Officials On The Hot Seat

FEMA Head, Louisiana Governor Grilled Over Katrina Response

(CBS)  "Why is that, Mike?" Storm said. "I know that you had identified this as a major problem, that New Orleans had potential for great disaster, but what is it that you did not anticipate?"

"The total lack of communication. The inability to hear and have good intelligence on the ground about what was occurring there," Brown said. "We had to actually take teams out yesterday because of the dangerous situation they were in. That's very frustrating not only to me but those teams. Those medical teams want to help save lives and the thugs and the others that are causing the problem are actually making it more difficult. So we had to pull them out for a while. They want to go back in. They're going back in."

Brown said President Bush has spoken with him every day since Katrina hit.

"That's why I now have complete cooperation from the military," Brown said. "I have everything I need to ramp this up and do what we have to do to secure New Orleans, to take this urban area and make certain it's secure, get people out of here, and start the recovery process."

Asked whether combat troops and more National Guard troops should have been brought in earlier, Brown said, "Well, the state had their National Guard troops here. The state was overwhelmed because of the vast size of this. That's why, in cooperation with the state, when they made that request and said they needed that additional help, we got it to them."

"What about these poor people that couldn't get out of the city," Storm said. "Was there any way to evacuate more of these people before the storm hit? They knew this storm was coming."

"That's something we need to look at because," Brown said, "when you have 100,000 folks that either can't get out, they don't have the transportation, we need to work with the cities to make certain there's a way to get those people out or at least put them in areas that can be safe."

Storm ask what he says to Americans who can't believe this is happening here and want to know why we can't take care of our own people.

"We can take care of our own people," Brown said, "and we're going to do that. I understand their frustration. I understand these people are suffering, and I'm telling you we're doing absolutely everything we can to make sure we take care of them."

Asked the same question by Harry Smith, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said, "When your whole system, your whole civilized system goes down, this is pretty much what you get left with. We had no communications, no running water, no electricity, no real help. We were inundated with water. We were locked down from every angle of access into the city. Ramping up has just been a monstrous task.

"I'm grateful for the help we're getting. I think things are finally getting to the point where we're seeing some difference, but every minute counts. That's the heartbreaking side of it. … It has just been horrific. Everybody is doing everything they humanly could do with the capacity at hand."

"What we keep hearing over and over again," Smith said, "especially from people around New Orleans, is that the response to this disaster has not been adequate. How do you respond to that?"

"Harry, I agree, it has not been adequate," Babineaux Blanco said. "But we are working every day. Now, as we ramp up, I think people are going to feel the difference. The magnitude was overwhelming. We don't get into the blame game. We just say we work with what we've got every day."

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Separately, Babineaux Blanco announced a fund for long-term relief for Katrina victims. The fund can be reached by clicking here.

To contribute directly, send contributions to:

Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, Inc.
c/o Division of Administration
1201 North Third Street, Suite 7-240
P.O. Box 94095
Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9095

Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]