Below are a compilation of the latest
Hurricane Katrina survivor stories that I have housed at dkosopedia. As several diarists have emphasized, it is incredibly important for us to keep a record of first hand accounts of survivors as the Bush administration and its cohorts begin the task of historical revisionsim. Please consider contributing survivor stories which you come across to the dkosopedia.
From URGENT FROM BOGALUSA...PEOPLE ARE F**KING DYING
...These people sent their kids to Texas and want to go there...it's a town south of Houston, the name escapes me now. These people have NOT seen the RC and scavange for food/water. She drove for an hour and waited in line for 9 hours to fill out the paperwork for getting RED CROSS vouchers and then was given a NUMBER and told to come back on MONDAY. Now you might think, well they must be in the middle of no where...WRONG, these people are on the ROAD THAT ALL THE GOVERNMENT agencies take to the main control center at least 10 times daily. FEMA never even got people to remove the trees off their roof, they had FRIENDS show up finally.
At my little 80 year old ladies home, I find out they haven't seen the RED CROSS for 2 days and they were out of food and water and needed medical attention and meds. I got them all of that.
While there, their young neighbor talked with the photo journalists who requested I talk to him and I find out that the RED CROSS REFUSED to talk to him, much less help him. This is a 36 year old man who has a wife with POLIO and they are living in a church with NOTHING. FEMA won't talk to them, they have no phone, etc.
From Down and Out in Bay St. Louis
...My time at the hotel ran out, it was booked, and there were no other hotels to take my family, I have four kids, and my sick mother South of Jackson needed supplies. For a week we lived in what I thought could be hell on earth, washing clothes in a bucket with whatever water I could get. The ice we did get we had to drive miles for on scanty gas rations. Twenty dollars of gas if you sit in line for three hours. Where I was wrong in those early days, was that hell was only beginning, I set for my hometown on the Coast, Bay Saint Louis, and the world crumbled into a kaliedescope of disturbing images, desperation, six hour lines for relief services, abundant MRE's, and the oppressive heat that challenges the stongest willed to keep on keeping on.
There is no excuse for the hell that people have had to suffer through these last 18 days. If there are final days about us, it is the Gulf Coast that has seen the first of the last.
From The National Guard WAS IN the Convention Center
here were 257 Louisiana National Guard troops INSIDE the New Orleans Convention Center from the Tuesday after Katrina until Thursday. They cowered in the back for two days, helped nobody, then evacuated themselves. I heard about it on All Things Considered, WaPo also mentioned it yesterday, but for some reason I seem to be among a vanishingly small number outraged.
The thought that 257 troops were not only incapable of assisting American citizens in distress in the same building with them, not only apparently incapable of defending themselves from people who desperately wanted help, but were apparently incapable of communicating the conditions inside the Convention Center to authorities outside boggles my mind. And it was okay with everybody up the line...
From A Place to Lay My Head - New Orleans to Austin
I spent several days under the Causeway Bridge for I-10, with only the clothes on my back. It was muddy and stank like nothing I have every smelled before. It was way too crowded, but I did get to see Jesse Jackson who came to help our people. I got there by taking a boat down Delachaise Street to St. Charles, and walked from St. Charles to Napoleon to a bus to go to Houston, but was instead dropped at the causeway bridge. The water was all in my house when I began making my way to safety.
I had nothing to eat for days, and could not eat the food here in the Convention Center, so I guess I had not eaten for six days when Mister Robert found me exhausted in the Convention Center and took me out to eat for some Crab meat bisque to get my strength back up. Now we have become friends, and I have my own place to sleep again tonight.
From Grandmother Accused of Looting Released, citing Grandmother Accused
"I thank God this ordeal is over," she said after being released from the parish jail. "I did nothing wrong."
---------------
A 73 year old woman was arrested in Gretna, LA the day after Hurrican Katrina hit, for taking $63.50 worth of food from a local grocery store because she was the only person the police could catch.
She was held on FIFTY THOUSAND dollars bail. I'll say that again. FIFTY THOUSAND dollars bail.
Even FEMA got involved in trying to get her released, but it took SIXTEEN days and an AP article to win her freedom. She will still have to appear in court on charges. Even the owner of the store she allegedly took the food from doesn't want her charged.
This is ludicrous. Yet another victim of the mindset that values property over people.
From Photos from St. Bernard Parrish (Plus: Racism vs. Relief Efforts)
My friend Joe, a Navy guy, sent me the following e-mail from St. Bernard Parrish, just outside of New Orleans:
"...it looks like we could be leaving soon. where we are at (st bernard parish right outside new orleans) is apparently all white and pretty redneck. They have been telling the chiefs off the boat they dont want any 'niggers' off the boat helping out'''... it is angering some of the higher ups onboard. supposedly the general who is in charge here went to the (whatever the head of a parish is called)'s house with the second in command off my ship and he wouldnt let the general in because he is black. he let the two guys off my ship in, and the general had to wait outside. fuck! i am amazed we havent left already! the general outranks everyone here!"
From AMERICAN SHAME: The Edgar Hollingsworth Story, citing Survivor rescued 16 days after the hurricane
The story of Edgar Hollingsworth brings me to tears. This man could be my late father. Did Mr Hollingsworth work his entire life, then retire ? (like my father)...
"...'''In the past few days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ordered searchers not to break into homes. They are supposed to look in through a window and knock on the door. If no one cries out for help, they are supposed to move on.''' If they see a body, they are supposed to log the address and move on...Fell broke the rules and ordered his men to bash open the door, launching a series of events that would save a man's life and revitalize California Task Force 5 from Orange County...But Tuesday, 16 days after Hurricane Katrina smacked this aging community in the face, an unconscious and emaciated man identified as Edgar Hollingsworth, 74, was rescued. The man is expected to survive...Medics from California Task Force 5, which had been searching in the same neighborhood, were eventually able to get intravenous fluids through a vein under the man's clavicle in an intricate curbside medical procedure that may have saved the man's life...
The man had been lying on the couch in his locked and sweltering home."
From Airboat rescue/recovery effort killed by FEMA
The latest situation in this entire matter is that the young man, Miles is his first name, has chosen to park his airboat and just let the military and Coast Guard conduct the final recovery effort.
Miles went to Louisiana with a pure heart and the best of intentions; after receiving an armed escort to the "control" center, he was met by a man with poor judgment and no clue of the consequences of the decisions he was making. Miles, and others, were turned away - and more people died.
Would you please help me to inform so many wonderful people who have kindly offered money to help pay for the gasoline for Miles? Their generosity, although gratefully acknowledged, will not be needed in this matter.
From New Orleans Survivors: Starting from Scratch
When I visited Camp Draper last Wednesday, I expected to meet people who were angry about unknowingly being flown to a state that couldn't be more different from Louisiana. What I found were people who were happy to be safe and who wanted nothing more than to share their stories, especially those who had been trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center without food and water. "There were horror scenes all over," says 20-year-old Cornell Perkins. "People scouring for food, water, Pampers for babies. Two or three babies died. It was very tragic. "
Perkins was in the convention center for four days until a charter bus picked him up and took him to the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. How did he feel when he found out he was on his way to Utah? "I felt bad at first. I'm like, what are we doing in Utah? I thought we were going to San Antonio like the National Guard told us. Man, we wound up far away from the south, but I've adjusted and I'm about to start my life over here in Utah."
Survivor Stories, Part I.