A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
This week marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina forged a path of destruction along the Gulf Coast.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The storm's sustained winds reached 175 miles per hour, making it a Category 5 hurricane.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The famous Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. That's where there was a big breach in the levee.
RUSSEL HONORE: I don't think the storm was discriminating in any way.
MARTÍNEZ: That last voice was then-Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore. He became well-known in 2005 when he led the military response to Hurricane Katrina and has become a go-to crisis leader for the last 20 years. Our co-host Michel Martin spoke with the now-retired General Honore from his home in Baton Rouge.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: You got there two days after the storm made landfall in Louisiana. That was actually the second landfall. What stands out to you just when you first arrived in New Orleans?
HONORE: Well, I was the - flying in on the helicopter on Wednesday morning and then landed next to the Superdome. That was a sight to behold. Imagine 15,000 or so people standing outside the Superdome, then getting off that helicopter and making eye contact with people, and that look of desperation in their eyes to get out of there. And it broke my heart when I saw a lady with a toddler in a shopping basket, pushing that baby in the water. The water was up to the baby's chest, and she was trying to get into the Superdome to save her baby and herself. And I said, we got to get these people out of here. I walked in and saw the mayor, and he said, my priority is evacuation.
MARTIN: Had you ever seen anything like this?
HONORE: Nothing of this magnitude. Over 240,000 homes flooded in and around New Orleans.
MARTIN: How did you decide what to do first?
HONORE: Well, I listened to the priority of the mayor. And I left the mayor and went to see the governor, Blanco. Her priority was evacuation, provide food and water for people. This obviously was a logistics issue. The talking point on - most of the major media was covering alleged looting. It led the governor to a point to say, hey, the priority is to prevent the looting, where in essence, people went into the survival mode. But somehow it got portrayed in the national media as looting.
MARTIN: But isn't it also true that there were law enforcement agencies in the area who were also treating people like they were looting?
HONORE: Yeah. That was the assumption, in my observation, that - this prenotion that the poor is going to loot. It's a sad commentary, but it's built into our culture. And in some cases, adjacent parishes and municipalities blocked people from coming in because they said, well, these people are going to come loot our stuff. And, you know, 80% of the area did evacuate. And it was this big fear that the people who were left behind were going to go loot people's stuff, whereas in essence, what they were doing was going in to try to get food and water.
MARTIN: The memory that a lot of people have is that there were too many people in leadership positions that were seen as incompetent. In hindsight, is that fair?
HONORE: We have to take into account, when you have a major disaster, first of all, all your first responders are survivors. The storm overmatched the infrastructure. And it overmatched the ability for them to deal with it 'cause in a real crisis, the local leaders lose control because it's beyond their ability to immediately respond to. That's why we got these levels of government and federal organizations that need to be prepared to go in and help people.
MARTIN: Is there something that you think emergency response leaders have learned from Katrina or should have learned?
HONORE: Yeah, that you can't skip the preparedness phase. In the preparedness phase, if you're going to put people in a shelter, they have prepositioned food and water. But what changed their entire quick response to create those shelters was the fact, when the levees broke, people couldn't leave. And they were run out of their homes, and they were on the top of the interstate. And some of them were still on their roofs days later. And the people on the ground - there were people working their you-know-what off, trying to save lives.
MARTIN: Look, I know in the past when we've talked, you've emphasized that people also need to take care of themselves. They need to have a plan. They need to be able to get ahold of their important documents, for example. Do you think that people have taken that in?
HONORE: Let me tell you, Michel, we spend more time here getting ready for football season than we do hurricane season (laughter). Now, obviously, that 80% that evacuated - they may have - not have started off with a plan. But the alert system, I can't overemphasize, that came from the National Weather Service was significant in getting people to evacuate. And the 80% that evacuate, I will tell you, could evacuate. That 20% that didn't evacuate - most of those were poor people that - many of them didn't have cars, and the majority of them didn't have the means, Michel. Or, in the case of those that we took out of their homes, they didn't have the information or the means. And remember, most of them were elderly, disabled and poor, and most of them were by themselves. And when you're elderly, you don't want to leave your home.
MARTIN: Yeah.
HONORE: They want to stay 'cause they know where their medicine is. Many of them lived alone, as I said, and they'd got left out of the information system. And in some cases, the system failed them. The city did send people to pick them up, but at that time, you couldn't take a animal in a ambulance. And the elderly people said, well, I'm not leaving if I can't take my dog with me. We changed the law after that - a federal law that says if you're doing an evacuation, you have to have a shelter in place for the animals.
MARTIN: Wow.
HONORE: And that has been fixed.
MARTIN: If there's a lasting legacy of Katrina, what do you think the lasting legacy is?
HONORE: It's a reminder that on any given day, Mother Nature can break anything built by man. And when we get proper warning, we need to evacuate, and we need to be prepared to evacuate.
MARTIN: That is retired Lieutenant General Russel Honore. He coordinated the country's military response to Hurricane Katrina as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. General, thank you so much for talking with us once again.
HONORE: Thank you, Michel, and be prepared to evacuate. I know you live in D.C. Be prepared to evacuate, 'cause you can flood up there, too.
MARTIN: OK.
HONORE: Get your checklist together and get ready.
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