Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 14:27:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt Thompson
Subject: acct of NOLA experience

Sept 5, 2005

Fwd by Phil Gasper:

Two friends of mine--paramedics attending a
conference--were trapped in New Orleans by Hurricane
Katrina. This is their eyewitness report. PG

Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences by Larry Bradshaw,
Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans,
the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and
Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display
case was clearly visible through the widows. It
wasnow 48 hours without electricity, running water,
plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning
to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and
managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and
prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's
windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly
thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never
materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to
the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could
have broken one small window and distributed the nuts,
fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and
systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they
spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing
away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days
ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet
to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper.
We are willing to guess that there were no video
images or front-page pictures of European or affluent
white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French
Quarter. We also suspect the media will have been
inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard,
the troops and the police struggling to help the
"victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but
what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of
the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New
Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift
to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who
rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The
electricians who improvised thick extension cords
stretching over blocks to share the little electricity
we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking
lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators
and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into
the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive.
Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.
Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing"
boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their
roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire
any car that could be found to ferry people out of the
City. And the food service workers who scoured the
commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for
hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had
lost their homes, and had not heard from members of
their families, yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not
under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in
the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of
foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves,
and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and
shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone
contact with family and friends outside of New
Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of
resources including the National Guard and scores of
buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the
other resources must have been invisible because none
of us had seen them. We decided we had to save
ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with
$25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the
City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for
a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra
money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending
the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the
limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a
priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new
born babies. We waited late into the night for the
"imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never
arrived. We later learned that the minute they
arrived at the City limits, they were commandeered by
the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water.
Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation
and despair increased, street crime as well as water
levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and
locked their doors, telling us that the "officials"
told us to report to the convention center to wait for
more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we
finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards
told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as
the City's primary shelter had descended into a
humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further
told us that the City's only other shelter, the
Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and
squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone
else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to
the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our
alternative?" The guards told us that that was our
problem, and no they did not have extra water to give
to us. This would be the start of our numerous
encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on
Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we
were on our own, and no they did not have water to
give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a
mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed
to camp outside thepolice command post. We would be
plainly visible to the media and would constitute a
highly visible embarrassment to the City officials.
The police told us that we could not stay.

Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In
short order, the police commander came across the
street to address our group. He told us he had a
solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain
Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge
where the police had buses lined up to take us out of
the City. The crowd cheered and began to move. We
called everyone back and explained to the commander
that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong
information and was he sure that there were buses
waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and
stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses
are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for
the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we
marched past the convention center, many locals saw
our determined and optimistic group and asked where we
were headed. We told them about the great news.
Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and
quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again.
Babies in strollers now joined us, people using
crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people
in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the
freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now
began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our
enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs
formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we
were close enough to speak, they began firing their
weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in
various directions. As the crowd scattered and
dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to
engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told
them of our conversation with the police commander and
of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed
us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied
to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway,
especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane
highway. They responded that the West Bank was not
going to become New Orleans and there would be no
Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if
you are poor and black, you are not crossing the
Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New
Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek
shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated
our options and in the end decided to build an
encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain
Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe
and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be
visible to everyone, we would have some security being
on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for
the arrival of the yet to be seen buses. All day long,
we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the
bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with
gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally
berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners
were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the
City on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further
into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the
bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks,
buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could
be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to
escape the misery New Orleans had become. Our little
encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water
delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it
for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army
truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight
turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and
water; cooperation, community, and creativity
flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage
bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood
pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as
the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure
for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and
other scraps. We even organized a food recycling
system where individuals could swap out parts of
C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for
kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath
of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food
or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You
had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids
or food for your parents. When these basic needs were
met, people began to look out for each other, working
together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City
with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the
desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would
not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we
offered food and water to passing families and
individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our
encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned
that the media was talking about us. Up in full view
on the freeway, every relief and news organizations
saw us on their way into the City. Officials were
being asked what they were going to do about all those
families living up on the freeway? The officials
responded they were going to take care of us. Some of
us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an
ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the
sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a
Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol
vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get
off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and
used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy
structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his
truck with our food and water. Once again, at
gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we
congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In
every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or
"riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay
together" was impossible because the agencies would
force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and
destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small
group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an
abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo
Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements
but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the
police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and
shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day,
made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were
eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue
team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed
to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young
guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the
Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section
of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were
shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks
they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift
had begun. The airport had become another Superdome.
We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights
were delayed for several hours while George Bush
landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After
being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we
arrived in San Antonio, Texas. There the humiliation
and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a
large field where we were forced to sit for hours and
hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were
forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties.
Those who managed to make it out with any possessions
(often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we
were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations
had been confiscated at the airport because the
rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had
been provided to the men, women, children, elderly,
disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be
"medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying
any communicable diseases.