The Failed Logistics of Hurricane Katrina | Wendover Productions

0:00When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network, and no contract holding you back, plans started $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code hack. The Switch at Visible.com, terms apply, see Visible.com for details.

1:02Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Hurricane Katrina was an entirely expected storm. It was certainly a bad category 5 hurricane, but it was nowhere near the worst. Plenty of more powerful storms have hit the mainland US since 2005, yet none came even close to the degree of human tragedy that Katrina unleashed. The reason this one became perhaps the most remembered modern US hurricane, even two decades on, has little to do with the weather itself. Rather, it's because the truest disaster was the response. In the days immediately before and after the storm, a series of operational failures unfolded, and the consequence was dozens, hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand, preventable deaths.

2:05The earliest stages went as they should have. The US's weather agencies tracked the storm from the earliest phases of its formation, and as it rapidly intensified and its severity became clear about 48 hours out from landfall, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, initiated level 1 disaster operations at its headquarters, as did its two regional offices whose territory lay in the storm's path. From here on, all three offices would be staffed and working 24-7, while all 15 of the emergency support functions at their disposal would now be activated. Importantly, as the agencies aligned with these emergency support functions allude to, while FEMA's often assumed to be the federal arms solely responsible for disaster aid and relief, it's better understood as the agency tasked with coordinating response and aid. For help with major infrastructure problems, for instance, it'll coordinate with the Army Corps of Engineers, for firefighting the Department of Agriculture which houses the US Forest Service. Rather than run the show itself, it's the role of FEMA to listen to what local and state-level emergency offices need, then coordinate with other federal offices and the private

3:09sector alike to procure the physical goods or expertise required in the disaster-stricken area. But while not its primary intention, FEMA does still have some resources of its own, and these had been mobilized by noon on Saturday still two days out from landfall. The Region 6 office mobilized one of the agency's five mobile emergency response support units or murs to Camp Boergaard, Louisiana. An armada of 275 vehicles carrying massive power generators, heating cooling systems, various telecommunication systems, multiple thousand gallon tankers of fuel and water and purification systems, murs units represent the brunt of FEMA's on-the-ground capabilities. With each murs unit is also a mobile emergency operation vehicle, a truck-controller configuration capable of serving as a mobile headquarters and communications aid, and in this unit, goes by the name of Red October. In addition to the murs unit, FEMA staged nearly 550,000 liters of water, 700,000 pounds of ice, and 330,000 meals ready to eat at the camp, along with other supplies positioned

4:13elsewhere around the region. The day before landfall, the map of supplies and personnel deployed at the federal level looked like this, with an emergency response team member being appointed federal coordinating officer here in Baton Rouge, where federal response would coordinate with the state of Louisiana's office of emergency preparedness. The storm seemed massive. Experts believe that if it lived up to its billing that the levees surrounding New Orleans were likely to fail, but the response appeared coordinated and ready. But as Katrina barrelled towards the coast, signs of the response's potential limitations began to flicker. On account of high winds, not all water and food sent to supply the superdome, the major designated shelter, made it to the location, further limiting already constrained supplies. And some disagreement between New Orleans' mayor Ray Negan and FEMA head Michael Brown had already bubbled up on how to use the superdome to begin with, as the latter argued that it shouldn't be a shelter of last resort since engineering reports showed the structure may not even hold in the event of a category 3 hurricane. A third party seemed to draw similar conclusion, as the American Red Cross deemed the stadium

5:17too dangerous and refused to stage their own... When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. And less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plan started $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan, and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HAC. Make the switch at Visible.com, terms apply, see Visible.com for details.

6:22Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. And more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Staff there during the storm announcing they provide resources to the shelter only after it had passed. Part of the hesitation stemmed from the concern that opening up the facility could encourage people to stay in the city rather than evacuate, and in the days and hours when these hurried conversations were going on, the primary focus was to get as many people out of the city as possible. New Orleans had a specific evacuation plan that called for the southernmost parishes to leave first. These, Lafouche, Plaquemaine, St. Bernard, and St. Charles, were notified to start evacuations on Saturday at 9 a.m. by their parish leaders. That afternoon, Sheriff's deputies were managing the intersections and traffic lights were turned off to ex-bite traffic out of town. By Sunday, deputies were going door to door to tell anyone left to leave.

7:26With a nearly 98% evacuation rate and ultimately only three deaths in the Plaquemaine community, this strategy worked, but not all areas were successful. The next parishes, lower Orleans, upper Orleans, and Jefferson parishes were also supposed to evacuate by implementing a contra-flow traffic strategy which meant turning all lanes of New Orleans highways into one-way roads directed out of the city, thus increasing capacity. Problem was, these evacuations were only, quote, recommended. In fact, different parishes used different wording, but none of them conveyed the urgency and no one made the explicit call that residents actually needed to get out. By the time that Mayor Nagan gave the direction at 11 a.m. on Sunday, less than a day out from landfall that residents of New Orleans really did need to get out and needed to get out now, there were an estimated 70,000 people still in the city. Besides intense gridlock due to sheer numbers, the problem now was that many of the tens of thousands of the remaining residents had no way of actually leaving.

8:29They lacked transportation or were either disabled or elderly and couldn't travel alone. Officials offered some solutions. They asked these remaining residents to meet at coordinated pickup zones where buses would pick them up, but these buses only transported these vulnerable populations as far as the superdome were an estimated 12,000 people were sheltered by Sunday evening. In the early hours of Monday, August 29th, Hurricane Katrina did what forecasters expected it to. This smashed into the Gulf Coast with 25 foot waves and 130 mile per hour winds. And while New Orleans dodged the brunt of the storm's direct impacts, the surge of water that followed became the critical problem. Unsubstantiated reports of levy issues began rolling in in the morning, then at 6 p.m. as the skies began to clear, a coast guard flyover with a FEMA official aboard verified as much. The fragile levees tasked with keeping water out along the lowline north side of the city had failed as engineers had feared they would. As the storm gave way, flood water poured into the city and the race was now on to get supplies

9:31and responders in and to get the stranded out. And immediately, a massive problem. Flood water had reached this building and the rising water destroyed its emergency generator. This building was home to Mayor Nagan's office and served as New Orleans City Hall housing the city's emergency operations center or EOC. Today, in a post-cretrina reality, New Orleans has the ability to take its emergency operation center on the move in the event that the EOC office is compromised, but that wasn't the case in 2005, so the office and mayor had to relocate here to the high-regency where the office would be stationed for the following days. Still, communications were dead. One phone line from the mayor's room would occasionally connect an outbound call, but could not receive them. Same for email. Not until three days after landfall would the command center be able to make calls or receive emails. This created a massive command and control problem, turning a large but expected natural disaster into an utter debacle. Formal National Scale disaster relief efforts in the US are structured as a federalist system

10:34that begins with and relies on local governments to pull resources from state and federal levels. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network and no contract holding you back, plans start at $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code hack.

11:36Make the switch at visible.com. For more information, visit www.Visible.com for details. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Other governments don't proactively push resources in, they technically wait for the smaller local governments to ask for them. FEMA, the National Guard under the purview of the Department of Defense, the State of Louisiana even, were thus all waiting to hear exactly what supplies Mayor Nagan and the city's command center needed and where. But with cell towers down, landlines flooded and the internet cut off, the city couldn't get information out. Of course, it didn't help that New Orleans Paris officials had not adopted satellite phone backups in the years prior, nor did it help that federal planners hadn't positioned enough communication backups near enough to the city.

12:37Recognizing the problem at hand, that pull logistics would not be possible without being able to connect the joint field office in Baton Rouge to city officials, FEMA attempted to push communications capabilities into the city. The day following landfall, Merse vehicles, including red October, were mobilized from barc stay-al-air force base and headed to the city core to establish cons. There they would meet a FEMA coordinator being flown in by helicopter to form a unified command, oversee commodities ordered, and build out an operational base for search and rescue. While the coordinator made it to the Superdome, there was little he could do but wait for the communications vehicles, which by nightfall, had only made it as far as Lafayette as navigating debris made progress slow. The next day, it became clear they wouldn't make it at all as floodwaters were too high for the vehicles to make it to the city core, turning red October back to Baton Rouge. They had gotten tantalizingly close, as one Merse vehicle made it as far as an overpass within view of the Superdome, but no farther. Two days after landfall, as the city went from under siege by a storm and back to miserably

13:37hot summer, FEMA had yet to establish stable communications between the local emergency officials and Baton Rouge, where state and federal resources waited for direction. While the lack of preposition communication resources within the city would be criticized in the months and years to follow, for now this meant major chaos in getting needed resources in. For the thousands upon thousands of pounds of commodities palatized in positions around New Orleans, food, water, ice, tarps, generators, disaster planners had designed a system where requests would be made by city and parish operation centers, they'd carefully be input by the state, and they'd be executed and tracked by FEMA through its database. But now commodities were being requested via word of mouth and over the radio by overwhelmed parish officials, they were being hastily input at the state operation center without any vetting and half hazard filling, and they were reaching, or not reaching, FEMA, unformatted, unverified, and often just incorrect. A logistics chain carefully designed to procure and track resources, but built around the assumed reliability of phone lines and internet access, had now turned into a stress-charged

14:40game of telephone. As goods did begin to make their way into the city, they were the wrong goods or the wrong amount of the right goods. In some cases, the request they swore they may just never showed up at all, and without much of a real coherent paper trail, no one knew exactly why they didn't. Without communications, logistics failed at all levels. Localities didn't get what they needed, or were too overwhelmed to even make the request, while FEMA sent truck drivers hauling ice on 4,000 miles or 6,500 km wild goose hunts as they struggled to figure out where to store, then distribute goods on the fly. All the while, as federal, state, and local emergency operators worked to scramble goods into the city, FEMA slowly began to mobilize to get people out. In the years prior, New Orleans officials had done significant amounts of planning on evacuating people from the city before the big one hit, but less thought had actually been given to getting people out after a major weather event, and this had disastrous consequences.

15:45One of these unforeseen challenges occurred in what was supposed to be the main evacuation space for refugees, the Superdome. Up to 12,000 people made it inside pre-Landfall, but on Monday morning, parts of the arena's roof tore open, compromising both power and water infrastructure in the facility. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at and.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. Unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back.

16:47Plan started $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan, and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code hack. Make the switch at Visible.com. Terms apply, see Visible.com for details. Cram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. It would need to be evacuated as soon as possible, and yet people were still arriving in hordes from now sunken parts of the city. By Wednesday, the population of the Superdome swelled to 23,000.

17:47As time drew on, the safe haven of last resort was proving anything but safe. The electricity system failed, and the backup generator could only power the internal lighting. The field level flooded, the plumbing failed, and their refrigeration systems went out, and food started to quickly spoil in the heat and humidity. Media reports were alarming, and tension was increasing, but because it took until early Wednesday morning for FEMA to officially assign the U.S. Department of Transportation, the task of mobilizing buses nationwide to assist in evacuating the Superdome, getting people out was going to take a while. Because much of the region had been devastated, the plan was to evacuate those in the Superdome to the Houston Astrodome, some 350 miles, or 560 kilometers away. But the city's school buses that had been staged to evacuate people before the storm were now underwater, so officials scrambled to find buses across the state, along with drivers willing to take on the task, which seemed increasingly dangerous as overblown or unsubstantiated reports of violence began to permeate from the city. By that evening, nearly two days after landfall, bus evacuations finally began, but it was

18:51hardly a major mobilization as a meager 120 evacuees headed towards Houston. According to Makeup for Lost Time, emergency contracts with bus companies as far as New York were set up, while the governor passed an executive order commandeering school buses, but evacuations stopped and started in fits and starts as rumors of sniper fire and other violence grew louder, thanks to faulty reporting by national media. With such degraded communications infrastructure, leaders assumed these rumors to be correct, while in retrospect, many have blamed the assumptions of violence on racially motivated stereotypes of the city's population. And all this chaos and suffering was playing out at the designated shelter points. Things were far worse at the convention center, where thousands headed for shelter but found no supplies, no security, and no emergency responders, along with these slightly elevated points, an i10 intersection that was called Cloverleaf, the industrial canal levees, and some Mississippi River levees, all exposed to the elements with only the Cloverleaf harboring the slightest supplies for medical rescues.

19:52Retreating from rising waters with no better options, the number of evacuees in these areas slowly grew throughout the days following landfall, while Coast Guard crews only added to the count as they launched rescue missions from Zeffer Field, plucking people from roofs and depositing them at the same impromptu safety zones by boats. By Thursday, the US Coast Guard had 43 aircraft and over 2000 personnel at the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama, a staging point left relatively unscathed compared to air station New Orleans. Among these were 80 Coast Guard swimmers deployed to not only look for trapped people, but to start removing debris, downed power lines, and decimated infrastructure to clear the way for more emergency services. At peak, the Coast Guard teams were rescuing 750 people an hour by boat and 100 people an hour by air. But for those rescued to high points like the i10 Cloverleaf, which reached 4000 at one point, they had to wait, surviving for days on meager rations dropped by helicopter and food that was left from a convenience store below. It reached nearly 100 degrees at points and it rained at other points and as the days

20:53drew on, bodies floated past the Cloverleaf while people in desperate need of medical attention died on it. By Friday, evacuations of the Superdome and Convention Center were finally properly underway with 475 buses deployed to transport people to the Astridome, which quickly housed up to 25,000. As more than 200,000 sought refuge in Texas, overflow locations in San Antonio and Dallas popped up too. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsor Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsor Jobs. Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand.

21:58With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network, and no contract holding you back, plans started $25 a month or get the premium Visible Plus Pro plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code hack. Meet the switch at Visible.com. Terms apply. See Visible.com for details. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens. The content they can see and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Thousands have now taken refuge. By Thursday, the center received some supplies. By Friday, rescuers finally made it there. By Saturday, the last of the refugees had been cleared from the Superdome, and that night the convention center would also be fully evacuated. As for the overpass, that wouldn't be fully evacuated until Monday, a full week after

23:01the storm had hit. From here, search and rescue took center stage while the city, state and nation began to wrap its head around how it would bounce back from the storm. Ultimately, it would take more than a year for the Superdome to reopen as a football stadium, and by the time it did, it was different. With half a billion dollars in repairs, it was a roomier, sleeker, more modern, easier to navigate. With time and a great cost, it was forever changed. So too was the city itself. In the 20 years since, New Orleans has built back at the cost of well over 100 billion dollars. Its population is starting to near what it was in 2005 before the storm. Its levees are now stronger. Its emergency planners are now more prepared. It's now more ready. But it will also never be the same. Not solely on account of a storm, but on account of a storm exacerbated first by failed physical infrastructure and flooding, then by flooded and failing disaster response infrastructure, New Orleans is forever changed. Principally because its population is forever changed.

24:02A slow, poorly executed response made worse by racially charged rumors of violence, and more acutely felt by the city's poor and blacker populations pushed many of these very people out. Whether it was the trauma associated with sheltering in a dangerous, disgusting, and dimly lit superdome, or the PTSD stemming from close calls as the water poured in or the prolonged suffering while waiting for rescue, Katrina and its response sent tens of thousands to spread across the American South and never come back. On account of failed logistics mixing with local, long-standing social issues, will begin as a large national disaster became a century-defining human disaster that tore a city down to its very foundation and both highlighted and exacerbated issues of racial and economic disparities. On account of failed logistics, one of America's oldest and proudest cities changed forever. On account of failed logistics also sounds like something I'd make into a series for the sponsor of this video and the streaming service I'm proud to be a part of. Nebula. At this point, you've probably heard the benefits of becoming a Nebula subscriber.

25:04The ad free content that posts on the platform before it goes to YouTube, the plethora of content that is only ever going to be available on Nebula, and the knowledge that you're directly supporting your favorite creators, so let me just focus on one specific point. There's some really good stuff on Nebula right now. As this video posts, about half of Maggie Mae Fischer's new original series, Amy's dead end dream house will be available. It's smart, it looks amazing visually, and it's an awesome example as to how creators are using Nebula to push boundaries in their content. Another example of this is the full length documentary by Bobby Broccoli called Seventeen Pages. Across 90 minutes, this documentary blends a fascinating story with twists and turns with really tasteful motion graphics netting. It's awesome, and their Reddit reviews are saying as much. I really, really recommend checking it out. More exciting projects are on the way too, including one we're hard at work at with the Wendover Crew. But until then, there's still countless examples of quality content coming out regularly across Nebula from us and everyone else. And if you're new, go ahead and check out some of our older originals too. I mean, everything mustard has made over the years is still so fascinating and fun to watch,

26:08especially for the average Wendover viewer. Without having to constrain our content for the YouTube algorithm, or water it down for YouTube's content guidelines, and without the pressure of pushing big views for video sponsors, we are really taking some big swings on Nebula content by mixing the quality storytelling we've developed on this platform. With some of our more experimental and creative ideas, we knew just wouldn't quite click for YouTube. So, go give it a shot. It's not nearly as expensive as your typical streaming service, especially when you go to Nebula.tv slash Wendover. Follow this link in the description and you'll get 40% off an annual plan, which brings the per month cost to $3. That's the cost of a single coffee to flip through content we've worked tirelessly on for a month at a time. I really think you'll enjoy what we've come up with so far, so head over to Nebula.tv slash Wendover to sign up with 40% off, and thanks if you do.