For a rally. He will join us after the events to take your phone calls. It gets underway tonight at 7 00 eastern here on cspan. , politics, books and american history. Coverage ofe alive president ial candidates at the iowa state fair continues. Chris christie at noon and bobby jindal at 1 00 p. M. Sunday evening at 6 30, scott walker holds a town hall meeting in ashland, new hampshire. Saturday come up with tv is live at the inaugural mississippi book festival beginning and 11 30 a. M. Rights, history and biography and the literary lives of harper lee and eudora wealthy. Shares her critical thoughts on the obama administrations relationship with millennials. Saturday afternoon at 5 00, andrew on the preservation of new yorks cultural, political and architectural landmarks in the history of the commission created to protect them. Railamerica, three films on the program administered by the Johnson Administration to help improve relations between the police and the community after the Martin Luther king assassination and subsequent riots. With the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina coming up next , we been covering the number of retrospective another coming up on monday. This one, daylong, looking at a the reconstruction efforts among other issues. Life monday beginning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. Another one held this week in washington marking the katrina anniversary. Next up, we will show you as much of that as we can until senator cruz speaks at the iowa state fair at 11 00. [applause] go ahead. Evening. I am doug brinkley. I am the clause i moderator here quasimoderator here with my friends. I wanted to begin and set the stage for the 10th anniversary. It is history now, katrina. People in the gulf south are still living katrina. It was not just an event of one day. Its an entire decade affecting the region. Atrina is one word that means whole important part of our country trying to come back. Not just hurricane, but from the manmade disaster of the shoddy levees and other problems that the katrina story points to. Racism, poor school systems, crime, economic disparity. Field ery for kyle fertile field of looking at america today. It is not just history. When the storm came, i was a professor at Tulane University and i evacuated the are before. I made the dumbest decision of my life to stay because i did not want to be in gridlock traffic on i 10. I cannot stand traffic. Im very hyperactive. My inlaws lived on top of a building called one river place. It was right by the hilton right next to the Convention Center. I thought i could do a vertical evacuation with my family, wait out the storm. We had provisions. I did that. It shocked me because the Natural Disaster part of katrina , i river all of my life, i looked at the Mississippi River and saw the river, the Mighty Mississippi you study and think about going in the opposite direction. The power of the storm was pushing the water from the gulf of mexico upwards. I can see across, you could see things coming up the riverbank. When the winds were coming it almost lifted the border collie, pulled the lease of the animal up and quickly brought it back in. You can see the danger of stop signs blowing and debris in mississippi, a lot of people got hurt by shrapnel. Loose bits of metal flying. Many injuries with that. Once the storm settled, i went and walked around the French Quarter. I thought new orleans dodged the bullet. Later, i went to the bywater region and talk to a group of police and we were looking at the levees breaching and the city was under water. Ts when i began looking working on my book, the great deluge. He was now standing mayor and his father was now standing mayor and he worked so hard and continues to work so hard on behalf of the city of new orleans. I wanted to ask you where you were when katrina hit and your first reaction at the time. Thank you to the audience, think you to the museum. , august 27, i flew to norlins for the funeral to new orleans for a funeral. We were living in new york, still owned our home in new orleans. We had moved to new york after i left office. My wife was working at cbs news. Norlinsth, include to new orleans to attend the funeral of the president of the urban league of greater new orleans. The funeral was taking place at dillard university. A beautiful, flawless day. When i walked into the chapel. The hurricane was a category one or two. This was a glorious celebratory funeral. It was going to go on for a long time. , myhours into the funeral Communications Director handed me a note. She said we must leave now. I walked to the side of the sanctuary and she said the hurricane is a category five. We must leave town now because you have to get back to new york. Andairport will be closed all hell is about to break loose. Mind you, it is a sunny, beautiful day. No evidence that a storm is on the way. To my to her im going mothers house to check on her first and then we will go to the airport. House andmy mothers i said, mom, turn on the tv. This hurricane is coming. You must leave town and go to baton rouge. She said im not going anywhere. Please give me a hotel room and i will vertically evacuate. I said, mom, i think you need to. O to sherrys house she goes upstairs, doesnt say a word. Im watching tv and i said i have to get to the airport. Im not leaving until you leave. Sawrned on television and i the beginning of the mishandling of the crisis. Successor saying to the that he could not order an evacuation until the lawyers cleared it. My heart leapt into my mouth because i had managed through a 1998 storm called hurricane george. Which was a storm which could have been like katrina, but it diverted. City and barely affected the city. The power. It knocked out the power. Back on a flight and went to new york and got back into new york. The hurricane this is what is so important. Youe gets perspective know this. Once the hurricane passed, the sun came out. Mistake number two from an Emergency Response standpoint was that the city and the emergency officials were not aware that there had been levy preaches. People went to bed, went to their homes, those that remained in the city and the levee breaches filled the city with water in the evening and overnight. And into the morning of tuesday, which created the panic in the crisis. In a hurricane, the first thing that happens that causes human anxiety with confusion and misery is the power goes out. You lose power, you lose electricity, you lose access to television, you lose access to anything people with cell phones can charge them. That occurs first. Congregated at the dome and the Convention Center. Last resortof because that is what had occurred in 1998. They went there expecting in 2005 what they got in 1998. Which was a facility where there was water, doctors, nurses, and maris, National Guard on standby. , National Guard on standby. Short, what you saw who had those automobiles and wherewithal got on the roads and got out of town. That means you had a car, a friend, any place to go. A credit card and money to get a hotel in jackson or memphis or atlanta or houston. Someplace away from the gulf coast. If you did not, you either and said iour home will ride this thing up because ive seen this story before. Or, i will go to the shelter of last resort at the Convention Center. That is a bit of context of why these people were stranded at these two facilities at the dome and the Convention Center. This this was a error. Storm of the federal government, President Administration initially pointed the finger at the governor and the mayor. The mayor pointed the finger of the governor, the governor pointed the finger at the mayor. Other,re blaming each having this argument about federalism and who was responsible and that was what characterized the first two or three days. No one stepping up saying i will be responsible. It was the media, the National Media who went to new or less new orleans that elevated what was occurring in new orleans into the national consciousness. Rescue inergency response, you have a 40 hour window to save lives. Goes out,electricity people will die in 48 hours if they dont get a respiratory machine or dialysis. We failed as a country. Except, the coast guard did an incredible job. Ns andana mississippians save themselves. Where were you when you started seeing this on the tv . I was where all good new yorkers along come in the hamptons. Coming, it would have been my 34th hurricane. They always do the same thing. They come straight towards new orleans and then hit mississippi. We knew thats what was going to happen. , as my father and e were tooling around Louis Armstrong was going to close and i had to go. I took my old bag and went straight to the airport. Not easy. There and quickly realized they were not ready. I would disagree about errors being made people made decisions of money over man. When the mayor did not send the buses, he made a decision money over man. That decision kill people. I watched as time went on people who died after day to are not counted as victims of katrina. I dont know what they count them as. They dont count them as victims of katrina. Those people are victims. This is the part where i would fill in the blanks with names. The people who made those decisions kill those people because they could not get water and cannot get food. People came up to me that one person came up with a baby and aid my baby is hotter than humans can be. My baby will die of we dont get to someone. We are on the bridge across from the superdome. There is video to prove it. We stand in front of the place where the cops are screaming by, make the cops stop and say this baby is going to die unless you take the baby. If you dont take the baby, im putting it on the news tonight. He took the baby and i wondered how many dead babies are there because decisions were made about money over man. Thats what happened. This storm did not hit new orleans. A category two hurricane hit nor lets. Orleans. Ts new haveeason you did not people screaming at you for mississippi is because they were dead. A 32 foot wall of water came into my state. New orleans got spared. They cannot even take being spared. So poor atn preparing a city under sea level to be prepared for the absolute they were so poorly prepared that they could not take a brush of the category two storm. It will happen again. It will be worse. Make is point i want to that today, it would not happen. Today, we have twitter and facebook and people would know, you cannot go to the Convention Center. You will die there. Is no medicine for your old people, no formula for your babies. Here is high you can get transportation. It would have been better today. Five wednesday, there were no cell phones. The cell towers went down and when the power went out, people who had cell phones cannot recharge them. You have this catastrophic situation where only by looking at television away from the city from a horrific point of view, when we were in new york and we turned on television and i saw what was happening at the Convention Center and at the dome, my wife and i looked at that i went from an absolute rage to crying. I hadnt cried since my daddy died. Memorial forat your father it was shocking to see people suffering like they were in the whole of the ship whole of the ship. In august in new orleans, it is 99 degrees. And 99 humidity. The heat and humidity is oppressive. Outdoorsgerous to be for long amounts of time. People are outside for hours, or ood. Without water or f while so much of the focus of katrina is on new orleans, the truth is, its impact was all around the gulf coast. Mississippi got battered. The gulf coast of mississippi. Coastal parts of louisiana got battered. There was a companion storm right behind katrina called rita which affected the southwestern part of the state. While new orleans was the epicenter, the massive extent of this storm went far beyond the city. This itsoffer important for people to understand what caused the flooding. Feared in new orleans that the most catastrophic thing that could occur would be a Mississippi River levee break. In the event of a huge storm. In this instance, what broke canalslevees on drainage that are not as wide as this room. These drainage canals carry water from underneath the streets to a pumping station where they are pumped up and put in the canal and the canal empties into the lake which then mds into the gulf of mexico. With the power of the hurricane, it forced the water in reverse into the canals and created so much pressure that the levee walls broke in five separate places. They were in Engineering Convention of the early 1900s designed to train drain parts of the city that used to be swaps. Innovations,ring why did they fail . If you saw these levees, their flood walls. They look like the sound barriers you see on the side of a highway. Some of them were poorly designed, some of them were inadequately constructed. The responsibility for these levees fail on the net States Army Corps of engineers fell on the united States Army Corps of engineers. A were financed by and designed by the United States government. Yet, when katrina took place, because it is the army, they were imbued by the doctrine of sovereignty from lawsuits. There was a responsible party that in normal circumstances would have been called to task. Therefore, many people were left with if they had flood insurance, they were left with anything the government would do under the stafford act. This was a unique set of circumstances. I really, really believe that and i hope that what people will year isn this 10th really, really have a candid conversation. It could happen again and it could be worse. It ought to be the responsibility of everyone to do Everything Possible to make sure that it cannot happen again in the magnitude that it happened with Hurricane Katrina. One of the other aspects of all this was the disappearing wetlands of louisiana. You will see all these Barrier Islands with erosion the wetlands dying, they built the river it connected the gulf of mexico to make nor lets a better port. New orleans a better port. It became a wind tunnel. That water hopped over all the flood walls. It is boardedup. It was an engineering boondoggle. The environmental boondoggle of costly killing americas wetlands when the storm would gulf,0 miles north of the it would suck in like a sponge a lot of the search. Now, you are getting a more direct hit on the levees. Mississippi, those towns got offclean off wept clean the whole town was gone. Mily picking up their belongings. They said we are getting ready to rebuild. Right on the gulf. Why wouldnt you move 12 miles and and then you can enjoy this in my granddaddy lived here, my daddy grew up here and im rebuilding. We will stay. Yous a lot of that will see people building homes along the gulf again in mississippi. Did you have a personal connection to that region . That made this different than other stores . Im from upstate in holly springs, the oxford area. Mississippi is really three states. , the centralpart part with jackson in the south part where they all talk about cajuns. We are all kind of one people. Dont mess with brett favre. Our hurricane was camille. The hurricane nobody knew about. That is the one that wiped us out. They had building standards to that level. Nothing will ever be camille again. Then, this top camille. The people who wanted to rebuild if you are looking to the left, thats where the storm came a sure. Right there in mississippi. Not in the louisiana. Thing is wavelan. You have to build 30 feet above the waterline. That land, they cannot use. Beforehe 5020 years katrina hit the mississippi gulf coast, the mississippi gulf coast had been transformed by casino gambling. , landbased boats that never float. One of the most interesting stories of katrina is that it wiped out most of the casinos on the gulf coast. One of the interesting stories, the governor, how can he convince conservative mississippi to embrace thie sin of casino gambling again . Iwas a political act want to paint this human picture. In katrina, the numbers about 2000 people lost their lives. People lost their lives in many ways. , ithe personal stories side had press whose parents died in their pets i have friends whose parents died in their beds. There was another group of people who managed when the waters rose to go into their antics, break holes in the roof of their houses and wait on the roots of their homes until the ran for would three consecutive days, helicopter, airbased rescues. There were those for whom the trauma and shock were so bad that they could notwithstanding on the roof, of being stranded for two or three days waiting to be rescued. Then, there was the aftereffect. And then there was the aftereffect. Was so difficult and challenging that diabetics were separated from their medicine for a long period of time to those on dialysis didnt have dialysis for several days because of the storm, and also days or weeks later because of the effect of the storm. This is one of the great human tragedies in modern american history. The reason why it is a tragedy ill tell a story. I was asked to the saturday after katrina to go to a meeting at the white house. I went to a meeting at the white house, and i will say this because it is absolutely true. At that point in time Michael Chertoff had just been named secretary of Homeland Security you know, distinguish former who said to me in a meeting in the white house that the reason why they could wasget supplies in thei there was no place for military helicopters to land. I challenged him to the point because at the dome there is a helipad. There is a helipad at the dome. What you saw in those first few days was absolute denial, failure to accept responsibility, a fumbling, bumbling, and political finger pointing. And it ought to be a lesson. The Public Officials who were front and center of what you see lost tremendous credib