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Wesley Hogan
Andrew Hemmert
English101-75
10/12/14
Katrina up Close, in Jed Hornes Real Ugly, Real Fast
Jed Hornes excerpt Real Ugly, Real Fast, from his book Breach of Faith: Hurricane
Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City, talks about the terrible conditions of New
Orleans as well as the poor handling of the situation by highly ranked officials. He focuses on
primary sources of people who experienced Katrina first hand. These stories pull you into the
situation and give you an emotional connection to those who played a role in Hurricane Katrina.
Horne begins the article by explaining that the mandatory evacuation was a serious
warning to the people of New Orleans (227). The Superdome would be open to people who
couldnt find a way out but was a last resort only. Still, thousands disregarded this warning or
couldnt find a way to evacuate (Horne 227). Many of the people that went to the Superdome had
special needs and were received and cared for by workers from the Department of Social
Services (DSS) (Horne 228). Local nursing homes dropped off vanloads of residents that had
been neglected or forgotten about (Horne 229). Marty Bahamode, the only FEMA representative
at the scene, was alarmed by the lack of doctors, medical supplies and toilet paper (Horne 229).
The roof began to disintegrate and water started to leak into the stadium. The sewage system had
failed, the lights went out and it became extremely hot (Horne 234). After the storm, people
came to the dome seeking medical attention. They scavenged any cloth they could to protect
people from the filth that covered the floor. Most of which was floodwater, mixed with human
blood, urine, and feces (Horne 235). By Monday afternoon FEMA was aware of breaches in the
Seventeenth Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal and the Industrial Canal leaving eighty

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percent of the city underwater (Horne 236). Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security director,
claimed he first heard about the levee breaches on Tuesday morning which was widely
considered to be a lie (Horne 237). Meanwhile, President Bush was vacationing at his ranch and
didnt show up to New Orleans until Wednesday (Horne 237). FEMAs director, Joe Allbaugh,
helped Bush fundraise for his 2000 campaign and was rewarded with this position (Horne 238).
City officials neglected to tell Ivor van Heerden, a Hurricane Expert, information that couldve
saved hundreds of people (Horne 239). When van Heerden was able to get into the air and see
the Chaos in New Orleans he saw riots in the streets and at least twenty-eight breaches in the
levee system (Horne 241). By Wednesday, communication systems such as landlines and cell
phones had failed (Horne 241). The crowd in the superdome was trapped without any food or
water (Horne 242). Despite Bahamodes increasingly desperate measures to show his boss how
dire the situation was, Allbaugh put in very little effort to help the people of New Orleans. The
leadership all over the U.S. shows how incompetent and unprepared they were to face the
tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.
In the article Real Ugly, Real Fast, Jed Horne describes in great detail the horrors that
occurred leading up to, during, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The rhetorical strategy
most used by Horne was Pathos. He targets the readers emotions by describing the situations so
the reader feels as though they are really there. He also tells stories from individuals that show
how this event changed the lives of so many. Ethos comes into play when Horne tells the stories
of some of the people that experienced Hurricane Katrina first hand. The facts and statistics that
are rattled off are the logos rhetorical strategy and they help you put things in perspective to gain
a better understanding of the situation. Overall, Horne does an adequate job of using these
strategies to pull the reader in and get his point across in an effective way.

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The first person Horne brings up is Sherry Watters. She is used as a reference to show the
readers what the Hurricane was like for a person that was in the Superdome. Not only was she
there, but she was the one helping those with special needs. The fact that Watters was a worker
from the DSS makes her a credible resource to learn about Katrina. These resources are Hornes
way of bringing the ethos rhetorical strategy into the article. The second person he mentions is
Marty Bahamode, the only person from FEMA on the scene and, judging from the rest of the
article, the only FEMA representative that tried to make a difference. Horne then shows how the
credibility of Joe Allbaugh, Bahamodes boss, is terrible since he essentially bought his way into
becoming the FEMA director. This was despite his belief that FEMA was an oversized
entitlement program. (Horne 238) This makes the reader believe that he did not care about the
people of New Orleans. Basically, Horne uses ethos to show that most officials were not
prepared for this disaster and the few who were didnt have enough power to make a big
difference.
The logos rhetorical strategy is introduced in the first paragraph in which Horne says the
Red Cross would no longer deploy volunteers and resources south of Interstate 12. (227) This
shouldve been enough warning for the people to realize that staying in New Orleans would be a
bad idea. This appeals to the logical sense because without any resources, people could get
trapped and possible not be able to survive. Horne would later say that FEMA had paid for the
hypothetical Hurricane Pam study it would soon pretend not to remember, and the scenario
would prove to be notably accurate. (230) If FEMA had taken a logical approach to the
hurricane, they wouldve had the resources they needed simply by looking at the data collected
from Hurricane Pam. FEMA had also promised a Disaster Medical Assistance Team that never

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showed up, which would greatly contributed to the chaos in the Superdome. Their lack of
preparedness for the hurricane demonstrates their illogical approach to helping those in need.
Finally, the pathos rhetorical strategy is what Horne is using throughout the majority of
the article. He talked about the horrible conditions of the dome. The stench, darkness, heat, lack
of medical supplies, and the fact that the dome was beginning to flood with human feces, blood
and urine were some of the things that made the reader feel sympathetic for those trapped in the
dome. One of the DSS workers, Sherry Watters explained that people were constantly coming in
and looking for friends and relatives. When the storm arrived, Watters surprisingly got a phone
call from a fourteen year old boy named Damon whom shed mentored at an after school
program. He was having an anxiety attack because he and his grandparents evacuated without his
mother and sister. They were stranded on their roof and according to the boy they couldnt hang
on anymore (Horne 233). He felt extremely scared and guilty for leaving without them. Watters
calmed him down and told him to be strong but couldnt talk for long because of the chaos in the
Dome. The fact that people were abandoning their elders to the medical staff at the Dome, The
thousands of people stranded in the Dome and almost thirty thousand tourists stranded in their
hotels elicit even more sympathy towards the people stranded in New Orleans (Horne 237).
These are just a few of the stories mentioned in the article that give us an idea of how badly those
in New Orleans had it. This evokes sadness and pity from the reader which shows that the
authors use of pathos was effective.
Hornes use of these rhetorical strategies give a more vivid description of the themes
being portrayed throughout the article. He is able to effectively balance these strategies in order
to give more depth to the story. After reading the excerpt from Hornes book, you are able to
understand the significance of Hurricane Katrina and see that the situation couldve been handled

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much more efficiently. The uses of ethos, logos and pathos persuade the reader to accept Jed
Hornes opinions about the handling of Hurricane Katrina.

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Works Cited
Horne, Jed. Real Ugly, Real Fast. 2006. Mercury Reader. Natural Disasters ed. Carbondale: Dr.
Tara Hembrough & Jerrica Jordan, 2014. 226-243. Print.