During Katrina, he and his councilors requested boats and rescued hundreds of people who took refuge on rooftops when the flood occurred. However, Rodriguez reached national fame in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as a regular guest to CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. Hurricane Katrina and related levee failures resulted in almost all homes and businesses of St. Bernard Parish being catastrophically flooded. Most had to permanently evacuate their house, and as of early 2006 the majority of the returned population were in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing trailers.