Class-action lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January.
From his shelter site at East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, then-Parish Councilman John Young first noticed something was amiss on the night of Aug. 28, 2005, when he saw the West Esplanade Avenue canal had not been pumped down in anticipation of more water. With Hurricane Katrina's landfall less than eight hours away, Young called the parish's Emergency Operations Center in Marrero to ask why.
The canal couldn't be drained to increase capacity, Parish President Aaron Broussard's top aide, Tim Whitmer, told Young, because the administration's 220 pump operators had been evacuated. "I mean, I was stunned," Young said in a sworn deposition last week. "I was shocked. I don't know exactly what I said, but, but whatever I said didn't not please Mr. Whitmer, because I, I didn't agree with it. He got very curt and defensive and said, 'It's not your call. You have nothing to do with it,' and that was basically it."
Young's testimony came in a deposition July 29 for a class-action lawsuit that blames the post-Katrina flooding of thousands of Jefferson Parish properties on Broussard and his administration for sending the pump operators, with other employees, to shelter in Washington Parish. Broussard, who is serving a 46-month sentence in federal prison for corruption unrelated to the storm, is accused of gross negligence and is sued in his individual and official capacities. Young was elected parish president in 2010.
In public statements after Katrina, Broussard defended the decision to order pump operators to evacuate, saying their lives would have been at risk had they been made to remain at vulnerable pump stations in the face of a monster storm. In his own November 2007 deposition, however, Broussard distanced himself from the actual evacuation order, which was prescribed in Jefferson's "doomsday plan" for disasters.
Plaintiffs' lawyers filed the suit in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna in October 2005. They hope to depose Broussard again while he is incarcerated. The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 13.
Young, who is not accused of wrongdoing, testified that he was previously unaware of the doomsday plan. It automatically activated when a Category 4 or worse storm was forecast to strike the New Orleans area, Broussard has said.
According to a draft transcript of his deposition, Young testified that the Broussard administration never shared the plan with the Parish Council, and that he first heard of it a week or so after Katrina's landfall. He said he knew of no other council member who was aware of the plan. But "in an ideal world," he said, the parish president would want to notify the legislative branch.
"I don't think there was a concerted effort, but sometime after Katrina obviously this became an issue, and I don't think anyone had received a copy," Young told plaintiffs' attorney Darleen Jacobs. "Again, I can't say I've talked to every single council person, but my understanding was, the council was not provided with a copy."
Broussard testified similarly in his 2007 deposition. He said he never saw the doomsday plan when he was a member of the Parish Council from 1996 to 2004.
Walter Maestri, Broussard's emergency management director, said in a 2008 deposition that he had revised the 1998 policy that evacuated the pump operators. He said he worked on the revision through Whitmer, under Broussard's direction, and that the Parish Council was apprised of it. Maestri resigned in 2006.
Young testified that the first time he heard Broussard discuss the pump operators' evacuation was at the Oct. 12, 2005, Parish Council meeting. Broussard opened the meeting by saying that for major storms in the future, the pump operators would be evacuated to the west, instead of to the north to Mount Hermon in Washington Parish.
"So I'm sitting there again dumbfounded and stunned, and he's going through this dissertation, and I'm looking around at my colleagues," Young testified. "Nobody is saying anything, and this is the first time evacuation of pump operators was ever discussed publicly."
Young said he told Broussard that pump operators should not be evacuated. "I got chastised by him in that regard," Young testified, "but six weeks later, he held a press conference and said, 'We're never going to evacuate the pump operators again.'"
Jacobs pressed Young on whether Broussard was solely responsible for evacuating pump operators. Under Louisiana's homeland security laws, parish presidents have sole authority during declared emergencies, Young testified.
"So the buck stops, stops with him. Is that fair?" Jacobs asked. "Correct," Young said.
Jacobs also quizzed Young on structurally sound buildings where pump operators could have weathered Katrina. Saying the parish is responsible to operate the federally built drainage system, Jacobs also asked whether the Broussard administration violated federal law that says "competent operators shall be on duty at the pumping stations whenever it appears that necessity for pump operations is imminent." Young, a lawyer, said he was unsure, and that he'd leave that interpretation to the courts.
He said residents were not told that the pump operators had been evacuated the day before Katrina's landfall. He did not recall whether Whitmer told him who ordered the evacuation.
Within five hours of Katrina's landfall, Young said, he recalled an attempt to return the pump operators. Their return was delayed by felled trees on the north shore. At least 12 hours passed before they were back in their stations. "It was not a quick return," he said.
Young testified he does not agree with evacuating pump operators. "Hindsight is 20/20," he said. "I don't want to - I don't want to put myself in that position, but I can tell you that my position is always going to be as long as I'm parish president, the pump operators will never be evacuated outside of Jefferson Parish."