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Hurricane
Katrina-Our Experiences
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
windows. It was now 48 hours without
electricity, running water or 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 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 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 f***ing 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 of 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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