The Superdome immediately after Hurricane Katrina. Much of the roof had been ripped off the iconic venue and flood waters had surrounded large swaths of the property.
FROM THE DESK OF THE MANAGING EDITOR
REPORTING FROM NEW ORLEANS— Doug Thornton can still taste the smell. The odor of raw sewage, 40,000 sweat-soaked evacuees and thousands of patients in makeshift medical wards lingers with him each day. It can't be washed away. It stays with him as a constant reminder of the five terrible days he endured during the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
“On the last night before the evacuation, we were walking the building and the smell was so wretched,” he recalled during an interview inside his offices at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. Today his office is a tranquil and quiet professional space, but back in the late summer of 2005, it was the final outpost for Superdome employees and their families. Over 40,000 evacuees had taken shelter at the facility after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Big Easy, bringing devastating winds and rain that caused the levees on Lake Pontchartrain to burst, flooding the city with a million gallons of water per second.
Thornton, the GM of the Superdome, had done all he could to provide basic comforts for the swelling population of evacuees at his building, but it was clear that he and his small team of employees, New Orleans PD and National Guards troops were losing control.
Doug Thornton inside his offices at the Mercedes-Benz Super Dome, New Orleans.
Food and water were in short supply, the Superdome was surrounded by flood water leaving evacuees with no where to go and overflowing toilets that hadn’t worked for 48 hours. The smell of open sewage was only made worse by terrible heat and humidity and the desperation of the evacuees who badly wanted out.
“I was walking the halls with one of my employees on that very last day and he turned to me and said ‘You smell that? It smells like death.’” Thornton recalled. “That really stuck with me and has stuck with me ever since. I can still smell that smell.”
People certainly were dying. The official body count was 10 deaths — one person committed suicide, one person drowned in the parking garage, a few overdosed on drugs and several elderly people died from illness.
“This place was a powder keg where people were literally at risk of losing their lives,” said Thornton. “Imagine the worst that you can imagine, and it was worse than that.”
"A Terrible Honor"
On Wednesday, I will be interviewing Doug Thornton for the opening keynote panel at the Event and Arena Marketing Conference, beginning at 1:30 p.m. in Galeries 1 & 2 at the New Orleans Marriott.
In one of the videos we'll be showing during the Q&A, a chaplain describes his experience comforting the victims of Katrina. He discusses what it was like to deliver last rites to several elderly patients who died inside the Superdome. He describes holding them in his arms as they passed and described the experience as "a terrible honor."
My upcoming interview with Doug certainly isn't a "terrible honor" but it is an honor to be with Doug to discuss something truly terrible. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has always been a compelling story to me. I love everything about New Orleans — the kindness of its strangers, the incredible talent of its creative community.
I remember that my wife Kristen was stationed overseas at the time on the tiny island of Kiribati in the South Pacific as part of her service in the Peace Corps. We weren't married yet and the only tool we had for communication was a satellite phone that could only receive short text messages (it could not reply or send back messages). I remember constantly writing to her and trying to describe what was happening to our beloved city. It was so difficult to contextualize the destruction and suffering into short text messages that seemed to shoot off into the void. Like everyone else in America, I couldn't do anything to help. I couldn't even tell the story.
Now I can.
The story about Doug Thornton and the Superdome during Katrina was one of the most important stories to come out of that terrible tragedy that took thousands of lives. The tale of the Superdome began as a story of pain and panic. It's a story of human sacrifice, of ingenuity and major tragedy averted. It's a tale of suffering, but it's also a tale on survival. And in the end, it's a story of rebuilding and rebirth. It's a story about how symbols can inspire an entire city that's been brought to it's knees. A city that lost everything determined to rebuild.
‘Couldn’t Go Another Day’
As a venue journalist, there is really no story more intriguing than the five terrible days Thornton, his team of SMG and Centerplate employees, their families and the tens of thousands of evacuees spent at the building.
Evacuees line up outside the Superdome prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall.
We’ll have over an hour to explore the entire story of the Superdome's role during Katrina, but here’s my attempt at telling the quick version: Just one day before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, the decision was made to designate the indoor stadium as the shelter of last resort. Mandatory evacuations were ordered throughout the city, but not everyone could get out. Those who were stuck went to the Superdome.
By the time Katrina slammed into New Orleans, about 15,000 to 20,000 people had taken refuge at the facility. The hurricane did terrible damage to the building, ripping huge holes in the roof, knocking out power and depressurizing the toilets. A generator powered back-up lights, but there was no air conditioning, no flushable toilets and very little food supplies.
Then the levees broke, drowning much of New Orleans. The flood waters almost knocked out the Superdome's back-up generator, which would have plunged the building into total darkness.
“Hundreds of people would have been trampled to death if that would have happened,” Thornton later recalled. Quick thinking by Thornton and the Army Corps of Engineers averted that crisis, but it wasn’t long before a larger human tragedy unfolded. The Superdome could barely care for the evacuees that took shelter from Hurricane Katrina. Now the building was really being put to the test as thousands more evacuees were being plucked from rooftops and dropped off at the Superdome via helicopter and boat.
The number of evacuees doubled in size to 40,000. The second wave appeared to be more desperate, more determined and more dangerous. Fearing a deadly standoff, the National Guard ordered its troops out of the building. Mobs of evacuees began to take over the building floor by floor, breaking into suites and banging on the door of the office where Thornton, his family and the families of other SMG and Centerplate employees were huddled. It was now the forth day of the crisis and Thornton knew his time was running out.
“I don’t think this place could have gone another day,” he recalled. “When you put people in a position where they don’t know what’s happening and whether they’re going to survive, it gets very dangerous. Your instincts take over — even though I knew federal and state officials were trying to get us out of here, I also knew how challenging it was to get the buses here.”
All the buses in New Orleans had been destroyed by Katrina. New buses had to be brought in from Baton Rouge, La., and Houston and other locales. By Thursday afternoon, the first buses began to roll in to the Superdome and take evacuees to safety. It took two full days to get everyone out.
‘Now it’s personal’
The night before the evacuations had begun, seven remaining SMG employees hunkered down in Thornton’s office. Their families had been whisked to another location and were among the first to get on the buses and get out. The entire operation was done in secret — the mood of many evacuees had shifted to anger and violence. If the evacuees had found out that others were given preferential treatment, a riot might break out.
“It was very tense. There had been a National Guardsman who had been shot that night (outside the building) and we were put on notice that it was not safe to move around the facility,” Thornton recalled.
“I remember sitting here talking in the early morning hours,” he said. “I told my team ‘get a good look at this building because this might be the last time you ever see it. I don’t know if it can be saved.'”
Thornton’s main fear was that people simply wouldn’t come back to New Orleans — already, early evacuees were being resettled around the country. Nevermind that there might not be enough fans to attend a future football game at the Dome — Thornton thought there might not be enough people living in the city to staff a game.
The next morning, Thornton finally left by helicopter, and “I remember lifting off and seeing the damage to the roof of the building. I could not believe what I was seeing.”
The helicopter came close to Thornton’s neighborhood — it was completely destroyed, sitting under ten feet of murky flood waters.
Flooding damaged thousands of homes across New Orleans
“Up until that point it was about the Superdome. It was about protecting 40,000 people and preventing huge loss of life,” he said. “But now it had become personal for me. I looked down my street where the water had risen to the top of the front door. That was the first time I started to think about my own personal loss. It suddenly hit me that everything I owned was gone. I looked back over my shoulder again and saw the Superdome with its roof ripped off and the water glistening all the way from my house to the Superdome. It looked like one big lake. And I said ‘It’s over. I’ll never be back.’ And then I wept all the way to Baton Rouge.”
Thankfully the Superdome did come back. On Sept. 24, 2006 the building reopened for a Saints' home game against the Atlanta Falcons. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent rebuilding the facility and billions more spent rebuilding New Orleans. Much damage remains, but the city has certainly come back from the terrible pain it endured in August of 2005.
“It could have been so much worse,” said Thornton, who recalled that he went through his own grief and trauma during the first few months. “But we survived. And we rebuilt the city. And once again we are strong.”
Interviewed for this article: Doug Thornton, (504) 587-3827