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Two posts: "They'll use you for target practice" --NOPDby not lois
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005 at 17:26:18 EDT
My friend is ALIVE!
I'm so happy, I'm shaking. He got out on Wednesday night. His words, below the fold, with a Bush quote I hadn't heard yet:
every time you blink it gets worse. evacuated sunday, early morning..we had gone to mississippi, but then learned we weren't safe there. when I heard how terrible it was going to be, I had to return to new orleans to move my cats, as I knew my 1 story house would be flooded and maybe blown to bits. I just split to drive back there, because I knew everyone would try to stop me if I told them. I moved our cats to my brother in law's larger, sturdier house in Metairie. I planned to stay with them through the storm, but was inundated with calls saying I had to go to a hotel downtown where at least there were other people and supplies. I went there sunday night, and gave the animals lots and lots of food and water, thinking maybe it would be a day or two or three or at the worst, four, before I could return to them. Monday morning around 5 am the hurricane began getting intense. They evacuated us downstairs while it raged. By late afternoon it had mostly passed, leaving tremendous destruction in the business district where I was located. Most of it was wind damage. I came out just before sunset to survey the wreckage, which was extensive, to say the least. I thought..ok, many homes will be lost and it will take a long time to clean up the incredible mess, but we're alive and life will return. I went to bed and when I woke up tuesday morning, there was six feet of floodwaters covering the cars--a rainbow sheen of gas and chemicals as far as you could see. We were trapped. All power was down and the heat was close to unbearable. If the hurricane was a category 5 on monday, it turned into a category 19 when the levy broke...that was the beginning of the end of new orleans. As the floodwaters continued to rise, it was decided that, with heavy vehicles, we might be able to relocate to another place on drier ground. Everyone was packed and brought downstairs. They made us dip our legs into buckets of iodine before walking out into the floodwaters. I was in the back of a flatbed truck, as we crossed canal street. Marshalls with pump shotguns lined the median of the roadway while looters by the hundreds on both sides of the street were dragging everything you can imagine through the broken windows and out into the river of muck. I have lived in New Orleans a long time now, and seen many poor and desperate people, also angry people and scary characters you would not want to be alone with. But THESE people were something else...I've never seen them, I don't know where they came from. They bubbled up out of the sewers. It was like Liberia--stoned kids loaded down with weapons...completely crazed. The second hotel was already infested with these looters...they were going to the various downtown hotels, breaking in to steal the liquor supply and robbing anyone they found. We had no food or water at this second hotel, so the staff went back in trucks to the first one to try to rescue our supplies there. As they left, police gave our hotel staff loaded weapons and told them to do anything to get the guests out of the city, because we would likely be killed. "They will use you for target practice" was what I was told. By some miracle, which I still can't begin to fathom, they were able to commandeer a bus to baton rouge for 55 people---no more. I made it. That was my ticket out of hell.
today, Bush was in Mobile Alabama...smile smile...chuckle.."and the good news is...and the good news is.." Later, he said (I wrote it down) "There's a lot of chaos right now on the Gulf Coast. Trent Lott's house was destroyed. But we're gonna build a new house there...a beautiful house. And I'm gonna sit on the porch."
I'm waiting to wake up--it is so horrible. I'm at my brother's in houston. I hear his infant screaming at night, and I feel like I'm listening to the sound of my own mind. Ripple Effect: Eyewitness, Baton Rouge I'm sitting cozy up in the Great Plains watching and hurting. Being this far away has helped me appreciate how the boulder was dropped on New Orleans, but the ripples are forming tsunami type waves soon to hit. There will be no section of these United States that will NOT be touched. Upon receiving this email, I had to start this awareness drumbeat. I have purposely removed identifying marks from it. You'll have to just guess why I did that. This is from a college kid. 22 years old. He's with compatriots with the same training and skillset. Now focus on the ripple - this is Baton Rouge. Once filled up to overflowing with humanity, where will it go next? See the extended entry for the "censored" email, and to pre-empt the question. This message was received in the past 24 hours. yes I am still alive.
I have been doing rescue operations for the past few days and I am just getting a chance to check my personal email. I have been working around the clock, getting a few hours of sleep when I can.
THIS IS PURE HELL. The refugees are coming in by the thousands. They have nothing but the clothes on their back. We keep shoving people into shelters, making them sleep on concrete floors with no padding. The blankets and few cots we have go only to the critically ill. We are short on food, water, medicine, and fuel. At most locations, we are not even dealing with the dead bodies anymore, just pushing them out the way to reach those still alive.
Riots have broken out at many locations, even here in Baton Rouge. It is no longer safe to go to any store here in BR. Most of BR is under lockdown. Martial law is in effect for most areas. People are desperate.
I sat and listened to a man tell me that he was trying to find a gun so that he could rob a bank as soon as possibile. He felt that if law officials killed him, it would be worth it since he was trying to provide for his family mambers that were still alive.
Hostages are being taken in some locations here in Baton Rouge. Law no longer exists in New Orleans.
The news media is only getting half the story. I have seen a lot over the past few days, and I can tell you what is really going on. There is chaos at most shelters because we do not have the supplies we need.
People are willing to kill over a blanket and a warm meal. Our detachment has turned into a command center run by cadets. Think of times one thousand in terms of intensity. Civilian volunteers are coming to us because they are tired of the Red Cross people in the field not knowing what to do.
We at least have the skills to lead people, something the other agenices lack horribily. I am making life or death decisions, I am soaking in sweat, my muscles hurt, and I have others' blood on me. I am taking a break now before 50,000 more refugees get here.
I don't know how many more will come tomorrow. I am not sure when school will start again. I am not sure if I even care. My house in XXXXX survived, but many of my friends no longer have a home. Many no longer even have a hometown, it simply does not exist anymore. LSU is filled with students' families. I am not even sure who else is living in my on-campus apartment right now.
I will try to send out another email later. Right now, saving people and keeping them alive is all I really care about. I don't know what else to say. This is a nightmare.
My God, where do we go from here? We should be collecting stories like these. |
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