Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 11:07 PM
Subject: Saramago’s Blindness Revisited — an eyewitness account from
New Orleans

Dad –

Forward this message to your friends in the department (and elsewhere)
– it is quite something.

Begin forwarded message:

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

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”.

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.