Nice and Quiett.
Posted on 08/25/2007 10:58:04 PM PDT by SmithL
“Are you OK?” his press secretary, Sally Forman, asked.
“This was God’s plan for me, Sally,” Nagin said.
“What was?” she asked.
“To rebuild New Orleans.”
That exchange is one of the many insights into the man and the chaos that reigned after the storm that Forman writes about in her book “Eye of the Storm, Inside City Hall During Katrina,” which is being released this week to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the devastating storm.
In the book, Forman, who left the Nagin administration when her husband ran for mayor last year, details the problems, politics and bureaucracy that hindered efforts to save the city.
Forman, whose regard for the mayor is obvious, said that when she told him about the book’s release a few days ago, Nagin said he didn’t mind — as long as it was truthful.
On Saturday, Nagin’s spokeswoman, Ceeon D. Quiett, said neither the administration nor the mayor was contacted prior to publication to verify any facts or anecdotes.
“Therefore, we will not, after final publication, validate or invalidate the content of this publication,” Quiett said in an e-mail.
Nagin took office promising a new day in government, more transparency, and an end to the corruption that has long plagued politics in New Orleans.
But Forman says the business-executive-turned-mayor’s distrust of politicians, his outsider status and — perhaps most of all — his sense that he was on a mission from God hurt the city after Hurricane Katrina.
Nagin’s decision to initially run for mayor, forsaking his successful business career, surprised many, including his wife, Seletha, who told Forman that the couple felt they had no choice.
“Clarence is a GOOD, HONEST, CHRISTIAN man who didn’t have to take on the huge challenge but out of all the men in the city we sincerely believe that a higher being felt like he was the one to do it,” Seletha Nagin wrote to Forman in an e-mail.
When Katrina hit Aug. 29, 2005, Nagin was nearly finished with his first term — disillusioned with Police Chief Eddie Compass, who he later fired, and navigating a rocky relationship with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Forman writes.
Though government at all levels seemed to pull together before Katrina, just days into the disaster, communications and cooperation had broken down, Forman writes.
With water pouring into the city and the pumps needed to drain it out in danger of flooding, Nagin asked the state to use helicopters to drop sandbags into the breech of the 17th Street Canal levee. None was dropped, he learned that evening. Sewerage & Water Board Executive Director Marcia St. Martin said it was her understanding that Blanco diverted the helicopters to a church where a thousand people were stranded on the roof.
“She diverted the choppers for a minister?” a furious Nagin said. “A minister had more clout with the governor than we have? This is a bunch of bull.”
Marie Centanni, a spokeswoman for the governor, on Saturday called the story “absolutely untrue.”
“Someone else asked about that story, and the governor said she had never heard of it even,” Centanni said. Centanni said it sounds like a book about the rumors going around after the storm.
The evening of the storm, Marty Bahamonde, public affairs liaison for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told Nagin about extensive flooding.
“After the meeting, Bahamonde used the phone to call FEMA officials in Washington to report his findings. In later testimony to federal investigators, Bahamonde stated that he tried desperately for 16 hours to communicate the urgency of the situation to FEMA officials in Washington,” Forman wrote. “This testimony would contradict FEMA Director Michael Brown’s allegation that he wasn’t aware of the grave conditions in the city for days after the hurricane.”
With communications limited and misinformation rampant, Nagin met with military leaders and others.
FEMA’s Phil Parr said the agency was “here to head up command and control.”
A note was delivered saying President Bush was trying to reach Nagin and that Bush had “visited New Orleans,” though it was a fly-over.
“When we were alone, the mayor commented that it ‘must have been one serious telescope to observe the city from a 747.’ ”
One of the more bizarre incidents Forman describes is a call by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for a meeting with Nagin at the New Orleans Saints practice facility.
They arrived to find Chertoff talking to reporters and touring a field full of equipment the city badly needed. They followed Chertoff for half an hour, but he ignored them and they finally left, Forman said.
Forman said she wrote the book to provide a history of what happened and so that other cities might learn from New Orleans’ experience.
Don't depend on the fedgov? Use your school buses?
Nice and Quiett.
I would call it the nation’s most OVERRATED natural disaster.
The only disaster was the ineptitude of Nagin and Blanco.
They should have gone to Mississippi and taken some lessons.
yitbos
God’s plan apparently included not ordering an evacuation until more than 24 hours after Bush urged him to.
And a fine rebuilding job he’s doing...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/25/AR2007082501268.html
There simply isn’t enough chocolate for Nagin to turn that cesspool into a city again.....
I think they both should have gone to JAIL! ...but what do they do in NOLA? REELECT.
Bingo!
Sewerage & Water Board Executive Director Marcia St. Martin said it was her understanding that Blanco diverted the helicopters to a church where a thousand people were stranded on the roof.I call BS. Even for a big church, that's an awful lot of people to have on the roof. Had that been true, you can be sure that somebody would have reported on it.
The Times-Picayune had run a multi segment article regarding the inadequacy of the levees. The state and city should have protected their citizens and the citizens should have demanded it.
I have videotape of numerous residents of New Orleans being interviewed the night before Katrina hit and they were proudly proclaiming that they were not going anywhere. I believe that was a common sentiment among the people of New Orleans just before the hurricane actually hit.
Have you seen ANY replays of those pre-hurricane interviews with those idiots? I haven’t. Not even one. And other than a few comments about this by Rush and a few other conservative commentators, this part of the story has either been completely ignored or swept into the memory hole by the MSM.
It’s just not politically correct to hold anyone accountable for their own stupidity, is it? It’s even less politically correct to note, even in passing, the stupefying effects that government dependency - waiting for others to solve all of your problems and make life “fair” - has on those who are its victims. The Libs in media and government try to use this incident like they use all other such incidents - To prove is that they are indispensable, and if you don’t believe it just “look at Katrina”.
I know there were failures at many levels, but the consistent narrative that enters the public conversation is only about those factors which (supposedly) prove that the Libs are right and utterly indispensable. Imagine that.
Sounds like that federal “Road Home” money has found some sticky fingers. Two years and they still haven’t released funds.
Frankly, I want receipts!
What was Bush supposed to do? Actually it makes more sense to get a birds-eye view of the extent of flooding than it does to meet with Nagin for a photo-op.
So true and rarely reported. Best to blame President Bush.
In the first days after the levees broke, Ray Nagin bought a 500K house in a Dallas TX suburb.
I wouldn’t read this pack of lies if there were a gun to my head.
The program promised that homeowners who lacked adequate flood insurance could recoup as much as $150,000 of their flood losses.
Okay...these people live in the KNOWN PATH of hurricanes, in an area KNOWN to be below sea level, and...THEY DON'T HAVE FLOOD INSURANCE?????
And then, they are pissed that the government doesn't bail them out correctly, and are "offended" that they have to be photographed and fingerprinted to prevent fraud?
I understand everyone down there is not like this, but perhaps the worst legacy of Hurricane Katrina is that it spread some of these people into other "uninfested" parts of the country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.