NEW ORLEANS — The retired U.S. Army general who led the military’s response to Hurricane Katrina 19 years ago has some stern warnings for coastal Louisiana residents ahead of yet another tropical event.
As Francine approached south Louisiana, Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré raised concerns about industrial safety and coastal storm surge and questioned why Louisiana still struggles with protecting its most vulnerable citizens.
Honoré earned broad praise for his no-nonsense leadership of Joint Task Force Katrina after the catastrophic 2005 flood protection failures, punctuated by his plainspoken commentary like, “Don’t get stuck on stupid” and “It’s a crying damn shame.”
The man who led troops into New Orleans to find a humanitarian crisis at the Superdome said those raw memories have had a lasting negative impact on how the city responds to storms.
“There's a case of PTSD in New Orleans that we will never shelter anybody in the city again,” he said. “Guess where they shelter people in Houston? The George (R.) Brown Convention Center. They put 7,000 people in there. And they're organized to do it. The problem in Louisiana, we've never organized to do that in New Orleans.”
He questioned why there isn’t a standing plan to open the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans to evacuees.
“There's no reason why the Convention Center didn't take in people from south of New Orleans that need a place and for people in parts of New Orleans that could flood,” Honoré said.
He said there’s still a shocking lack of understanding about the devastating impacts of storm surges. He’s particularly worried about vulnerable coastal communities.
“If you’ve got friends and relatives along the coast, tell them, get the hell out of there, please,” he urged. “You can always go back.”
Honoré has dedicated much of his retirement to leading GreenARMY, a network of environmental groups. He called special attention to the vulnerability of chemical plants in the path of the storm, including a liquefied natural gas plant on the coast in Cameron Parish, which was evacuated, and two more that are not yet online in Cameron and Plaquemines parishes.
“Those plants are very volatile,” he said. “So, we worry about what happens if they lose total power and are unable to control that natural gas. We have done some studies with the GreenARMY that would show if one of those natural gas plants blew up, it would be equivalent to the size of weapon that was dropped on Japan in World War II.”
In addition, he expressed concern about dangers to the residents of fence-line communities in the corridor known as “Cancer Alley” between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
“All these are products we use, so it's going to happen,” he said. “But I worry about those 150 plants between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. If you live there, we want to make sure you stay aware. If you smell something and it's burning your eyes, call 911 because that means it's toxic.”
With a rare southwesterly approach, Francine is also forecasted to pass over a concentrated area of offshore oil and gas operations. The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement reported as of midday Tuesday that crews had evacuated from 130 production platforms, a little more than a third of the manned facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.
Three of the 20 movable rigs in the Gulf have moved away from the wells they’re drilling. That raises more concerns after storms in 2020 and 2021 caused major damage to rigs that remained latched to equipment on the sea bed and failed to move before getting slammed by Hurricanes Zeta and Ida, respectively. Those near-misses led to new federal safety rules for rigs to set a deadline for a final decision to stay or leave ahead of a storm.
“I hope they got those crews off there because the way (Francine) is set up, the east side, the right front, is going to churn the hell out of that water in the Gulf,” Honoré said. “And I hope they've done the proper risk mitigation and got those men and women off those rigs that are at risk.”
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Video: New Orleans metro residents stock on 'essentials' ahead of TS Francine
