If you could sum up the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in one word, “chaos” would be quite appropriate. With most of New Orleans underwater, people were left stranded for days, with no indication of when help would arrive. Needing a strong federal response, they designated Lieutenant General Russel Honoré as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, and he immediately took charge of the rescue effort. General Honoré says he does not blame local officials for the initial response.
“The mayor himself, his house was underwater. Most of the police’s houses were underwater, and their vehicles had been flooded. So that’s what happened in a real disaster,” Honoré said.
Honoré said he would have liked to have been in New Orleans earlier, but the city had flooded so badly that he and other members of the National Guard had no way of getting into the city – and, in effect, they had no way of getting people out.
“It closed the river, it closed the roads, it took down the comms, and it took out the airport. It was going to take a minute to get to logistics lined up and find out how we could get buses in there to bus people out,” Honoré explained.
One of the lasting images of Honoré during the immediate aftermath of Katrina is of him shouting to police officers, “weapons down, dammit!” Honoré says those officers were acting on orders from Governor Kathleen Blanco to shoot anyone they found looting. Honoré said he told Blanco to rescind that order.
“I didn’t hear that directly, but my staff heard it. They called me and said, ‘The governor just told people to shoot looters on sight.’ I said, ‘We can’t do that,’” Honoré recalled.
A three-star general, Honoré retired from the Army in 2008 and continues to serve as a consultant on disaster preparedness.
