The retired Army 3-star general who was widely praised for his leadership as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina on Monday called for an evacuation of New Orleans.
Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, a native of Louisiana, was interviewed Monday evening by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell.
"The issue now is the grid is broke," Honoré told O'Donnell. "The grid is broke."
"Water and electricity is broke and I don't see how we're going to sustain half a million to a million people without clean water and without sewage in a metropolitan area or in the countryside," he said.
He called for FEMA to authorize hotel vouchers.
"We cannot keep that many people in that city with the grid as broke as it is right now," he said. "And on top of that, the electrical grid and water grid, the telecommunication grade is broken."
'I think that the language and the focus has to be now on encouraging people to evacuate by providing them hotel vouchers and FEMA as the capacity to do that, but that needs to be the charge of the day once the search and rescue is completed," Honoré said.
Watch:
Retired Lt Gen Russel Honoréwww.youtube.com
