First-hand accounts and other Katrina news

[buggery]

This first link is actually not specific to the situation now facing the nation with regard to Katrina -- it appears to have been written sometime before the last few days of August -- but it has chilling implications for the distribution of relief resources for evacuees as well as anyone else who has been affected by Katrina's destruction throughout the lower Mississippi (river) region: The 'New Poor' Versus The 'Old Poor': Who Gets Prioritized? by freelance writer Kirsten Anderberg. Sobering historical precedents are cited which we all ought to keep in mind in the coming weeks -- and make sure any organisation we contribute (time, goods, money, publicity) to, as well as any elected or appointed government officials with a say in what happens to Katrina survivors being succored in our own areas, understand that we will not accept any division of the have-nothings from the have-less-than-nothings. If and when we see any example of this -- I'm looking at YOU, former First Lady Barbara Bush -- we must immediately and loudly speak out against it... and *keep on* making noise until things are made right.

(Current White House talking-point spin on Barbara's remarks is that they were 'personal'. I'm sure it will cheer the hundreds of thousands of people accused of *profiting* from the loss of every possession they owned, not to mention friends and family members who are missing and possibly dead, to know that they were *personally* insulted by the mother of the man who's running this country, and that the executive branch itself can't be bothered to stop lying long enough to add any further *direct* insult to their grievous injuries.)



Now, some more first-hand accounts.

Rabbi Yossi Nemes, Director of the Chabad Center of Metairie, Louisiana (just upriver from New Orleans proper) describes the situation as waters rose and people discovered, sometimes despite their preparations, that immediate evacuation was simply impossible. (As near as I can tell, a Chabad Centre is something like a Jewish Hasidic Community Centre. For further clarification of this point, see lomedet's comments below, which I won't attempt to condense or paraphrase.) Some key moments from his story:

"Some elderly people had no way of leaving and needed to be walked through a virtual checklist of items that they should bring up to the highest floor."

"[W]e discovered that leaving by car now bore a significant risk factor. News reports presented a dismal picture of the highways backed up with hours of traffic while the storm loomed closer. If we ended up stuck on the highway, G-d forbid, in the middle of the storm, our chances of surviving were far smaller than if we were to be in our brick, hurricane-fortified home."

"A medical rescue boat passed by and they screamed up to me to make sure no one in our home was in danger. I directed them to the others on the block whom we knew had stayed. They warned us not to venture into the water as there were many downed power lines and they had also seen poisonous snakes. They assured us that they would return the next day to check on everyone, but we never saw them again."

"I sloshed through the mud to reach him across the street and discovered that he and his elderly wife had been without food for a full day. The woman suffered from heart problems and was in great need of hospital care. They had been unable to contact anyone."


I could not find an official statement by actor Sean Penn, even though, as most of us have heard, the actor went to New Orleans earlier in the week -- to help, Penn himself has said; or as an ill-thought-out publicity stunt, as is now predominantly being reported by our news media. What I eventually found wound up meriting its own LJ entry, which I will link to from here once I get it posted I finally finished and posted. And here it is: My heroic search for the story of Penn's rescue efforts.


From rynia (taken from comments originally posted here):

"As a resident of Lafayette, Louisiana - one of the areas that's being *overwhelmed* by refugees at the moment - I don't know what to think. I don't have cable, so I can't keep up with the official news. The most news I get is from the emergency medical personel (sp?) themselves - I do the fire watch for the dorm where they are housed.

(Basically, the dorm didn't pass fire inspection, so it couldn't be used this year. The fire marshall let the university house EMTs there on the condition that someone walks the halls of each floor every hour. That's my job.) Some of the stories I'm hearing are just... It makes you lose faith in humanity."

(At this point, Te and I asked Paige to share more details of what she was seeing and hearing in Lafayette.)

"My name is Paige Gautreaux - feel free to quote me and use it. Since I'm pretty sure you can find the big news in New Orleans, I'll tell you about the things that are hitting close to home for me.

"All apartments/hotels in Lafayette are completely full. I live in some bug infested shitholes right off campus that are completely full. They get several calls every hour about possible reservations. Immediately after the hurricane, they timed it - another call every three minutes. Bancroft dorm, housing the EMTs has run out of beds on firesafe floors. The new men coming in are camping on the ground.

"You can't walk anywhere without seeing cop cars and/or ambulances.

"Cars with UNO/Tulane/Loyola stickers are *everywhere*. All of my classes, even the specialized honors course on New Testament Greek, have new students. Signs, also, are everywhere, requesting donations and volunteers.

"The local grocery stores are almost sold out of even the most basic supplies. Fast food places are also running out of food - the local Burger King is completely out of chicken strips. Most food places around here had supply depots in New Orleans.

"Business and school shops have shortened their hours. Only two buildings that I know of are open 24-7. The local Sonic has taken to closing at 10 on the weekends. The local PJ's coffee shop closes at *6* on the weekends.

"The Cajundome is no longer being used as a refugee camp. The situations there... One friend of mine had walked there with a friend of his whose car was parked in their parking lot. They met a woman who appeared to be frothing at the mouth. She managed to choke out that she had gotten a glass of water from someone who appeared to be a colunteer. After getting her to an EMT, they learned that her water had been spiked with bleach.

"Gas prices are *insane*. Anywhere with a price under $3.00 is completely out of gas.

"It's not safe to walk campus alone at night - and this is a relatively small campus. It's not even particularly safe to walk during the day, but what can you do?"


Survival of New Orleans Blog: "This journal exists to share firsthand experience of Hurricane Katrina her aftermath with anyone interested."

interdictor is part of a group of people who remained in downtown New Orleans throughout the crisis in order to keep essential services running.
Where exactly they are located.
Who the other members of the team (besides the journal owner) are.
Why they remained in the city.

A 1 September interview conducted via cellphone with a man stuck at the Convention Center. Excerpt: "They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them."

Report of police staging area set up for 60 officers on the 18th floor of a central business district building in preparation for the storm on Sunday 28 August.

Flags flying over New Orleans on Monday 29 August, and other observations.

Why it's easy to despair in an ongoing crisis situation, and why the Camp Crystal folks were not despairing on Tuesday 30 August.

Reports of looting and flooding on the afternoon of 31 August.

Conditions for NOPD forces in New Orleans on Thursday 1 September: bad. From later the same day, various updates, a plea to Bush for desperately needed federal intervention, and good news about relief efforts being arranged for through privately-owned business.

From entries on Friday 2 September: The NOPD wants to know where 'the two active duty brigades' were that he says they were told were supposed to arrive today. When I asked him what he would want to tell the world, he said 'Everyone keeps talking about the military presence in the city,' and then asked me, 'Do you see any military around here?' in disgust. And later: Bunch of stressed out, trigger-ready police and military types driving by suspicious as all hell. It's not safe just standing out on the street even if you look like you belong there.

Via email received Saturday 4 September, many elderly and/or ill individuals still in flooded areas unable to venture out for either supplies or evacuation are being left in danger despite information on their exact locations and conditions being available.

From Sunday 4 September: A lot of the already homeless refused to leave without their shopping carts. So they won't go near the evac centers, even though we have heard reports that the helicopters will now allow people to bring their shopping carts with them.

And from earlier today, Friday 9 September, 'confirmation that law enforcement or military personnel are confiscating lawfully owned weapons': "So there you go, go ahead and grab your pocket-sized copy of the constitution and tear out Amendment II. It should be the first one on the page, because if you've been keeping track, Amendment I should have been torn out years ago. I don't mean to make this a debate about guns, but what I want is for the law to be the law, and that means if the we don't like Amendment II anymore, we need to just go ahead and repeal it, not ignore it."

Peruse the journal for many, many firsthand accounts I have not specifically linked to.

Click here to search Survival of New Orleans Blog entires by date (August).
Click here to search Survival of New Orleans Blog entires by date (September).
Live cam mirror #1 -- Live cam mirror #2 -- Live cam mirror #3
Mirror site for all still images from SoNO blog site
Off-LJ mirror for interdictor's journal


Orlando Sentinel (FL) reporter Kevin Spear spent the night of Sunday 4 September-Monday 5 September in New Orleans' Garden District. "A bottle of oxygen, not firepower, was all an 84-year-old lifelong New Orleans resident needed. Yet when she sought medical help, she was taken to the airport and was told she would be flown to another part of the country." (There are two pages to this article; don't miss page 2.)


Older posts on this blog dealt with surviving and evacuating from Katrina. This post in particular describes the blogger's 'six-hour marathon session of Disaster Relief Bingo' on Tuesday 6 September as he filled out various agencies' relief paperwork in Tallahassee, where he had been evacuated to.


Previously posted about in my LJ, a first-hand account of being stranded by Hurricaine Katrina and the difficulties faced by those trying to evacuate, by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, emergency medical services workers from San Francisco who were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck.


Edited to add -- new link: A separate post in my LJ with links to and excerpts from an account of a campground in Oklahoma which FEMA planned to house evacuees at... where they would receive only two meals a day for up to five months, unauthorised visitors like the camp's owners and charity groups would be denied access and barred from donating additional food or other assistance, and evacuees housed there would have no real option to leave the grounds.

Edited (11 September) with another new link: Nearly 200 photos taken in New Orleans before, during and after Katrina struck by a man named Alvaro, all with descriptive captions for context. (Thanks to teenygozer for pointing me to that link.)

Finally, a little bit of good news: Michael D. Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, today was relieved of his duties overseeing recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region. ...the hurricane-recovery mission would now be led by Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, the third-ranking officer in the Coast Guard.

Don't cheer yet.

Brown has NOT been fired. He remains FEMA director, and Michael Chertoff, who announced Brown's reassignment, is still running the Department of Homeland Security (in circles).

Vice Admiral Allen's assignment *is* good news, no question. Having authority over continuing rescue, recovery, relocation and rebuilding efforts will no doubt save lives, prevent deprivation and injury, and eliminate needless delays in getting aid to already-devastated survivors and their families.

But those survivors, those who did not survive, and we as a nation, and as human beings around the world -- we deserve better news than that.

Comments

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

Chabad = Chabad-Lubavitch, a branch of Ultra-Orthodox Hasidim (very, very religious Jews). They run outreach centers all around the world, doing general community work and outreach within the Jewish community (their goal = creating more observant Jews). a Chabad center is *not* a general 'Jewish Community Center', but it is a place that scared Jewish tourists (especially traditionally observant ones) might call to get information in a time of crisis.

I hope that made sense - feel free to ask clarifying questions if I forgot to translate any jargon.

also, thanks so much for your ongoing Katrina posts. not owning a TV and being stuck on dial-up at home, it's been so useful having a lot of the important points culled for me. and happy birthday!

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Thanks. And thank you!

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I keep reading your posts on this and kind of.... boggling.

When I'm not enraged, anyway.

Thank you for keeping us informed. And.... damn. I never wanted to see days like these. I only wanted to read them.

[vylit.livejournal.com]

This situation is fucking tragic and overwhelming and I think this article best explains what has me so pissed off at the moment.

I don't know how Barbara Bush can be so fucking nonchalant about people losing their friends, loved ones, and homes. I don't understand how Bush can see so many people suffer and not be completely focused on doing anything and everything to help.

I was watching CNN and they interviewed a man who had lost his home and his wife, and when the reporter asked him what he was going to do now, he said he didn't know and started to cry. And - God, that's what really breaks my heart. These people lost their security, they lost their families and employment, and if that isn't enough, they lost the illusion that their government cared about them.

[kadymae.livejournal.com]

To put a new spin on the immortal words of Bull Connor, for Bush, this is a simple case of mind over matter.

Bush doesn't mind because to him, poor folks don't matter.

Water spiked with bleach

[(Anonymous)]

Just FYI, the water spiked with bleach may not have been an intentional poisoning. Adding a small amount of bleach to water kills off the potential pathogens, it's one of the ways to make potable water on the small scale. The problem with doing this in NOLA is that the water there is also contaminated with toxic chemicals, which the bleach will do nothing to remove. Also, you shouldn't do the bleach trick if you've just heard about it, as AFAIK, it is very tricky to get the proportions right (I *believe* its something like a tablespoon of bleach to a gallon of water, but its been a number of years since I read that).

-Malthus

Re: Water spiked with bleach

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I don't see how it could have been anything *but* deliberate. Here are the details again:

The Cajundome is no longer being used as a refugee camp. The situations there... One friend of mine had walked there with a friend of his whose car was parked in their parking lot. They met a woman who appeared to be frothing at the mouth. She managed to choke out that she had gotten a glass of water from someone who appeared to be a [v]olunteer. After getting her to an EMT, they learned that her water had been spiked with bleach.

This event took place in Lafayette, where there was no need to treat local water yourself. The woman had been handed the water by someone who either was, or was impersonating, a relief volunteer. Finally, the amount of bleach it takes to make someone that sick is enough that it's extremely unlikely to have been done accidentally; think about how much bleach is in swimming-pool water, yet that's (relatively) safe to drink.

I wish I could believe that your non-intentional theory was plausible. I prefer to be an optimistic pragmatist. But I have to go with the EMT on this one.

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

I am going to click through the links you're posting here. I started with the new vs. old poor article. Would it be ok if I used some of these links on my other journal? I know you went to a lot of effort to collect them, so I don't want to just steal them.

I appreciate you doing so much leg-work for everyone else.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to say my links were helpful to you. I don't do that enough, myself, with this stuff, but it's heartening to hear.

You can absolutely repost any links you find here. That's really the point of all my Katrina posts -- to get the word out to as many people as possible. So yeah, spread them around (I don't even mind if you don't mention where you found them, not that credit isn't appreciated) and don't forget to tell people you know who don't spend half their lives online... anybody who's getting all their news from the TV and/or newspapers *isn't* getting all their news, even now. The non-partisan outrage, unfortunately, is already being eroded in the mainstream media.

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm from the Gulf Coast, so all I ever talk about anymore is Katrina (my personal lj is k_sims.

I did give you credit, even if you don't care either way.

The thing about the so-called media is that they are a corporation. When your reason for existing is to make someone money, then you're not going to be all that concerned about those bothersome "facts".

I'm going home in a couple days to do volunteer work, so if I come across anything that might interest you, I'll let you know.

[ethrosdemon.livejournal.com]

also, re: contributing to aid groups.

have you seen this: http://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/katrinarelief.html