Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

DARGAN: Were you able to evacuate New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit the city?

WARD: Yes, I was able to evacuate. I left the Sunday before the hurricane hit. I left because I got urgent messages from friends who said, "You must leave," and I was very resistant. And then I heard the reports of Mayor Nagin's very impassioned plea for people to leave, as he issued a mandatory evacuation order. So, I said, "Well, maybe I should leave." [Laughter.] And I did.

DARGAN: Were you resistant despite knowing the magnitude of the hurricane?

WARD: Well, the hurricane was growing from a three to a four to a five, and I wasn't quite sure how accurate the reports were. I had stayed through previous hurricanes and nothing happened. I had very mixed feelings about just leaving, but I think my better sense told me that leaving was a wise thing to do.

DARGAN: What did you see as you were leaving on Sunday?

WARD: As I was leaving, I was seeing a very deserted city, at least from the part of the city I was leaving—the Gentilly area. I got onto Interstate 610 in order to connect with Interstate 10, which was the official contraflow route to go either to Baton Rouge or to Texas, or up Interstate 55 into Mississippi, and Interstate 55 was the route I chose. Traffic was bumper to bumper. It was hot and some people's cars had stopped on the side of the Interstate. I guess they had run out of gas or something; I don't know. The heavy lines of traffic looked like a kind of funeral procession.

DARGAN: Was anyone with you in your car?

WARD: No, I was alone. I had called a friend and asked him if he wanted to evacuate with me, but he said "No," because he had family in New Orleans, and he wanted to stay with his family. So I got into my car and drove up to Mississippi.

DARGAN: How long did it take you to step back and begin reflecting on what happened? You know, once, I guess, you got out of the city and were just kind of able to put yourself in a place where you could really think about it. How long did that take?

WARD: It took me about two weeks to have anything that I would call psychic distance. And that's when I started writing The Katrina Papers. I was in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I stayed at a shelter that was provided by the First Baptist Church of Vicksburg. I had originally tried to find housing in a motel, but every motel was booked. You just couldn't get space anywhere. Fortunately, I was able to get into a very nice shelter—that is in terms of facilities and people who were very much concerned about our welfare. I suppose that what I was doing for most of the two weeks—although I tried to make myself useful in terms of helping people with their FEMA applications—was living in a kind of state of disbelief that I couldn't return to my home in New Orleans [laughing]. I could see all of the flooding on television. I could see people trying to make their way with makeshift boats through the water. I could even see a couple of dead bodies in one shot. I kept wondering, "Did this really happen?" And I would think, "No!" "You're confused," I would say to myself. I was very confused. Then it hit me: the city had been inundated, not by Hurricane Katrina alone, but also by the breaks in the levees and by the retaining walls along the canals. I was not going to be able to get back to New Orleans, because, by this time, two weeks later, I was hearing that people were told not to go back to the city and that National Guard troops were going into the city. I also heard that the poor police chief was losing his rationality and so was the mayor, to...