preparations were worth all of the effort. louisiana governor kathleen blanco never recovered from mistakes made during katrina. appearing in press conference after press conference, east coast governors were determined to learn from the kathleen blanco model and not to fumble the response by underreacting. yeah, i saw some of these i ve been watching upstairs of people sitting on the beach. get off the beach and get out. you re done. it s 4:30, you ve maximized your tan. get off the beach. president obama returned from his martha s vineyard vacation a day early and toured fema. shadowed by those images of president bush who remained at the crawford ranch after katrina hit. and the president was intent to be hands on. you need to know that america will be with you in your hour of need. i continue to meet regularly with secretary napolitano and
we just need some help. and supplies. there was one voice in the crowd that caught our attention because it was heart-felt and innocent and it made sense. it came from a 9-year-old boy, charles evans. it is so pitiful. pitiful and shame that all these people out here, they have over 3,000 people out here with no home, no shelter. what are they going to do? what are we going to do? charles is one of those i wanted to find five years after katrina, and when i caught up with him, i found a much more subdued 14-year-old young man. what s happened in the last five years? where you been? well, when i first moved back to new orleans, i was staying with my grandmother, and last year my grandmother moved back to texas. she moved to houston, so now i m staying with my aunt. when katrina hit, what little
hurricane. who comes up with those names anyway? i reason? really? i know tons of people with that name. this gets a little more political. you know, if you go and check the social names after katrina hit, katrina was a popular name before that storm and now that name has fallen off the list. no one wants to name their kids katrina because you associate it with one of the worst natural disasters in the history. the name cycle every five years, there is a bill in the list and mine will come up once every five years. if they re strong enough the names get retired. there will never be another hurricane andrew. never been another hurricane katrina or camille. you ll never see that name again. it used to be they didn t have names. first they got names and was all males. it was probably a male that made that decision then they started going opposite. female, male, female, male and that s the current system.
when katrina hit, what little stability this young boy from a troubled home had ever known, was completely shattered. after living in the squaller of the convention center for a week, he and his grandmother, whoe raised him, eventually evacuated to texas. they settled in mess skeet and for a while it seemed as if the disaster my have given charles a new chance at life. his television plea got him attention. he appeared on stage at the emmy awards in los angeles. concerned americans sent money and supportive words and charles quickly adapted to his new home. things were much better for me. my environment was better. my school was better. my home was better. my community, my friends. but where charles lives isn t his own decision. in 2007, his family decided he
people expected i was among the thousands inside the superdome as katrina hit. i was there when it tore a hole in the roof and rain started pouring in. and it was there, on the night i will never forget, that i met albert brian sleeping. how many people did you bring with you? three grandchildren, three children, a sister and a wife. even though the hurricane weakened to a category 3 when it hit new orleans, the levees failed and 80% of city flooded. approximately 100,000 people were trapped in their flooded homes and attics, some of them for days. the scenes of human depravity at the convention center and the