Gustav Response

Sept. 2, 2008, 4:51 p.m. EDT

New Orleans: On the Brink of Hurricane Gustav

When residents of New Orleans began drowning three years ago, the cityâs director of Emergency Medical Services, Jullette Saussy, faced a devastating crisis. Radios failed. Ambulances were trapped. She needed boats and high water vehicles to respond to the increasingly frantic 911 calls from people threatened by the rising waters.

Saussy and other city, state and federal officials vowed the next time would be different. So as Hurricane Gustav bore down on New Orleans this weekend, ProPublica's Sheri Fink went with Saussy to the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, the cityâs designated evacuation point, to get a first-hand look at how much progress had been made.

Reporter: Sheri Fink
Producer: Krista Kjellman

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page

Gustav Response

New Orleans: On the Brink of Hurricane Gustav

Latest Stories from ProPublica

What ProPublica Is Doing About Diversity in 2024

I Moved to Rural New Mexico to Report on the Aftermath of a Massive Wildfire. My Neighbors Were My Best Sources.

Chevron Will Pay Record Fines for Oil Spills in California

Idaho Legislature Approves $2 Billion for Schools to Repair and Replace Aging Buildings