Dispatches From the Edge_ A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival - Anderson Cooper [51]
“Stop thanking each other” I want to yell. “Grab a body bag and get down here with some soldiers!” Instead I nod and listen. Night after night.
Wednesday, I interview FEMA director Michael Brown. I tell him I’m not seeing much of a response here, and there are bodies lying in the street. It’s “unacceptable,” he says. He promises he’s “working on it.” After the program, someone from FEMA tells my producer we can follow Brown around the next day. Later, however, they call back and rescind the offer.
Politicians keep saying that they know people are “frustrated.” If they really understood, however, they wouldn’t use that word. Frustrated is waiting on line for a film; it’s a slow-moving train. The feelings here go much deeper. People aren’t “frustrated.” They are dead. They are dying; the scales have fallen from their eyes. I remember what Dr. Tectonidis told me in Niger, about the mothers in the intensive care ward. “They don’t want your sympathy,” he said, “they want you to do your job.”
In normal times you can’t always say what’s right and what’s wrong. The truth is not always clear. Here, however, all the doubt is stripped away. This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats, theories and politics. Relief is either here or it’s not. Corpses don’t lie.
When you’re working, you’re focused on getting the shot, writing the story. You sometimes don’t notice how upset you are. In Waveland, I certainly don’t. Late Wednesday night, I’m talking to someone back in the office about the woman we left on the street, and I find myself crying. I can’t even speak. I have to call that person back. At first I don’t realize what’s happening to me. It’s been years since a story made me cry. Sarajevo was probably the last time. I’ve never been on this kind of story, though, in my own country. It’s something I never expected to see.
I used to get back from Somalia or Sarajevo and imagine what New York would look like in a war. Which buildings would crumble? Who among my friends would survive? I always told myself if it did happen here, at least we could handle it better. At least our government would know what to do.
In Sri Lanka, in Niger, you never assume anyone will help. You take it for granted that governments don’t work, that people are on their own. There’s a different level of expectation. Here, you grow up believing there’s a safety net, that things can never completely fall apart. Katrina showed us all that’s not true. For all the money spent on homeland security, all the preparations that have allegedly been made, we are not ready, not even for a disaster we know is coming. We can’t take care of our own. The world can break apart in our own backyard, and when it does many of us will simply fall off.
THURSDAY. I’M ABOUT to interview Senator Mary Landrieu. She’s a Democrat from Louisiana. I’m unaware she’s going to be on the program until a few minutes before she appears. Much of what we’re doing on the air each night is impromptu. I like working that way best. No scripts, no TelePrompTer, just talking with the viewers—no separation between me and the camera. Before I go on air each night, I have a rough idea what will be in the program: where our reporters are located and what they’ve been working on. During the broadcast, however, much of that changes, so I have to be quick on my feet, ready for anything.
As a child, I used to spend summers at the beach, and I loved to run along the edge of the sand cliffs made by the retreating tide. As I ran, I could feel the sand collapse beneath me, but as long as I kept moving forward, kept running fast, I could stay one step ahead of the falling cliff. That’s what anchoring the news is like. You can easily falter, easily destroy your career in a sentence or two. The key is to keep going, keep moving, never forget you’re running on sand.