Katrina Response Sparks Outrage

Scott Pelley Interviews Angry New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

(CBS) 
We got to Charity Hospital as the last were loaded. Like the mayor said here’s a story. Hundreds of patients trapped for days without power. Dr. Peter Deblieux helps run the emergency room.

"In the space of an hour and a half we moved our entire emergency department up one full flight of stairs," Deblieux says. "In an hour and a half we had over 50 critically ill patients moved up stairwells because their elevators were shot, gone, no electricity no power nothing to do it by.

"So we’re using flashlights and jerryrigged ventilators everything else to ventilate, breathe for people and have the critical care," he says.

Even so Dr. Ben Deboisblanc told us patients died who might have been saved.

Deboisblanc recalls a "little old lady who sat in our ICU for three days, had a breathing problem, was on a mechanical ventilator. Her husband sat with her 24 hours a day and because the electricity was out while she would sleep he would fan her.

"He would just to keep her cool," Deboisblanc says. "We got her over to the heliport to the top of the parking garage and her vital signs began to deteriorate and we knew she was going to die."

Deboisblanc adds, "She died on the rooftop waiting for a helicopter. I haven’t spoken to her husband. I don’t even know where she is. I don’t even know if he knows she’s dead."

There is joy in rescue, but remember, most of these people have no place to go. Prisoners are now refugees.

One face tells it all: relief, regret, a last look at her job for who knows how long.

The final evacuation of the stranded is in progress. A huge military rescue thunders through the city under the command of Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, a man the mayor calls John Wayne.

Pelley asks Honore if he understands the frustration Americans felt all across the country when they were watching people on their roofs, people at the convention center and at the Superdome for days. And people are saying, "Where, where's the Army? Where's the National Guard? Why is this taking so long?"

"It took time to get here," Honore admits. "And who on that first day knew the levee was gonna break? We are blessed in a way that those people made it to the dome."

Honore continues, saying, "It was a blessing. What would've been the opposite of the storm? They all would've drown. We woulda lost a hell of a lot more people. A hell of a lot more people would've perished."

With bodies floating in the water people who are urging a faster response, Honore offers this ultimatum: "Well, right now I could either have these troops go do this or pick up the livin'. What would you do?"

We stopped on Jennette Street to find the Army picking up the living one at a time. The neighbors told us the Army wanted all the sick and injured brought to this intersection. So here they were under the hurricane of a Blackhawk. It was incredibly efficient, but they could be forgiven if they thought this might be the thing that would finally do them in.

As people flew off Jennette Street, across town sandbags were falling and disappearing into one of three breaches that betrayed New Orleans to the sea. We learned something that surprised us here. Despite what you’ve been hearing, not one of New Orleans’ levees failed. All of the massive earthen levees survived. The failure was in flood walls like this one on the 17th Street canal. The flood walls are miles long, but only two feet thick.

Al Naomi is the man who manages them for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was probably the first to understand what was about to happen to New Orleans.

"Flood walls are unforgiving. They’re either there or they’re not," Naomi says.

The walls were designed in 1965 to withstand a Category 3 storm. Category 4 Katrina pushed her surge over the top.

"It just was overtopped and the water started pouring over the support for the flood wall, failed and it just pushed out and toppled over and that was it," Naomi explains.

Naomi was at a loss when asked how this engineering disaster could have been prevented.

"You see there was not sufficient money or time to do anything about this," Naomi says. "If someone had said, 'O.K. here is a billion dollars, stop this failure from happening for a Category 4,' it couldn’t have been done in time. I’d of had to start 20 years ago to where I feel today I would’ve been safe from a Category 4 storm like Katrina.

"Sure it should have been done 20 years ago but what can we do about that? You have to recognize before we had Category 3 protection we didn’t have anything."

On Friday President Bush came to see for himself and ran into Hurricane Nagin. The president offered the mayor the first water he was happy to see in five days - a shower aboard Air Force One.

Pelley asks Nagin if he unloaded the anger he expressed on the radio program toward Mr. Bush.

"No, I didn't, but he was well aware of it," Nagin says. "And I pulled him on aside with the governor. I said, 'Look. That was uncharacteristic for me. But consider being in my shoes. What would you have done? And if I said anything disrespectable, disrespectful to the office of the president or the governor, I apologize. But tell me, what we gonna do now.'"

Nagin adds, "The president basically said, 'Mr. Mayor, I know we could've done a better job, and I, we're gonna fix it.'"

Nagins says Mr. Bush asked him to be honest. "He said to me, he said, "Look. I think I've been hearing a lotta stuff that's, may not be true. I wanna hear from you. Tell me the truth, and I will help you.'

"And I looked in his eyes, and he meant it," Nagin says of Mr. Bush. "And when he meant it, I told him the truth."

The truth about New Orleans is incredibly that the worst is yet to come. Once the flood walls are plugged, the city’s network of pumping stations will start to drain the city. That will take weeks. Before they can even begin to make the city livable, they will have to deal with the dead.

Honore says, "Every house that's flooded right now we have to go in and see if there's anybody in it and God forbid take those who didn't make it. Every building, every room."

"I think we're gonna find a lotta people," Honore adds.

Asked what he thought the casualty rate would be, Nagin was far from optimistic.

"Well, let, let me put it to you this way. We think we evacuated 80 percent of the people in the city as it relates to this particular event," Nagin says.

"Do the math. That's 100,000 left. We've evacuated 35,000 people so far. Let's say there's another 15,000. That's 50,000 people unaccounted for.

"What, which number you wanna pick, 5 percent? Ten percent? Fifteen percent? I don't know, but I think it's gonna be significant."