Mr. Bush's Katrina timeline

President Bush is in Mississippi and Louisiana this week, making Katrina anniversary appearances, but it doesn’t count.

When it did count, or could have counted, a year ago, the president was elsewhere.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005, as national television watched Katrina spinning up to full strength in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said that, in a worst-case scenario, storm surge would sweep past the levees and flood the city with 18 feet of water. Nagin was exploring the idea of ordering a mandatory evacuation. Making matters worse, at least 100,000 people in the city lacked the transportation to get out of town. Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort for people who had no cars, with city bus pick-up points around New Orleans. “This is not a test,” Nagin said. “This is the real deal.”

On Sunday, Aug. 28, Mayor Nagin said, “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. In Crawford, Texas, at the Vacation White House, President Bush declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast, an action that cleared the way for immediate federal aid. “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities,” he said. The president participated in a videoconference with disaster management officials, and he spoke by telephone with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. FEMA director Michael Brown took up a position in Baton Rouge, north of New Orleans. FEMA started to position water, ice and military rations to points in the Southeast. Thousands of New Orleans residents went to the Superdome.

On Monday, Aug. 29, the hurricane made landfall south of New Orleans at 6 a.m. NBC’s Brian Williams reported from inside the Superdome as winds and rain penetrated its roof. A levee was reported breached, and flood waters gushed into the city. President Bush was flying from Texas to California, where he made a speech on the new Medicare program at a senior center in Rancho Cucamonga. He and Mrs. Bush then flew to the North Island Navy base in Coronado in the afternoon and rode in a motorcade to the Hotel del Coronado.

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, 80 percent of New Orleans was under water after multiple levee failures. President Bush made a speech at North Island Naval Air Station in which he compared the Iraq war to World War II. The media focus was almost completely on the New Orleans disaster. “The scope of the catastrophe caught the city by surprise,” reported The New York Times. “A certainly sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of New Orleans, proved cruelly illusory, as authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated.” “The magnitude of the situation is untenable,” said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. “It’s just heartbreaking.” During the day, President Bush said he would cut short his vacation and fly back to Washington. He left San Diego and flew back to Crawford.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, looting was widespread in New Orleans and the atmosphere increasingly hostile. Some of the looting was of emergency supplies. Food, water and ice were not reaching refugees stranded in New Orleans. Reports from the Superdome were horrifying. “A major American city all but disintegrated yesterday,” said the AP. President Bush departed Waco, Texas, in Air Force One, instructing the pilot to overfly New Orleans and the Gulf Coast devastation. A photo, now famous, is taken of the president looking out of the airplane’s window at the wreckage. The plane continues on to Washington, D.C., where the president later said, “We’re dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history. I’m confident that with time you’ll get your life back in order, new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will get back on its feet and America will be a stronger place for it.”

Thursday morning, Sept. 1, the AP reported that “Criticism of the federal response to the most sweeping natural disaster in U.S. history rose to a fever pitch. Some who survived Katrina’s assault Monday died of neglect in the ruins of their homes, on city streets and at New Orleans’ Superdome and convention center.” New Orleans mayor Nagin issued “a desperate SOS.” The White House announced Bush would tour the area Friday.

On Friday morning, Sept. 2, President Bush flew on Air Force One into Mobile Regional Airport: At a briefing there, he spoke the famous line to FEMA director Michael Brown: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

The president toured sites in Alabama and Mississippi and was driven through New Orleans. But he was a day late and a dollar short. The time for him to be on the ground in New Orleans was Tuesday, or at the latest, Wednesday morning. He may not have actually been able to achieve anything, but he would have at least been perceived as doing something, and that would have made all the difference, to us, and to him. Now, a year later, the world might be a different place. But it’s not.