Re: what went on in new orleans

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 04:00:15 -0000, awouk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Arthur
Wouk) wrote ( from an article by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth
Slonsk7 - excerpts)


>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.

>Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There
>was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be
>lost


What a terrible story of the suffering of New Orleans survivors who
were trying to help themselves only to be thwarted at every turn by
those they expected to help them ! Everyone should read this :

Hurricane Katrina - Our Experience.

maureen

> received in my email from my nephew.
>
>>>From the blogosphere:
>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 was now 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 the arrived to 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 been 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 the police 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 crowed 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 pasted 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.
>
>This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
>reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her
>shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and
>toiletries with words of welcome.


>
>Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There
>was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be
>lost.

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