The people mentioned in this email forward do, in fact, exist. This goes beyond incompetence. It’s what makes the natural disaster so terrible. It shows why our Maine Presdient in a big hat is unfit to lead. It demonstrates the total lack of morality in the sociopolitical system championed by “his” administration.
The following is a message from Tobias Wolff to his father, Robert Paul Wolff, professor in the Afro-American Studies Department at UMass
Amherst, and contains an eyewitness account of two friends of Tobias who
were trapped in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Two friends of mine-paramedics attending a conference-were trapped
in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is their eyewitness report.
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 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 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”.
(Continued in Part 2)
