Road to
Recovery; Interview With Representative
Bobby Jindal
Aired September
27, 2005 - 09:30 ET
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's check
the headlines. Carol Costello here with
that.
Good morning, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good
morning, Miles. Good morning to all of
you.
Now in the news, President Bush is now
touring the area hit by Hurricane Rita.
The president left Andrews Air Force
base in the last hour. He's expected to
get an aerial tour of the battered
Texas- Louisiana border. He also plans
to meet with storm victims. The trip
comes one day after the president urged
Americans to conserve fuel.
There is word the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, or FEMA, as its
known, is planning to reimburse churches
and other religious organizations for
their help in the wake of Hurricanes
Rita and Katrina. That's according to
"The Washington Post." Religious groups
that operated at the request of
officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama would be eligible. It would be
the first time tax dollars are paid to
faith-based groups.
Second-most wanted Al Qaeda member in
Iraq has been killed. A U.S. military
spokesman confirms the man now known as
Abu Azzam was shot in a gun battle in
Baghdad. It's believed he was
responsible for supplying money to
terror cells in Iraq.
The Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is
speaking out for the first time about
claims he had inside information before
selling off some stock. Frist sold his
holdings of Hospital Corporation of
America just one month before a weak
earnings report sparked a drop in its
price. Frist denies having any
information that was not public. The
Justice Department and Securities and
Exchange Commission are now
investigating.
And more debate expected to resume this
hour on John Roberts' nomination to be
chief justice of the Supreme Court. The
full Senate is expected to confirm
Roberts in a vote possibly as early as
tomorrow. Once Roberts is confirmed,
President Bush is expected to announce
his choice to replace retiring Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor.
So a lot of debate on Capitol Hill today
and in the days to come.
(WEATHER REPORT)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk
business, because of course business
needs to recover here in New Orleans
before really the city can get back on
its feet economically, of course.
We've seen today lots of efforts.
Business owners coming in to figure out
at least what they've lost. Adaora Udoji
has been covering this story, really
seeing firsthand people who are getting
a sense of, in some cases, how good it
is, and in some cases how bad it is.
Good morning.
ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good
morning.
Exactly. There are thousands and
thousands of business owner who are just
now getting a sense of the kind of
damage that their businesses have
suffered after both Katrina and Rita,
and many of them are learning that there
is just an enormous amount of work
that's going to have to take place in
order for them to recover.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UDOJI (voice-over): Scott Boswell had
not one but two big dreams of restaurant
grand openings. In the best of times not
an easy task here in the Big Easy, but
these are hardly the best of times.
SCOTT BOSWELL, RESTAURANT OWNER: Thanks
for supporting us, man, really
appreciate it.
UDOJI: Somehow in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina's chaos, he opened "Stanley's,"
his second restaurant in the French
Quarter. It was the only thing open for
blocks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Order up.
UDOJI: But banged up around the corner,
his first restaurant, the four year old
smash hit "Stellas" is a mess. He had
just started renovating before the
storm.
BOSWELL: It was devastating for me,
because, we don't have any money coming
in.
Progress. Progress.
UDOJI: He does have determination, so
did his mother, his sous chef and the
sous chef's girlfriend. The four of them
started things going. Five more workers
showed up four days later and now,
they're all working day and night
serving up simple meals.
PAT BOSWELL, SCOTTS'S MOM: He needed to
work. The people here needed food. And I
said, "we can do this." He said, "how?"
and I said, we just serve cheeseburgers,
cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers.
UDOJI: No classic New Orleans, but good
enough, especially since the generator
they're using almost ran out of diesel
fuel. Ingredients? They scour streets
far away from the city for open stores,
making daily trips, this one for $1,600
worth of food and drink. Boswell
delivery trucks are not allowed back in
the city. The sous chef on the grill, he
flew all the way home from culinary
training in France just for his friend.
JUSTIN GIROURARD, SOUS CHEF: I knew he
would want to open up and sell burgers,
so that was a good reason to come back.
UDOJI: Others want the same thing. West
of them in Jefferson Parish business
owners paste on poles and lawn signs
displays declaring they're open. Some
big chains like Lowe's not only got up
and running fast but they're selling the
goods to help everyone else get going
and Outback serving up steaks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joel, party of two.
UDOJI: Most of the area is roughly
70,000 businesses, though, are still
abandoned. A great many of them small
businesses like Boswell's that employ 20
people or so and they need everyone
which, right now, is a big problem.
BOSWELL: All my employees are scattered
all over the United States.
UDOJI: And getting them home is just the
first step.
BOSWELL: I have to figure out housing
for them, because some of their houses
have been destroyed. They don't have
places to live.
UDOJI: They don't have places to live or
furniture or clothes.
(on camera): Did you ever think that
that would be one of your main issue,
was getting your employees some clean
clothes?
BOSWELL: I told them, I said every day
here we do things I never dreamed I
would be doing ever in my life.
UDOJI (voice-over): As word of mouth
travels, more hungry customers are
showing up. That's their great reward in
the city they love.
P. BOSWELL: One lady came and said,
"Thank you. It's the first day we felt
normal in 23 days."
UDOJI: Like everything else here, it's
all upside down. If the general rule for
a restaurant is the customer doesn't
want to see how you cook then here in
the Big Easy, the secret to customer
satisfaction may just be show 'em how
you do it. That's what makes it so good.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UDOJI: Now, in the case of Scot Boswell,
he's in contact with all 25 of his
employees, expecting that many of them
will come back. But there are many,
many, many companies that have
absolutely no idea where their employees
are. And a good example of that is the
Royal Tenesta (ph), where we're staying.
I mean, they usually are running with
500 employees. Now they're doing it with
40. They don't where some of their other
employees are. They don't if they're
going to come back. So it just creates
an incredible amount of complication and
confusion as the economy starts to get
going again here. S. O'BRIEN: And if
those employees have now relocated to,
let's say, Houston or -- and other
states, and they've got kids that
they've now enrolled in schools, who
they are trying to get their lives
restarted, who knows how many are going
to come back and how many are not.
That was a nice piece. Did you get to
taste the burgers?
UDOJI: We did. They were good.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, cooked food. That sounds
good.
Let's go back to Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: I'd say. That's a lot better
than I was eating when I was in New
Orleans last time. Glad to see the
burgers.
S. O'BRIEN: I thought the same thing.
M. O'BRIEN: Glad to see the burgers,
burgers on the grill. When I come back,
that's where I'll be going, for sure.
Thank you, ladies, very much.
Former FEMA chief Mike Brown will
testify before Congress today about the
federal government's slow response to
Hurricane Katrina. No doubt he will be
asked why he is still on FEMA's payroll.
U.S. Congressman Bobby Jindal represents
parts of six Louisiana parishes. He
joins us now from Washington.
Good to have you back on the program,
Congressman Jindal.
REP. BOBBY JINDAL, (R), LOUISIANA: Good
morning. Thank you for having me.
M. O'BRIEN: Why in the world is Mike
Brown still being paid?
JINDAL: There are a lot of questions we
have down in Louisiana. I think my
constituents are going to be very
interested in moving forward. What can
be done to make sure we don't have this
same kind of response in the future, God
forbid, if there's another hurricane or
there's a manmade attack.
In the first days after the hurricane,
there was just not a coordination, there
was not a sense of urgency, at both the
federal and the state level. Federal and
state agencies, neither of them really
distinguished themselves on the first
days after this hurricane.
Now there were heroes -- the coast
Guard, the Wildlife and Fisheries
agents, local sheriff departments, local
fire departments, state police. These
first responders did an amazing job.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, but they did so in
spite of the system.
JINDAL: You're exactly right. My office
was very frustrated. So often the
paperwork and the bureaucracy got in the
way of people trying to save lives. And
so I think there should be some very
tough questions asked, not to point
blame, but to say, going forward, how do
we make sure this doesn't happen again?
How do we make sure that -- when the
military arrived we had a unified chain
of command.
M. O'BRIEN: I think perhaps a little
blame is OK, as long as it's
constructive. In this case, though, how
much blame rests on Mike Brown's desk?
JINDAL: Well, I think that, obviously,
FEMA didn't respond the way it should
have, and as the head of FEMA,
obviously, he should take some
responsibility for that, whoever heads
up the organization. You heard the
president say that, you heard the
governor say that. FEMA clearly didn't
do what it could have done in those
first days. We have horror stories of
people looking for paperwork when they
should have been focused on saving
lives.
But the blame is not only on his
shoulders. Again, there was enough of a
breakdown. There's plenty of blame to go
around. The federal and state agencies,
again, did not distinguish themselves.
At either level, there just wasn't the
coordination, wasn't the kind of sense
of urgency.
And I do want to say the military
improved things dramatically. When they
got there, we saw the situation improve
almost overnight.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, Nancy
Pelosi, who leads the Democrats on the
other side of the isle, is saying this
whole thing is kind of a sham, a photo
opportunity, and that, essentially, Mike
Brown has become a sacrificial lamb for
the Republicans to sort of be done with
this. Would you go along with that in
any way?
JINDAL: Well, I don't think we're
placing him alone to fix the problems
with FEMA and with the federal and state
response. I think that there's something
much more organizational. I think we
have to study why it was that
bureaucracy took over. We literally had
pilots that wanted to save people that
were told they couldn't get permission.
We literally had truckloads of water
that were turned away. We had a sheriff
that was told he couldn't get help
unless he e-mailed his request in.
Again, that happened repeatedly at the
state and the federal levels. It's fine
that we...
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, this is a sheriff who's
underwater with no power and they say,
oh, send us an e-mail. Got to love that.
JINDAL: Well, that's right. And at one
point, I had sheriff tell me, look, if
the government worked as efficiently as
a private sector, more people might be
alive today. One sheriff said, look, I
don't have electricity, my parish is
underwater. I requested help. The said
to send an e-mail. When I was there in
his office, I saw volunteers the first
days after the hurricane. I saw
volunteers from Michigan. They were told
Louisiana does not need help. You'll be
turned away at the state border, do not
come.
I'm grateful, my sheriff was grateful,
they broke the rules, they came anyway.
They're heroes in this, often said,
look, we'll ask for forgiveness later.
We don't have time to ask for
permission. What I want to know why
wasn't there that same sense of urgency
in the federal and state bureaucracy?
Again, it's great that one or two people
may have been replaced, but that's not
going to solve this. We need to look
organizationally at how can we change
the culture of those agencies?
M. O'BRIEN: Well, it's changing the
culture, but it's also changing some
rules. One of the things that the
president would like to do is federalize
this in a way that sort of has, you
know, creates, I guess, a federal
militarized go-team, if you will. You
think that's a good idea?
JINDAL: I think in normal disasters, we
have to have local and state first
responders on the ground, making the
decisions. When we have catastrophic
disasters, either manmade or natural, if
we -- if God forbid, we had a weapons of
mass destruction, a nuclear device,
absolutely. You can manage a scenario
where the local responders are going to
be overwhelmed, the decision-makers may
be incapacitated.
I think it is smart to have some kind of
federal team, whether it's led by the
military, led by a beefed up, a
restructured FEMA or however the best
way is to deliver that. Clearly in this
case after Katrina, the military's
presence, active and reserve -- the
National Guard, as well as the active
military -- did an amazing job. They're
part of the resources, the chain of
command. That worked tremendously well.
M. O'BRIEN: But of course, as you just
pointed out, if there were federal
government failings to federalize the
response the next time, maybe that isn't
the solution.
JINDAL: Well, no, that's right. And
that's why I don't want to see a federal
response in every circumstance. What I'm
saying is if there's an overwhelming
catastrophe, a national tragedy where
maybe your local decision-makers are cut
off by communications, maybe they
themselves are victims, maybe your first
responders don't have the ability to
organize and respond, then we need to be
ready. And again, the tragedy is, after
9/11, we've had four years, billions of
dollars. We should have been better
prepared this time...
M. O'BRIEN: You bet.
JINDAL: ... at the state and federal
level.
M. O'BRIEN: You bet. We sure should
have. What would be the one question,
top question you'd ask him today?
JINDAL: Well, I -- the top question is
going forward in his mind what could he
done to create a sense of urgency in the
organization that he until recently ran.
What can be done to replace the
bureaucracy and the paperwork with a
culture that says let's save lives,
let's get people out of harm's way and
then figure out all the paperwork later.
M. O'BRIEN: Congressman Bobby Jindal,
thanks for being back with us. Always a
pleasure. JINDAL: Thank you.
M. O'BRIEN: Soledad?
S. O'BRIEN: All right, Miles, thanks.
As you look at some of the damage along
Magazine Street, we all know that,
clearly, the business districts in New
Orleans have taken a big financial hit,
big financial toll. But what about the
emotional toll. How will people here
recover psychologically? We'll talk
about that ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back everybody. As
we talk this morning from Magazine
Street about what's happening in the
business recovery, we also have to talk
about psychological recovery, because
that road, in many respects, might
actually be a lot tougher.
Jennifer Cheavens is a psychologist.
She's at Duke Medical Center. You've
really been here, though, helping out.
JENNIFER CHEAVENS, RED CROSS VOLUNTEER:
I have.
S. O'BRIEN: What's your number one
concern, now that you've been on the
ground for several weeks?
CHEAVENS: Right. Well, the number one
concern is the length of time that this
is going to go on for people, and the
psychological symptoms that are going to
start to come for people.
S. O'BRIEN: What are you seeing now?
CHEAVENS: What we're seeing now actually
is a great blend of kind of devastation
and despair, but with a lot of
resiliency and strength. People are
committed, determined. The vast majority
are really showing signs of strength and
resiliency.
S. O'BRIEN: It seems, though, sometimes
that strength and resiliency is
beginning to crack. There's been a woman
who -- we've really been following her
path for a long time now. Her name is
Gwendolyn Garley.
CHEAVENS: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: And the other day,
yesterday, we interviewed her.
CHEAVENS: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: And after being so upbeat
and so tough and a survivor, she's
really starting to crack. I want to play
a little bit of what she told us
yesterday.
CHEAVENS: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GWENDOLYN GARLEY,
EVACUEE OF KATRINA AND RITA: I guess I
crashed. I've been on -- in survivor
mode. And today -- yesterday I just felt
-- I felt weak. I mean, we was faced
with no place to go. We didn't know
where to go yesterday. We're out of
cash.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
S. O'BRIEN: You know, I guess what
strikes me about Gwendolyn's story --
and she's been incredibly resilient. I
mean, she plucked off her roof, she went
to a shelter, went to a another shelter,
spent time at the Houston Astrodome,
then went to Texas, had to be evacuated
out of Texas. I mean, she's been
everywhere and her story is not
atypical.
CHEAVENS: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: What do you -- how do you
counsel someone like that?
CHEAVENS: Right. Well, let me start by
saying that I've been in the Mississippi
Gulfport area, and so many of the people
that I've been seeing have been back in
their homes, which is a little bit of a
different process than what you're
talking about here.
But I think the first thing for people
to remember is that these are really
normal emotional responses to this very
bizarre natural phenomenon. And it's
going to last for a while. And after
time goes on, if these symptoms persist,
to get checked out by mental health
professionals.
One of the things that the Red Cross
volunteers are doing is carrying with
them local resources for folks to go in,
see, is this kind of a normal reaction
to what's going on , or is this
something more pathological that would
need a treatment?
S. O'BRIEN: We've seen people getting an
opportunity to go back to their
businesses along this street or even go
back to their home, as we've seen in
certain parishes. Does that help? I
mean, sometimes it's so bad, but is
there an upside?
CHEAVENS: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: There is?
CHEAVENS: Yes, I think there is. What
happens psychologically for folks is
that sometimes knowing, even when the
knowing is terrible and unbearable, is
better than not knowing at all. It's
like when you have a puzzle, it's hard
to walk away with three pieces not in
it, right? And so going back and seeing
what work lies ahead for you can really
bring a sense of -- a boost to that
resiliency you were talking about.
S. O'BRIEN: What about the children who
have really gone through -- I mean,
imagine having to float across sometimes
in a little plastic tub with your
parents, and sometimes being displaced
from your parents for a long period of
time.
CHEAVENS: Right.
S. O'BRIEN: What are you doing for them?
CHEAVENS: What we're doing for them is
when we're going out into communities,
where we're going and meeting with
children, we're taking, you know,
stuffed animals, coloring books,
stickers, things like that, to get them
talking and then listening to their
stories in their words, and not trying
to make them be adults through this, but
helping them process at the level that
they're at. And then, again, making
referrals to local mental health
providers for long-term care.
S. O'BRIEN: How long is long-term care?
I mean, is there -- do people ever get
over this?
CHEAVENS: I guess it depends on what you
mean by get over. You know, people will
build their lives. And the people that
will be hardest hit psychologically are
the folks who were having some
psychological difficulties before this
storm hit. Those are the -- you know,
people who were depressed, substance
abusing. Most vulnerable will be the
people who will need most from us.
S. O'BRIEN: Well, it is a tough story,
and a long road ahead, not just for
them, but also, I think, folks like
yourself...
CHEAVENS: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: You know, who have been
really helping out. Jennifer Cheavens is
a psychologist at the Duke University
Medical Center.
CHEAVENS: That's right.
S. O'BRIEN: Helping out here. Nice to
see you. Appreciate it.
CHEAVENS: Great to see you. Thank you.
S. O'BRIEN: Miles, back to you.
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad.
Coming up on "CNN LIVE TODAY" is a lot
of things. And Daryn is here to fill us
in on that.
Hello, Daryn Kagan.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, yes. Good
morning to you, Miles.
At the top of the hour, boy, are there a
lot of questions. What went wrong in the
days following Hurricane Katrina? The
former head of FEMA, Michael Brown,
telling his side of the story this
morning on Capitol Hill. His testimony
live right here on CNN. It is only a few
minutes away. You are going to see that
live.
And a tale of two city in Louisiana, one
flooded, the other dry. How did the dry
city avoid Hurricane Rita's wrath? we'll
explain in a little bit on "CNN LIVE
TODAY." For now, back to you. M.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much,
Daryn.
Still to come on the program, a troubled
airline comes out of bankruptcy by
merging with another carrier. Andy's
"Minding Your Business" with that,
coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: U.S. Airways and America
West have teamed up. It's like a couple
of ailing patients getting together, and
the end result is a more healthy
patient. I don't know how that works.
But Andy Serwer is here to explain the
logic.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: We're
going to explain all.
Let's talk about the markets first of
all, Miles, go down to Wall Street,
check out that Big Board. The Dow Jones
Industrials up 25 points this morning.
We continue to recover, at least on Wall
Street, from the devastation of
Hurricane Rita. The price of oil
stabilizing, and we're just going to be
watching energy prices going forward
from here. Everyone on Wall Street
certainly is.
U.S. Airways emerging from bankruptcy
today. Have you heard this story before?
You have, because this is the second
time they've come out of chapter 11.
This time newly emerged with America
West Airlines. The parent company, and
the entire company, in fact, will be
called U.S. Airways. We're going to be
phasing out the America West planes, the
logos, you can see there, just as soon
as they can paint them. Actually it's a
process, Miles, that's going to take up
to two years to change all the signage.
However, in Tempe, Arizona, where
America West has been headquartered,
they've already taken out the America
West sign.
America West actually had been a pretty
healthy concern, U.S. Air has had its
problem. So it will be interesting to
see how these two fit together. 40,000
employees, we still have a bunch of
other airlines in Chapter 11. United,
Delta and Northwest, of course, so this
industry continues to be in turmoil.
M. O'BRIEN: So the new airline will be
U.S. Airways?
SERWER: That's correct.
O'BRIEN: And does it have a new...
SERWER: It has a new ticker symbol,
thank you, LCC, which stands for
low-cost carrier. Isn't that creative?
M. O'BRIEN: Why did they do that?
SERWER: It's very creative.
M. O'BRIEN: Creative, but would be hard
to find.
SERWER: Yes, hard to sort of associate
is what you're saying? M. O'BRIEN: Yes,
an association issue, yes.
SERWER: Indeed.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very
much, Andy. See you tomorrow.
SERWER: You're welcome.
M. O'BRIEN: Back with more in a moment.
Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Hey, Miles, I don't know if
you can hear the hum, maybe it's a roar
of the generator behind me. You hear
that a lot. Anybody's who has sort of
taken responsibility for their own power
has a big old generator -- that big
green thing there -- parked in front of
their building. Supermarkets still not
back here on Magazine Street.
Also, in spite of all the good news on
the street, in that it wasn't really
very badly damaged in the hurricane, you
know, they've still got a long way to
go. You've got the plywood that's got to
come off, and of course you have to have
the inspections. You've got to get the
power back as well, so a pretty long
road ahead before the customers come
back to the world famous Magazine Street
-- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN; Yes, you know, it's
interesting. The picture there isn't
pretty. And then every now and then you
see a glimmer, like these business owner
who are determined to get back to work,
the restaurant cooking the
cheeseburgers. It's kind of hard. I walk
away not sure where the city is headed.
How about you?
S. O'BRIEN: You know, I got to tell you,
when I was here several weeks ago I
thought it was really bad, and I think
that there is definitely a sense of
people who are committed to rebuilding,
people who will bring the city back
around anyway possible. It's not going
to be next week. It's not going to be
next month. But I've been invited for
Mardi Gras by about 40 people, and I
expect to be here -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: There will be a Mardi Gras
this year, I'm told, and I'm sure that
will happen. All right, Soledad, let's
all go. We'll do the show from there.
Why not? That sure beats working. The
crew wants to go. Everybody here wants
to go.
All right, everybody is shaking their
head, yes, Mardi Gras, yes.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/27/ltm.01.html
