- This is the hurricane
New Orleans has feared for decades.
- During Hurricane Katrina,
FBI headquarters wanted a presence
to remain in the office.
- There's communications gear and certain sensitive items
that can't be unattended.
- And then the rain bands started coming.
[wind howling]
- The roof literally peeled off like a sardine can.
- Unbelievable.
- Wind is coming straight down in the building.
- Water's pouring down the walls.
The telephone poles were snapping,
and it's like we're going to die in this building.
[dramatic music]
- I've flown 130 combat hours in Somalia,
but flying in New Orleans
was one of the most dangerous environments
I've ever flown in.
Helicopters were getting shot at
from lots of criminal elements.
- We were afraid that people would try to break in.
We have drugs in our evidence room.
We have an entire vault of guns.
A white van pulled up,
and the guy that stepped out had a shotgun in his left hand.
- Did they say anything? Did they talk to you?
- No, no.
I could tell that they were looking for not food,
not water, not help.
They were looking for trouble.
[tense music]
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪ ♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent-to-agent.
♪ ♪
This is "FBI True."
[suspenseful music]
- I'm glad you guys came in today to talk to me
because I can't believe it's going to be 20 years
for Hurricane Katrina.
- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year veteran of the FBI.
She worked Organized Crime, Terrorism, Drug Trafficking,
and Money Laundering.
- So this is your story of survival during Katrina.
Take me back to when it happened.
- Friday night, watching the news,
hurricane coming across Miami, barely paid attention to it.
It's supposed to what, go up into the panhandle of Florida?
Go to bed. No big deal.
I get up, I'm headed out to get some groceries.
And the phone rings
and it's the supervisor from the field office.
And he says, hey, do you want to come in tomorrow
for the actual hurricane?
And I'm like, what hurricane?
- Todd Heflin was a police officer
and an attorney before he joined the FBI in 2003.
He retired as chief of the FBI's
Critical Incident Response Group's legal unit in 2025.
- I called him back and said I'll come in tonight.
Volunteering for the hurricane was
just something I like to do.
- And Saturday, the posture of everything changed.
Katrina at that time was a 3 barreling towards New Orleans.
And they predicted it was going to get to a Category 5.
- What can you tell us about the latest of Katrina, Bill?
- Well, it's not good news. More bad news keeps coming in.
- We're stressing that anybody that can leave,
please do so now.
- As I'm driving down the road,
I look and I notice gas stations are full.
People are backed out on Vets Boulevard
trying to get in.
- We've got oil,
we've got water, we've got food.
Pray for us. Pray for all of New Orleans.
[tense music]
- I drove against traffic to the FBI field office.
The field office sat up on the lakefront,
probably six, seven miles from downtown.
And it was kind of on this big, flat plain
just inside the levee from Lake Pontchartrain.
- During a natural disaster event,
FBI field offices mostly evacuate,
but someone has to remain in the building at all times.
- There's a SCIF in every FBI field office,
and it's got certain communications gear
and certain sensitive items that can't be unattended.
Foreign nation state actors
would love to get their hands on some of this equipment.
So I helped secure the building on Saturday night.
It was all quiet.
- I had volunteered for prior hurricanes as well
and got a call from our ASAC,
can you come in Sunday morning really early
and relieve the switchboard operator
so they can evacuate with their families?
And I said, absolutely, so long as I could bring my two dogs.
I had two German shepherds at that time.
ASAC said, absolutely, bring the dogs.
You know, you're welcome.
- LisaMarie Freitas joined the FBI in 2002,
where she worked Terrorism and Crimes Against Children.
She left the FBI to become a federal prosecutor in 2006,
and is currently an investigative counsel
for the Department of Justice,
Office of the Inspector General.
- Our office was a relatively new building,
and it was sturdy.
And I thought, you know, we'll be OK.
I went in to relieve the switchboard operator,
and then everything shut down at noon.
And at that time, we knew that it was
a very dangerous hurricane.
- This is the hurricane
New Orleans has feared for decades.
Hotels are packed for hundreds of miles,
many people squeezed into shelters,
wondering what they will have to go home to.
- Our SAC Bernazzani said, look, the engineer called us
that had, you know, built the building
and said we need to evacuate.
That the building was not
built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
- That's not good to hear. - Yeah.
It didn't make us feel good. - No.
- And then he received a call from FBI headquarters
from the deputy director, who said that they wanted
a presence to remain in the office
regardless of the nature of the storm.
We couldn't leave the SCIF unguarded.
It was eight of us that made the decision to stay,
including Todd and myself and two task force officers
from New Orleans Police Department.
And at that point, our purpose was
to occupy the office and get it ready for the storm.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Scott, you're back in Virginia at Quantico.
Are you watching this on the news?
- I'm following it like the rest of the country on TV.
And as the date gets closer to landfall day on the 29th
between headquarters and CIRG,
they started making decisions that the New Orleans office
is going to need logistics support and medevac support.
- Scott Johnson was a decorated military
combat pilot before joining the FBI's Miami SWAT team
as a sniper in 1999.
He was a supervisory special agent
on the hostage rescue team before retiring in 2021.
- We had two Bell 412 helicopters.
We were told, gear up and launch down
when the storm's out of the way
and we can get the helicopters down there.
- At that point, the gravity of what's going to happen
has sunk in.
Like, this isn't going to be one
that skirts us or goes around us.
This is a Cat 5 coming across the Gulf
that's going to hit us head on.
And Sunday evening, we just--
we ate some dinner and just kind of waited.
That was a really strange feeling.
- With Katrina's worst on its way,
the last wave of people fled New Orleans overnight,
thousands of them looking for any place safe.
In the city itself,
deserted streets are just one more sign of the worry.
- And then the rain bands started coming.
♪ ♪
Power went out quick.
Power went out before the storm came.
♪ ♪
And I remember going to sleep.
And then at some point,
must have been 4:00, 4:30 in the morning,
there was banging on the door and they said, LisaMarie,
get up, get up, get up.
The roof, the roof.
So we get up, come out, and there's pieces of the roof...
in front of the building.
♪ ♪
- The roof literally peeled off like a sardine can.
- Like a tin can?
- And just rolled up and fell in the front parking lot.
♪ ♪
- I remember Todd and I
standing at the window on the third floor
and you're watching---
the telephone poles were snapping.
♪ ♪
And then there's like, air conditioning pieces
flying around in the wind.
♪ ♪
Water is pouring down the walls in the halls,
just coming down the side walls.
♪ ♪
We were just told, don't go upstairs,
don't go on the fourth floor.
But at some point, tiles started collapsing.
♪ ♪
And it's like, you know,
is this building going to make it?
Like, we really thought the building was going to collapse.
♪ ♪
- We lose the elevator cap,
so the wind is coming straight down the building.
And I'm not an engineer,
but at some point, I'd seen a show where they talk about
how wind in hurricanes knock buildings down.
It's not from the outside. Like, you don't blow them over.
Wind gets in the inside and it kind of pushes them apart.
And I just remember having that thought
as I'm, like, passing one of the elevator shafts
listening to the cables banging against the elevator door.
And at that moment you're like, we've got no place to go.
If the building comes apart and we don't die in the collapse,
what are you going to do?
Because looking outside, I can't imagine
being outside with those kind of winds.
- And I remember saying to Todd,
we're going to die in this building.
[wind howling]
♪ ♪
- There's this period of time at the height of the storm,
you think, I just don't have any control.
And in law enforcement, it's all about control.
You can work with people.
You can arrest people. You can predict them.
There's nothing you're going to be able to do--
- Mother Nature. - No, Mother Nature.
I can't control this
and it's just going to happen one way or the other.
♪ ♪
- We found a corner of the office
and we all sat on the floor.
And at that point, the two NOPD officers had their radios on,
and you could hear
people calling in dispatch for help.
- Like, we're in the attic.
I'm in the attic with my children.
Help us. Help us.
- The dispatchers were just like,
there's no help coming for you.
- You could hear their children crying...
- Ugh, it's horrible.
- And screaming in the background.
And, you know, just listening to that for--
it felt like, hours.
- And then we just all kind of, you know, hold fast
until the storm passes,
which is 9:30, 10:00 in the morning.
So Monday afternoon, we kind of thought things are good.
- I think most people thought the worst was over
because the storm was gone.
- Absolutely.
And everybody's focusing on the destruction
in the Mississippi coastline.
[somber music]
Those poor folks,
everything just got wiped out and washed out.
- What you're seeing are simply the pilings.
- Pilings.
- The entire bridge is gone.
- The country's like, New Orleanians are fine.
Right? They just had a storm that went over.
It's gone.
But the levees breach during the storm,
nobody really notices that
because New Orleans is a big city...
and it fills up like a bathtub.
♪ ♪
By late Monday evening,
we're dry because we're on a high point.
But the whole neighborhood across, it was just--
yeah, filled up.
♪ ♪
- The team guarding the field office
doesn't have access to boats or helicopters,
so they're unable to help,
even if theycould leave their post.
- And then nighttime came,
there's no light anywhere and you could hear gunshots.
[distant rapid gunshots]
- Did you know what that was? Why?
- Through our radio, we learned that the NOPD,
they were engaged in active gunfire
with people all over the city.
- Looters. - Looters.
- I think looters. - Yeah.
So that's really kicking off on Monday night.
- Well, we were afraid that people would try to break in.
We don't just have what's in the SCIF.
We have drugs in our evidence room.
We have an entire vault of guns.
[tense music]
And thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo.
And the power's out, so the locks aren't working.
- Do you have food at this point?
- We did not have as good a hurricane plan
as field offices do now.
♪ ♪
- There was definitely not adequate supply of the things
that we could have used, mainly food.
It was a very long, long night.
♪ ♪
On Tuesday, the city was still completely flooded.
Bernazzani called a meeting
and he said, listen, I want everybody geared up.
I want your weapons on.
We're going to take turns patrolling the property.
Todd and I were sort of patrolling the property.
And we were walking towards the front gate
and a white van pulled up.
♪ ♪
And the door slid open slowly,
and one guy got out,
but you could see that there were others behind him
in the van, probably seven to eight.
- Did they say anything? Did they talk to you?
- No, no.
And the guy that stepped out had a shotgun.
I could tell that they were looking for
not food, not water, not help.
They were looking for trouble.
They were looking to come into the building.
♪ ♪
- So they stood there
and they were contemplating what they were going to do,
because there's probably a good seven to eight
of them in the van and it's just the two of us.
I was absolutely terrified that they were going to overrun us.
- Todd and I raised our weapons and looked at them
and put my finger on the trigger.
And, you know, in law enforcement,
in the Bureau, you know, we're taught
you put your finger on the trigger,
that means you're willing to pull it.
- Right.
- The guy looked at us and he looked back and forth.
And my dogs are barking.
And my dogs are both German shepherds.
So to a stranger,
they might have thought they were police dogs.
And after what felt like forever,
they got in the van and they drove off.
♪ ♪
And I thought, they're going to come back tonight.
They're going to come back when we can't see.
They're going to break in here.
We're going to get attacked or worse.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- As the city's sort of devolving into chaos,
I remember listening to a newscast
and people had commandeered boats
and were loitering around through the neighborhoods
with boats looting, fully armed.
NOPD is getting crushed. They're losing officers.
♪
And I'm listening to that thinking,
it's just a matter of time.
They're going to come here, right?
It's just a matter of time.
- I was able to get a call through to an FBI agent
and said, we need reinforcements.
Like, there's not enough of us here to protect the building.
And she said, we're trying, we're trying.
And then the call was cut out.
- Scott, what are you doing during this time?
- We sent two helicopters down.
♪ ♪
So we kind of flew in behind the storm track.
And it was a 8-hour flight down to Baton Rouge.
We see New Orleans for the first time.
- I mean, what did you think when you saw it?
- It was catastrophic.
It looked like
you were looking at something on a movie.
[somber music]
You're looking at bodies.
Lots of bodies just floating in the water.
♪ ♪
Um, it's--uh, it was-- it was tragic.
Very tragic to see.
- When you pull back for a wide shot,
the scene is nothing short of apocalyptic.
If ever the cavalry was needed,
it is now and it is in New Orleans.
[tense music]
- I've flown 130 combat hours in Somalia,
but flying in New Orleans was one of the most
dangerous environments I've ever flown in.
Because even in war,
you've got good communications.
In New Orleans, there's no comms,
there's no air traffic control.
It's a non-radar environment.
There's hundreds and hundreds of helicopters
just circling the city looking for people to help.
♪ ♪
It was controlled chaos at best.
♪ ♪
- There's tens of thousands of people
fighting for their lives.
♪ ♪
I think the two parishes had 900,000 total.
- With no infrastructure. - No, none.
- No electric, no water.
Police department is cut down significantly.
We realized that we were going to need
a lot more logistical support with law enforcement.
There were a lot of rescue missions still going,
but for us at HRT,
the rescue missions turned into criminal relief missions
to support the PD to stop the looting,
to stop the violence.
♪
We called back to the HRT commander,
let them know, hey, we need the whole team down here.
♪ ♪
We started pairing up with a New Orleans officer
with different SWAT teams from the Bureau
and inserting them into hotspots.
I could hear gunfire.
[distant rapid gunfire]
The helicopters were getting shot at
from lots of criminal elements.
Which blew my mind in a peacetime environment.
♪ ♪
- At this point,
we hadn't eaten or slept properly in three days.
The most terrifying part was just sitting up all night.
I didn't turn the radio on
because I wanted to hear everything and anything.
Any footstep.
I wanted to hear the dogs barking.
I wanted them to be able to hear,
and just was afraid of getting attacked.
Thankfully, that van of armed men
never returned to the field office.
- I remember talking to my girlfriend, my wife now,
and she had seen this thing on the news
where the retaining wall that kind of held my neighborhood,
noise wall, I guess, had broken.
And she tells me, she says, you've lost your house.
[somber music]
And I think that was the moment where it dawned on me
like, that's everything I own.
That's--that's everything.
And you're not going to get it back.
♪ ♪
And I remember that was a tough pill to swallow
to realize everything you've got's gone.
- So when did you two finally get out of the office?
- So Wednesday morning, you know,
we came out in the daylight
and a helicopter landed in the field next to the office.
They unloaded SWAT,
took a first load of passengers, and left.
- Three or four hours go by, and we're thinking
we're not getting out today. - We're not getting out.
Yeah. - Ugh.
- And the desperation, I'm like, I got to get out of here.
- Yeah. Yeah, we need to sleep.
We need to eat.
A couple of hours later, we see a helicopter
coming in our direction.
Chopper landed and said, you two coming?
- And I said, OK. You know, we had the dogs.
And he said, I'm not taking your dogs.
And I said, well, then I'll stay.
The SSA said something to him.
I don't know what he said.
To this day, I'm forever grateful,
but they ended up taking us out.
Todd and I lived in the same neighborhood.
And I remember elbowing you.
You were sitting on my left and looking down,
I'm like, that's the roof of my house.
That's all I can see.
- That's horrible.
[somber music]
- And I just looked at him and I'm like,
what am I going to do?
Like, I have nothing.
Like, everything I have is here.
I have two dogs and a bag of some things.
That's it. That's all I have.
♪ ♪
And they took us to the Baton Rouge office,
and the agents there took really good care of us.
- By the time we got to Baton Rouge,
then we got all the flood of news.
- Right.
- You know, what was going on in the convention center,
the Superdome.
- The horror show at the Superdome.
Close to 25,000 people were trapped there for days
in the heat and stink.
Thousands more baked on overpasses
along the interstate.
- This man jumped to his death
because he just couldn't take it no more.
♪ ♪
- United States Attorney General Gonzales,
he wanted to survey the damage.
We're flying around New Orleans,
and he gets over the radio and says, hey,
can you show me the breach site?
[helicopter whirring]
I'm at about 50 feet above the water, low and slow,
which is not good for a helicopter,
and I can hear something vibrating
louder and harder than our aircraft.
[tense music]
And it's big.
And I just have enough time to look over my left shoulder.
An Army Chinook flew within
probably 30 to 40 feet of us up above us.
- Wow. - That's close.
- I knew we were getting ready to get a lot of turbulence
from this aircraft.
I pushed the nose over at the same time
to try to start building forward airspeed
to get out of it.
And then my co-pilot starts reading my altimeter,
how high we are off the ground.
And we started at 50 feet
and all I can hear him say is 40 feet, 30 feet,
- Ugh.
- 22 feet, 15 feet, 13 feet,
15 feet, 18 feet, 20 feet.
- Ugh.
- So we got down to about 13 feet above the water.
- Lucky number 13. [laughter]
When we started pulling out of it,
I looked at my co-pilot and I said,
you realize we just about
killed the United States Attorney General?
One of my friends corrected me a couple years ago.
He said, Scott,
you didn't just about kill the attorney general.
The Chinook did. You actually saved his life.
So, Attorney General Gonzales, now you know.
[somber music]
- Nearly 1,400 lost their lives
as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
1 1/2 million people were displaced.
Around 40% of the evacuees weren't able to return home.
With over $200 billion in damage,
Katrina remains the most costly natural disaster
in U.S. history.
It took eight months for the New Orleans FBI office
to reopen.
♪ ♪
- So sitting here today, how do you reflect
on your Hurricane Katrina experience 20 years later?
- I think that was a life-changing event
that focused me on the things that mattered.
When you lose everything and you look around,
you realize that's not really as important as family.
And I think it led me down the path now.
I've been married for 18 years,
have a 16-year-old daughter.
- It amazed me coming back on flights,
whether it was midnight or 1:00 in the morning
or 2:00 in the afternoon,
members of the community had a big buffet table
lined up with hot food.
And it was every single day.
Not because they had to,
it was just, we're here to take care of you
and you guys are taking care of us.
It was amazing.
- I mean, for me,
it just made me see amongst the devastation
the kindness and the goodness of so many people.
♪ ♪
It also made me realize that, you know, life is short
and you have to take, you know,
value in stock of what you're doing and enjoy what's left.
Because for us, that could have been it.