or send us a tweet. now, former mayor of new orleans counts the days hurricane katrina and the aftermath. presenting "katrina's secrets" in atlanta. [applause] >> thank you, thank you so much. well, good afternoon, everyone. it's my pleasure.

i am excited about being in hotlanta as you guys called it. i want to thank you for the warm introduction and thank a cappella books and the presidential library for inviting me to speak to you, but first, you know, i'm a former mayor, so i got to do this. let me bring greetings from one of america's most interesting creative and resilient city, new orleans. you know, we are the birthplace of jazz, home of louis armstrong, jackson -- oh, forgetting my people now -- [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> no, that's domino who i'm drawing a blank on. you name it, and we have it. they say music and culture oozes up from the pavements of new orleans. for you hip hop fans, i'm not

leaving you out. [laughter] we're also the home of cash money records and grahmmy award winning lil' wayne. we have it all in new orleans, and i'm sure most of you have been there or have heard about us, and it's a wonderful, wonderful city, and i'm going to spend about the next 20-30 minutes or so to tell you a little bit about an incredible story that most of you have probably followed, but you may -- there may be things you were not aware of that i hope to share. now, the first question i get is it's almost six years after, ray, why are you writing the book? well, to be honest with you when i got out of office in may of 2010, i was not looking to write a book. i just wanted to put together what i was calling my own private library of my eight years in office, but, you know, when i got to the katrina section, i said, oh my gosh, this is some kind of story, and

what got me also is that if you were to google hurricane katrina, you get as many as 56 million search results at the peak, but what i was starting to understand a little bit better 1 is that the entire story had not been captured. as a matter of fact, there's some things that have been reported that just don't quite get what actually happened, so i decided to write this book because this is much bigger than new orleans. there's a very constructive story about resilience, about tragedy, about love and hate -- you name it, and it's every kind of emotion in there. now, you mentioned earlier that i talked to some publishers, and i did. i talked to some agents, and i did. at the end of the day, they said turn the script over to us, guess what? we have the time say on how the book ends up. well, you know me, i don't like that kind of stuff. [laughter] i like to tell my own stories, so i decided to self-publish,

and one thing led to another, and i found amazon and create space, and, you know, we put this partnership together, and it's been a really good experience. any of you would-be authors out there thinking about it, charles kroger, lord have mercy on him, way back, but anyway, i encourage you if you're thinking about it, but it's a lot of work. it took me over a year to put this project together. there's writes and rewrites as you know, but i'm going to keep going. this story that i put together basically is taking the reader on a front row seat journey into one of america's, i think it's been classified as the worst natural and manmade disaster ever in the history of the united states. i interacted with everyone, george w. bush, governor

kathleen, all the military leaders, the john wayne dude as i coined him, and i ended up being the last leader standing which is not necessarily the best thing after the disaster. if you study cease and cease and disasters, most leaders normally run out of office, out of town, or are killed. low and behold, i decided to run for reelection and was blessed enough to win. i've been enduring quite a bit of torture to say the least, but it's all good. i would do it again because new orleans was just that important. ..

i went on radio and did a little testing. god is still working on me so you are all going to have to excuse me. i'm not going to cuss tonight, trust me. no, i am not. but i made quite a splash and it was at a critical time when things were almost at their worst, and those words, those sound bites will probably live forever and people will always associate i think me with shared frustration because we just couldn't believe that this was happening in the united states. the richest -- one of the richest countries if not the richest country in the world. we saw all sorts of stuff, devastation, people suffering on

their roots in the superdome and the convention center. this storm was unbelievable and the aftermath was just as incredible. it literally, but really brought the city to its knees. now we all were overwhelmed. i will be the first one to tell you, every level of government was overwhelmed and you find that in major disasters that are historic. i was overwhelmed. i made some mistakes. everybody up the food chain that was in leadership absolutely made mistakes during this particular disaster, but think about this. this hurricane, katrina, was the most bissette that storm we had ever seen. it wasn't until 20 -- made landfall that she really revealed where she was going. now think about atlanta. iowa's put this in perspective for people when i'm in different cities. how would you evacuate atlanta? in less than 24 hours?

think about your traffic right now. but, can you imagine everybody trying to get out at the same time? there was a storm, hurricane gustav, that happened a couple of years later in texas and they watched ascend they saw the interstates around and everything is pointing away from the city and they tried it and guess what? it did not work. they didn't really understand how sophisticated we had gotten in our practices and we would face each particular area. it takes 72 hours for us to totally evacuate an entire metropolitan area in new orleans so we had less than 24 hours to get people out. hurricane katrina hit and it was devastating. 1800 people died unfortunately and over 100 billion with a b

build -- dollars in damages. she disrupted thousands and thousands of lives across the gulf coast. but let me make a little note that most people don't understand about what we did because we got a lot of criticism about our evacuation plans. we got about 95 to 96% of all the citizens in the metropolitan area out of harm's way before katrina hit. most people think there was a huge number of people left. something like 4% of the people were left. unfortunately that 4% didn't leave for one reason or another, didn't leave because of money or whatever and they were stranded and that is where the disaster unfolded. keep in mind, new orleans is a city that is built like a bowl. the closer you all to the river or the lake the higher the ground. as time went on the ground subsided in the middle of a city so it is like a bowl. so when the levees reached and broke and they are federally

designed and constructed and now maintained levees. they reached -- breached catastrophically so the water started rushing into the city and it got as high as 20 feet and over rooftops if you can imagine that. as a matter fact, 80% of the city flooded. 80%, almost 150 square miles of our city flooded. can you imagine that? can you imagine that happening here? i hope it never happens but you never know. you never know what is happening with global warming. we were stuck at that point. for some reason, we were quarantined. nobody was coming in and nobody was coming out. we had always planned for a disaster if the big one never hit. we always planned that. we were hunkered down for three days in the calvary would come. the calvary being the feds and

the state. they would come shirley and rescue us after three days because you can get across a tsunami all the way across the world. surely they could get to us but guess what? we were quarantined for seven days of hell and high water. in addition to that, some of our neighbors started -- you all have counties here, right? we have perishes. so one parish decided to blockade a major road that would lead from the lower ninth ward into chalmette and ended up blocking the road thinking they didn't want no orleanians to go looting or whatever you would think, whatever they thought people would do. so they blocked it and when the water came in, that blockage hurt them in the long run because it kept the water in their area as well as ours. so it backfired on them. another one, jefferson parish. great partners. we shared pumping stations to

pump our city out in bare parish out. they ended up blocking a major canal that put all the pressure on the new orleans side that caused the 17th street canal, the famous 17th street canal, to also breached and then to add insult to injury, they ended up taking a temporary pumping station, set it up in the night, draped a hose -- it wasn't a hose but they draped it over and started pumping water out of their parish into a breached canal which further flooded new orleans. then the big thing. the people at the convention center got so frustrated because that was the one we opened up at the last minute. so they had very little food and the superdome didn't have anything. so the people decided to march.

they found a route and decided to march across the ridge on a federal highway and they wanted to march to a better area to try to get some food and water. well the gretna officials over there met them at the foot of the bridge with police dogs and machine guns, fired over the head and force them to turn around. now this is america i'm talking about. i'm not talking about a third world country. in disasters, all sorts of things happen and people either go super helpful or they protect their interests like you couldn't believe. as i stated earlier, all levels of government were basically overwhelmed and piloting and partially matter during this disaster. we had a republican president and a democratic governor and they were tusseling. they were tusseling over who would control the resources coming into the area and more importantly who would control the billions and billions of

dollars that would come in later to rebuild our area. the thing that i found amazing, hadn't taken a shower in about five days so i was not in a position to greet the president or the governor so they let me take a shower on air force one. unbelievable plain. i called it the ultimate people mobile. [laughter] you have not lived until you have been on air force one. so i took a shower and when i came out of the shower we had this big meeting and what i realized is that the president and the governor were tusseling over control and the governor was using a little-known federal law. i didn't even know the thing still existed. it is called a posse comitatus act. anybody ever hear of that? [inaudible] [laughter] i don't watch that much television.

i learned something. apposite, taught us is a little known at that was passed under reconstruction. the south controlled congress and controlled the laws of a pass this law basically designed to impede or slow down the federal government from enforcing the end of slavery. this thing is still on the books. and it basically says that the president cannot come into a particular state or community without being invited in by a governor. for law-enforcement purposes. now, she never invited him and she was a democrat and she said this is my moment. the president said if you want me and we are not coming so we had a posse comitatus standoff for seven days in the pressure got so great on the president that he ended up having to come in anyway and she never gave him her approval for him to come in. posse comitatus is something that a lot of people really

don't know and understand, and i covered that in the book. i take you behind the scenes on all that went on after katrina so you can kind of get a feel for what a mayor would go through in a catastrophic event like that. then i share with you some secrets. why start the book off by explaining to to you how new orleans operates, which to me as fascinating. i was the mayor of the city for eight years and until i became mayor i really never understood the law. i was born and raised in it but you have this mardi gras thing that everybody is kind of paying attention to. there is all sorts of stuff going on. they are all tied into the business relationship they keep new orleans and a certain economic condition. this is the city of hats and have-nots. you all know that i'm very

direct so you have to excuse me are right? i'm going to tell you the real deal and i hope i don't offend anybody but this is what i want to share with the world so you can understand the conditions that created what you saw when katrina hit. why there was so much poverty in new orleans. it is institutionalized. and i got into office one of the first things i wanted to do was to attack the poverty rate and we attacked it. we started focusing in on single-parent households and particularly mothers and elevating their economic status and we took 37,000 people of the poverty rolls in a relatively short period of time but there were still so many more that we just could not get to. so, you know i explain that in the book. i talk about justification. there was some bold stuff going on. i was in new orleans for two weeks. i wouldn't leave because i didn't want to leave the people who were suffering. i wanted to feel their pain. i didn't want to have

air-conditioning and i didn't want to have anything sword keep me focus. i was going to check on my family who evacuated to dallas and i was called to a meeting. is called to a meeting of local business people and as i was arriving at the meeting they had already done interviews with "the wall street journal," "the new york times," you name it, basically saying that they wanted to see it a different new orleans after the storm. they didn't want certain people to come back particularly poor people and particularly african-americans in the city. i rejected that categorically. i said everyone, everyone had a right to return home and after i did that, lord have mercy. all hell broke loose. i also shared with you the role of disaster capitalism. if you ever find this book published by naomi kline, it is called -- i think it is called disaster capitalism. anyway naomi kline talks about it. i saw it upfront and personal. let me give you one quick

example. shock doctrine. one good example. after a major storm i katrina you know you are going to have to pre-two cleanup, right? trees, homes to move off of the foundation and just tossed into the wind. you have got dirt and you have got everything, mud caked up after the storm so you have to pay somebody to pick that up and clean it up and dispose of it. guess what? after katrina the federal government issued for, 500 million-dollar no-bid contracts. did you hear what i'm saying? five. wouldn't you like to have one of those? five -- four of them. $500 million to pick up debris. the contract called for them to pick up debris at $44 a cubic yard. there was millions of cubic yards. immediately the company that was lucky enough to get the bid and you know some of these companies -- immediately

subcontracted, $27 a cubic yard. $44 a cubic yard. 27-dollar guy, some poor local guy or some out-of-town company and we are going to contract with them for $78 a cubic yard. they did all the work. seven to 8-dollar guys. 27-dollar cubic yard guy, 44-dollar cubic yard guy did not push a broom. did not rake a leaf. all they did was push paper and basically wait for the checks. czechs. i calculated what was happening in new orleans and they made at least a billion dollars in profits. paperpushing profit. it was all legal. it should be wrong but it was legal. so why get into some of that for you so you can understand next

time there is a disaster hopefully we can clean some of the stuff off. i will never forget the superdome was about to explode. the day before there was a riot that almost happened and some guys were trying to overturn the national guard to get control of their guns. thank god we quieted it down. the next day with it was august in new orleans, one of the hottest august in history. it was hot. it was africa hot. teeple were standing out on that ledge, if you remember these images, and they wouldn't move because they kept hearing that buses were coming. then the buses wouldn't come but they wouldn't want to lose their space so they stayed there to make sure that if a busted calm, that they would get a seat. and they did everything right then. they did not move. if you can imagine. so, the next day, the sun was beating down it was so hot. it is unbelievable, in the

midday people were pushing on the barricades and there were 30,000 of them and we only had 300,000 national guard and a couple of police officers. they could've easily overpowered us and took over and who knows what would have happen? at the time that i thought the barricades were going to fall, a small storm cloud -- not a storm cloud -- a small cloud came over the superdome -- superdome and quiet raindrop. it was just enough, about 15 or 20 minutes, that equal the people off and they calm down and they went down into the superdome. god helped us and i'm not afraid to tell people about that. then there were heroes and she rose besides general on a raymack who is one of my favorite people of all time, the coast guard came in with helicopters and flew and flew and save people. our first responders, the

firemen and the police officers were having troubles with police officers but that was a very small group. most of the ems workers and policemen and most of the fire department did incredible work. and saved thousands and thousands and thousands of people so i will tell you stories about that. and then i will share with fie stormwill never forget my and the winds died down. i wanted to see for myself because they were shooting me a lot of the bowl. people were telling me things they really were not real. so i want to fly. i hope i never have to fly in one ever in life again but the first time i flew up, i told helicopter pilot i want to see everything so we flew over the 17th canal and there was water everywhere. i could seep playgrounds where i had been a kid and played and went and looked at my house.

i didn't want to go to close but everything was flooded and then we went to new orleans east and we saw where the storm waves had picked up whole sections of concrete on the highway. she had cut off all exit routes to the east. and then i went to the lower ninth ward and i could see people who hadn't made it and i thought, i burst out in tears. i couldn't take it any more. then i said let's just fly slowly up the river and take me to see what the french quarters looks like. when we got to being right in front of the st. louis cathedral i said to the pilot, stop and the cathedral looked like a postcard. it looked like it'd just been manicured and in the background i could kind of see out of the corner of my eye little rainbow. that was the sign to me that it was going to be alright even though we are going to go through hell and high water it is going to be all right eakin

is our cultural assets are still intact, a great place and you've seen the hbo special. is as a matter fact in the french quarters there was a bar that stayed open throughout. they served a warrant beer by candlelight. i had one and it was good in the midst of the storm, so i share with you those kinds of things and then i also share how i was thinking about planning a recover. this was catastrophic. there was no example. i looked everywhere. i went on the internet into the libraries and talk to every expert. there was nothing that i could use as a comparable precedent. there was nothing that had happened might do so guess what i did? one day i was in prayer and i open up my bible and i went to the book of nehemiah. in the book of nehemiah jerusalem, our walls looked like

you know, they were totally destroyed. i had kind of follow that an studied it and sure enough, there was a plan, a way for us to start to deal with this in a logical way that made sense to me and that is kind of what i used to get us started. then recovery dollars -- millions and millions. i think it was $134 billion for the entire gulf coast. louisiana i think got about 34 to $36 billion. all the recovery dollars, the federal government and the state -- guess what? it never got to us until 2.5, almost three years after the storm. we almost went bankrupt. i had to lay off half of my workforce. half of the city workers, about three or 4000. so i don't want to bring you to far down but there were challenges to everything that we had to deal with. so we had to improvise. i share all of that.

here's the kicker ladies and gentlemen and the point i'm trying to make in this book. i don't know if our country is better prepared today for another disaster. the federal law that governs how we deal with a disaster is called the stafford act. it was written many many years ago and it really hadn't and updated until this day. we got some better people. i mean we have better people. i will leave it at that census is c-span. we have better people, but institutional struggles that they went through with that law was basically says -- i will give you an example. it says you have to replace things for similar kinds after the storm. so guess what? we had a whole bunch of buses. city buses that got flooded. they wanted us to go to california and by a bus the same age and retrofit it with air-conditioning in new orleans.

that is what the law basically says. you have to replace. you can improve it. you replace it with what you have. that silliness is still on the books. so you still have some challenges. and guess what? we as a nation do not have a national evacuation plan. so, i will use this example. let's say you have gas lines. let's say there is a major explosion and it does something where there's a chain reaction and an explosion going all over atlanta and is your worst-case scenario. there is no national disaster -- no national evacuation plan to get you out of here so you are going to be stuck in gridlock on the interstate 85, 75 or whatever five it is. you have got a bunch of them. you are going to be stuck. how are you going to get out? that is why i go around the country and i tell people, start to think about, and this is

something that is not easy, what would he do if he had to get out of here? how would you do that? where would you go? which routes would you take? don't forget about your neighbors. make sure you have enough prescriptions and you have got enough cash and you have credit cards and you have a place to go. most people don't think about that in you won't be able to think about it in the heat of the moment, but we have at this moment no national evacuation plan. now we have sense in new orleans used trains, buses and planes, but that is specific to new orleans. it is not in place for any other community. let me wrap this up and then i will take your questions. in spite of everything that i've said ladies and gentlemen, the city of new orleans is an amazing, amazing resilient place. in spite of all of this, the city is still ahead in my opinion, and you know we live in a fast-moving town. we want fries with that sheikh.

everyone in new orleans beat me up for not moving fast enough that when you study history and you look at kobe japan and even look at new orleans -- new york, and that kind of got a jolt for that. we won't even go there. it takes 10 to 15 years to recover from a major disaster, a major disaster. we are only in year six and we have 85% of our population back and growing and we are basically reinventing ourselves. i will never forget maya angelou, one of my favorite poets of all times. she came and talked to us and came to the university and it was back. she talked about rainbows and clouds, and i couldn't follow it at first but she said the thing you must understand is before you get to see a rainbow you must go through a storm. and the best time to see a rainbow is when the storm clouds

are in the distance in half of the sky is dark and have the sky is bright. that is when you see the brightest rainbow of them all. ladies and gentlemen, we are kind of in that mode right now. we still have a few storm clouds in new orleans but we have some bright clouds in front of us. our population, depends upon who you talk to -- the census for some reason has this ad the low 80. the local demographer has us in the low to mid 80s. president bush, read his book. i want to see what he had to say. it didn't quite jibe with what i had experience but that is okay. it is his book. we have freedom of speech in this country. he said we are at 87% so we are somewhere in the mid-80s and growing in the census has this is one of the fastest-growing cities in america. our public school system is totally revamped. one of the most -- worst public schools in america. more charter schools in the city

and we are building brand-new schools. we have about $2 billion worth of brand-new public schools under construction. now there is a lot of debate about whether we are heading in the right direction but it is much better than before. housing, all of our public housing units have been torn down except are one. very controversial but we have converted them to concentrate poverty and crime into mixed income communities that are beautiful and gorgeous and you know the crime in those areas have gone down. unemployment is at historic lows in the city of new orleans. and things are going okay there. we have a 70-acre biomedical research center with 2 billion-dollar hospitals under construction and i added up all the infrastructure going on in the city and we have about $26 billion with a b, worth of activity going on in the city. and our evacuation system i will submit to you, we have the best

evacuation system in the country and we tested it successfully a while back. here is what we also learned and hurricane katrina. people did not leave because of their pets. some people just could not think to pardon leave their pets. so now we have a pet evacuation process. if you want to evacuate, bring your pets? we scan them and put them on climate control 18-wheelers and they are taking care of after the storm. we come back and we reunite you with your pet. during gustav we did not lose one pet. the only thing we had was somebody left as a parrot. [laughter] and it was a loudmouth parrot too. that was the only thing that we had. and then the coup de grace. in 2010 -- but in 2010 the new orleans saints won the super bowl.

[applause] yeah. and we partied like never before. we had 800,000 people in the streets of new orleans. we hit the yang yang group singing this on which was our and then. we had everything going on. the previous year the super bowl 40 have about 300,000 people so it was a big deal for us after 43 years of mainly losing teams. so i close. i have written this book. i have gotten some pretty good response from it. i have gotten people who don't like it at all. it just depends upon your perspective. what i wanted to do was tell the story and to me it is much bigger than a hurricane. it is the story about the ultimate disaster that could happen to any of us and how you deal with that and how you come back from something that devastating. it is instructive, something designed for all to learn from and i will submit to you, what

would you do if your old cement disaster hit you today? how would you deal with it? would you look at the dark clouds or would you look at the sunny skies and what what would you see the rainbow because regardless of what you go through, it is always going to be a rainbow that shows up. if you just have to work through it and get there. so i thank you for listening, and i look forward to taking some of your questions. [applause] >> if you will raise your hand when you have a question and mayor nagin will recognize you and remember please wait until the microphone comes to you. there is a question over here, right here. >> president carter was very critical of what happened to fema when i was put into dhs as well as the director, brown come

after he quit. what is your opinion of what happened to fema under dhs? >> i share with president carter's concern. i watch it upfront and personal and i think fema such a critical organization when a disaster happens and it needs to have direct access to the president. i think a big part of what was going on during katrina -- there was a lot going on but the communication change just did not work well. i think it needs to go back to the way it was. i worked with the u.s. -- mayors and we put together a white paper that allows changes to lobby congress on and that is one of them. >> 60 minutes did a piece on the current mayor and it was flashy and it was nice. there is a spirit -- he is a spirited about new orleans is your. it also came across as somewhat of an upgrade and i wonder what

you think about the things he has been able to do since you left and if any way it is a criticism of what was going on. my second question was there as been conspiracy theories about katrina. can you dismiss any of them? >> yeah, well yeah i do. like i said i don't want to offend anybody but i had an incredible day that i point out in the book. i was going to fly back to new orleans and for some reason lewis farrakhan got ahold of it. he wants to meet at the airport. i'm like okay. so we met and he talked to me about his big concern. did they purposefully low up the levees? i will tell you what i told them. i don't see how it is possible. what i do know is that there was some barges that got loose in the canals and as the wind was blowing, the barges were were going back and forth and it was

banging up against the levees. one even broke through and ended up sitting on top of some homes in the lower ninth ward and i told him, is that i'm almost certain that is what people heard down there. i don't think -- i don't know how they would know where. we had so many breaches. i don't see how they could note where. now, as far as the other conspiracy, there was definitely a move to try to change the social fabric of new orleans. that is well-documented. there is no doubt about that. as far as the new mayor, 60 minutes is an interesting group. [laughter] they interviewed me when i was in office and they promised this wonderful puff piece. i bought into it hook, line and sinker. in the day i was going to do it tim russert wanted to do an interview with me so i agreed to do it around the same time. 60 minutes got very upset and then they turned the piece into

this huge negative thing that kind of got me in trouble with new york and anon 11 site. but as far as you know what they are doing now, look, i am done. i don't have any aspirations to run for public office. they can say what they wanted they can do what they want. the new man, god left him. i hope he becomes known as the best mayor new orleans ever had. i will tell you this, a lot of things that are coming out right now, i think everybody has to acknowledge that they were put in motion when he went into office. i think it is good. as long as my city continues to improve, i'm okay, i really don't care. there is all sorts of stuff going on. a lot a lot of that unfortunately his race, class and poverty. it is historical. if you go way back in new orleans history you will find it. you are all asking some good

questions. >> just curious to do have a tree our system in place and if so where will the senior citizens and crippled old people, the 4% that didn't have an option to move and go anywhere, go? is there anything new since then? >> there were lots of lessons learned that what we did was, at at the 72 hour mark when the storm was in the gulf we started moving senior citizens and started moving them as best we could. >> people were banned and people died there. >> i'm going to get to that. we made a call for the senior citizens, the ones who needed support ramaz and we pick them up with their ambulances and got them out. some of the senior citizen centers did not answer that call. they were supposed to have their own evacuation processes and they did not. and then in addition to that the ones who stayed and when they got wind that there was some struggling, they were rescued and brought, we at the superdome

and right next to the superdome was the arena, the basketball arena and that is where we brought the senior citizens that we rescued. >> what about the nursing homes? they were abandoned. no one went there. >> the nursing homes, yes there were lots of problems with nursing homes where people got abandoned. not only that but some of the hospitals. >> so is there a triaged -- did you have a trio's program? i'm not being critical. i'm curious. >> can be critical you want. >> when these events happen, we need to get the weakest out and i've read some -- the weakest are not always the first to be evacuated. >> i think you raise an excellent, excellent point. since katrina we now have a better grasp on that. each nursing home has to have a very specific evacuation plan that is followed and there are criminal penalties now if you don't follow those. the city coordinates for with

the state. >> that is wonderful. i wonder if we will see some of those plans and guidelines published anywhere? >> yeah, i am sure. they have not revamp the city's web site that they used to be on the city's web site, the current evacuation plans. they're probably still there. >> i don't want to beleaguer this but i saw a professor and they listed triaged an american not just the poor new orleans and senior citizens are way the bottom of the list and i called the professor that co-opted this article on ups. she climbed up through quickly and said that was just an experiment and so that is the reason i'm asking the question. if you were in the heart of the situation you know better than anyone in america just how crucial it is that we get our crippled, old and defenseless people out who can't defend for themselves. >> i'm totally with you and that is why he made the point earlier we do not have a national evacuation plan which senior citizens are going to suffer,

again liking katrina. new orleans is kind of upgrading this stuff but i don't get the sense that other cities practice or are sensitive to this issue as you are so it is a challenge. excuse me, call dubreau. i'm from new orleans. you will have to excuse me. [laughter] >> what are you doing now? are you still in a political position? >> absolutely not. politics for me, this is my first time being in public office, running for mayor which is kind of different and i'm happy to have serve. don't get me wrong. the eight years that i served were incredible even with the katrina stuff but i was happy to get in and i am happy to be out. >> are you using your experience is? >> i've been called for all kinds of stuff, most of an international. i've done haiti. i have gone to the czech republic and i'm getting ready to go back over to australia.

i'm going to go to brussels. i do some stuff in the united states and unfortunately we really don't pay attention to disasters until they happen. that is just the way we are. we don't believe they are going to happen to us and we think that new orleans was just some ultimate reality tv show which you know, i'm really concerned. i don't want to bum you guys out but i've been tracking major disasters and since hurricane katrina bear bend over 400 major declared disasters just in the united states and if you look at the trends around the world, the thing that bothers me the most right now is that natural disasters are now being linked with man-made disasters. katrina and levees, japan, tsunami and nuclear. we have nuclear plants all over the place. do you know where one of the biggest fault lines in america is today? you think california, right? tennessee. tennessee has a huge fault line,

so i'm really concerned and that is why i am out here, i am out here talking to people all over the place. about this experience so they can learn and i'm trying to deal with this global warming stuff because i believe it is real. i have been working with some entrepreneurs on solar and l.e.d.'s also. keeping busy, but not too busy. >> nop d.. i'm not going to ask you to comment. >> that case is over and i can talk about it now. >> we inherited -- atlanta inherited some of the leadership of nop d.. we are through with that now. we we are past it but there were some problems with that leadership. what i'm asking you is we have new leadership now, could you

comment on how we could develop a more positive leadership in the atlanta pd? [laughter] >> well you know, police are very, i don't know how to describe it. it is probably one of the most difficult organizations to manage from a leadership standpoint. you know, i can speak to new orleans. new orleans has had a long history of all kinds of police stuff going on so when i went into office the main thing i wanted to do was make sure and whenever wind down there was an independent investigation so we brought the feds in and we did all kinds of stuff but even with that, there was still some stuff going on and katrina -- i share some things in the book. there was some hate crimes going on. by the police department. so, you know, it is just an

organization with power. the power of being able to tell you, get on that car and put your hands behind your back. sum can handle that and some can't. so you will have to have processes in place and you have to have checked points on the police as well as your citizens to keep that under wraps. it is a very difficult task. as far as atlanta is concerned, i have been following that out of the corner of my eye. you guys have some challenges. get the feds involved. they are going to come in and do an assessment. they will tell you some things you are not going to want to hear and they will expose some dirty laundry but at the end of the day it keeps the police, who are kind of susceptible to going in the wrong direction, keeps them on their toes. the feds, you go to federal court and that ain't nice. whatever your sentence, 85% penalty you are going to serve in they know that.

they will have to serve a ten-year sentence but in the feds, that gets their attention. all right? >> professor douglas brinkley wrote the book, the great state of illusion about that. >> yes, my friend. >> it was kind of an example of a failure of proper st. communicating with one another. what was your experience with that and also in the fog of the storm, the outer world got a perception of you that they not really captured the real you. what did you see that changed her image or impacted who you were when you were there and everybody could see your sound bites. >> douglas brinkley wrote a book and he is a historian. he worked with the guy who did the work on world war ii, stephen ambrose, yeah. doug and i did not see

eye-to-eye on that book. he tried to interview me after the storm and it was clear to me that once he interviewed me get already made up his mind and he wrote the book in mild pinion a little prematurely. they didn't have any congressional testimonies and it but this is america so you are free to write what you want. and, i have said this publicly. i think doug was part of the kind of a group that didn't want to see me and power for the second time so that book was time released. you know, i dismissed it as such. politics. and now your other question? >> how do people perceive you? >> just depends, man. i go all over the world. i was in china and there was a chinese guy looking at me out of the corner of the side. he ended up coming up to me and kind of bowing and he said, you

are ray nagin. you cussed out lush. [laughter] this is in china. so i get some of that and i get other people that look at me like, you did a horrible job during katrina. it just depends. like i said earlier, most leaders, they quit or they run out. bush got out of office quick. kathleen blanco decided not to run for re-election because her approval ratings were so low. i was the last guy standing so arrows came from everywhere. i am okay with it. controversy sells. my book is doing all right. i'm going to sell a little more controversy. what else do you all want to hear about? [laughter] >> would you comment on what the engineers did to the levees post-katrina and how comfortable and confident are you with what

they did? >> there is -- the guy who headed up the corps of engineers at the time, his name was general career. you should look him up. he was in charge of the entire design and build. i feel pretty comfortable with it. i worked with them. i used to meet with them every other week to go over their progress in the plan. i'm not an engineer, but i've i have spoken with the dutch and other independent people and what they have dealt is probably second to none in the world. if you get a chance to go to new orleans you should go and see what they -- the structure they have built by late warren which is where most of the storm surge from hurricane katrina came up. it is a 25-foot structure that goes for miles and it has this huge gate that closes. there is nothing else like it in the world so i feel pretty comfortable. they spend 14 or $15 billion it is the first time we have had a

comprehensive hurricane protection system in new orleans. i think we are in good shape, but we will see. two more questions. >> i would like to know, where were the politicians like yourself? where were they housed? when katrina came? >> you want to get me in trouble. you know, most everybody left. politicians, tv stations, newspapers. most of them left. they were hanging out in the air-conditioning in baton rouge and all over the place. and you know, everybody has to make decisions. it was horrific. i was scared and i was there.

when we notice that the levees were preaching at the 17th street canal i told my staff, everybody leave except for the most central people. we had a skeleton crew that stayed behind. everyone was leaving because we didn't know whether the water was ever going to stop flowing. so it was tough but i wish they would have come back after the water went down and really dug in and tried to help. politics kicked in and scapegoating and all that stuff. it was something. it was something. have we got a couple more? >> hi, if thought i would try another question about political aspiration. i'm recalling an interview he did with anderson cooper a couple of years ago.

>> my buddy. >> if i remembered correctly what i took from it was you indicated after you -- saw how poorly president obama did in louisiana after the election, perhaps your chances of being governor of louisiana were good so i guess my question would be if that were to change, if you knew you had a reasonable chance to be elected governor, is that a job he would like to have? >> my wife would kill me. if i even talked about it. [laughter] i will tell you this. there only two positions in politics that i really would -- and that is mayor of new orleans and the governor the state of louisiana. i watched barack and his first race and this guy was so popular everywhere around the world. louisiana is a democratic state on paper per. 65% of all the voters in louisiana are democrat, but they don't vote that way all the time

and when i saw barack, think less than 10% crossover vote -- i'm a candid and i crossed over time. i got 85% of the white vote the first time around. i got 45% of the black vote and totally flip the second time for a lot of different reasons. i understand the crossover appeal. when i saw barack only get 10% i was like this is a super red state. and there was no way in hell they are going to elect me. it ain't going to happen. [laughter] they have not forgiven me about that yet. i am a p fungi. i'm sorry. george clinton, p funk, you all know the song.

one more? >> there was a group of people who had a lawsuit and they actually won the lawsuit. i think it was dealing direct with the levees. do you think even though they won the lawsuit that they will actually ever get paid dealing with the economic situation? >> you know there were so many lawsuits i'm trying to figure which one. there was one major lawsuit that was thrown out of court says they said the corps of engineers and the federal government had immunity. but there was one that made it through and it was for a couple of million dollars, the settlement was. and i think that they probably will get paid, but it wasn't a lot of money or a tremendous number of people. there was another lawsuit at the end of 2010 when i was getting out of office. somebody sued the state and federal government and claimed that the road home for grants,

the rebuilding grants for citizens was discriminatory and they won that lawsuit. so that could be interesting because the state is still sitting on about $3 billion in federal recovery money so that could be interesting. >> this has been a fascinating evening. i think it was great. mayor will sign copies of this book in the lobby. if you haven't gotten one, a cappella books has them for sale. let's give mayor nagin a thank you. [applause]