average of $1.5 million per day. Before Katrina, 10.1 million visitors came to New Orleans in 2004 and spent $5.5 billion. More than 75,000 people were directly employed in the travel industry in the New Orleans metropolitan area in 2004. Louisiana lost more than $1 billion in direct tourism revenue by the end of 2005 because of Katrina's devastation.

"There's nowhere to walk near her apartment, in a desolate part of town. Lillian yearns for her grandsons. They've lived next door to her all their lives. Now they are in Dallas, where a bus took them after the storm. Her family pictures--her husband in better days, the baby pictures and school pictures of her son and his sons--are stained with water and mud."

Just one day before New Orleans would elect its mayor, the headlines rang out clearly that the impact of a natural disaster and the limitations of federalism continued to shake the systems of government and the lives of American citizens living in Louisiana.

KATRINA STATISTICS

The story of Katrina was staggering statistically, as well as personally. By November 2005:

* 467 Small Business Bridge Loan applications totaling $8.8 million were approved by Louisiana Economic Development

* 519,469 households received more than $389 million in Disaster Food Stamp Benefits.

* 2,350 Louisiana Swift commuters had been transported--on free buses--to and from New Orleans for jobs, job searches and recovery efforts.

* 2,223 citizens displaced because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita remained in shelters from the original 62,000.

* 129,349 people from the original 1.4 million who lost electricity remained without power.

* 4,900 mobile home trailers had been placed with Louisiana businesses for temporary employee housing.

* $292.7 million in unemployment and disaster assistance was distributed to displaced citizens from the Labor Department.