Below are a compilation of
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 Houston Day III: "You will never know what happened in that city during the flood"
All the patients have stories to tell, most of them horrifying. One woman, who came in to get blood pressure medicine and to treat a skin rash, said:
You will never know what happened in that city during the flood. We saw people climbing to the attics of the houses, and then the water rose to where the whole house was under water. I'm sure those people never made it out. They died in their houses. I saw women with three-day-old babies in the Superdome, in the pitch black all night. With people shooting and dying. All you see in TV is the looters. But people were breaking into stores to get food. No one knew when help was coming. It was days, and we thought they had forgotten about us. There were old people, sick people. They should have sent in the army right away, but no one did anything. You will never hear the real story of what happened in those days.
From One family's three-day wait for rescue
...Only by the grace of God, by a miracle, a local volunteer came with a speed boat to our back yard.
He picked up the entire family, took us to a dry area, where a truck got us to the convention centre. There, we were told a bus would be coming to take us to the Astrodome in Houston. We thought it would be a matter of one or two hours. But it didn't come. There was no organisation, no one to ask. But it was a relief not to fear any more that we would be trapped by the water. We still had hope that a bus would come soon.
The night was just incredible. Lunatics, unruly people, scared the hell out of people. There were shots, everybody was in panic mode. There was no security, no police. We have been trying to make the kids as comfortable as possible but it is not easy."
Thursday
They told us a buses were available to move us out. We all lined up and waited for hours in the sun. No buses came, not a single bus. We were still getting no water or food. We drank and ate what we managed to bring, soda and cereals. People were sharing what they had...
From Arrest this kid? He deserves a medal!!!
Rather than die on the streets of New Orleans, a young guy named Jabbor Gibson grabbed on an abandoned bus and drove 7 hours straight to Houston, rescuing complete strangers, including women and children, according to the Houston Chronicle...
'About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.'
From Three Days in Hell by TPMCafe author Pascal Riche
[French Tourists at Louisiana's Superdome]...They evacuated people towards the barriers. A pregnant woman's water broke. Twice we heard gunshot and everyone dove for cover. We didn't have anything to eat, only water. The soldiers didn't car. Sometimes they joked amongst themselves. Once, a guy near the barrier had an epileptic attack. He was drooling and everything. We said to the soldiers, "Get him out of here for Christ's sake!." But a soldier said, "it will stop and he'll be alright."
One time, to amuse themselves, the soldiers threw bottles as hard as they could into the crowd, like in baseball. A woman was hit in the head. The Navy arrived and it was even worse: the soldiers did not stop yelling at us.
From The tourists are talking
...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 [there follows an incredible description of three days of needlessly abusive, gratitiously insulting treatment by NO police and military].
From Survivor Story: 6-Year-Old Leads Five Toddlers, Baby To Safety
In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard in New Orleans last Thursday, one group of survivors stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about two years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A three-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
From Charmaine Neville's chilling first hand account -- REAL heroism
We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door open on the roof of the school to help people to get them up onto the roof of the school. Later on we found a flat boat and we went around in the neighborhood in the flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school. We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad. By the second day, the people that were there that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food, no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming into our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters go across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us, "Hi," and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food, any water, nothing.
Alligators were eating people. They had all kind of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water. We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people, people that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old folks' homes. I tried to get the police to help us but I realized we rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the district police station.
From Physician who told off Cheney lost home in Katrina, detained, selling video on eBay
"I waved a middle finger at [Vice President Dick Cheney's] caravan," Marble wrote.
After driving the extra 20 minutes and filming video of destruction along the way, he made it to his home. Marble overheard a neighbor say that Cheney was down the street talking to people. That's when he got the idea to go meet Dr. Evil himself.
"I am no fan of Mr. Cheney because of several reasons," Marble wrote. "For those who don't know, Mr. Cheney is infamous for telling Senator [Pat] Leahy 'go fu** yourself' on the Senate floor. Also, I am not happy about the fact that thousands have died due to the slow action of FEMA, not to even mention the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e. Iraq."
From We Looted to Live]; an account of Liverpool tourists in New Orleans during Katrina
British tourists trapped in their hotel survived on American Army rations and used bottles of spirits to clean the toilets as conditions deteriorated.
The family barricaded themselves in their hotel when the storm hit and said the aftermath of the hurricane saw gunshots, explosions and looting every night in the lawless city.
Mr Scott said: "The American people were fantastic, they couldn't do enough for us. I wish I could say the same for the American authorities.
"We had 72 Army ration packs for 40 people for five days.
"We had to break into all the vending machines in the hotel and we got all the snacks out of those.
"I have nothing but contempt for the American authorities. The only person who seems to be trying to do anything is the Mayor of New Orleans and that man is banging his head against a brick wall."
From Interviewing Evacuees Who Unknowingly Land in Utah
John Tucker, 26
Searching for his mother Patricia Tucker
...The storm hit on Sunday and I was at home with my mother who has heart failure and uses a pacemaker. On Tuesday she didn't have any medicine, so I had to get her to a hospital. The police came on a boat and took her to the hospital. I stayed at the house without food until Sunday when it was mandatory for us to leave. Then I got on a plane and here I am.
...No. They didn't say anything until we got on the plane. On the plane, we said, 'Can you tell us where we're going?' And they said, "Uh, we don't know." I think they knew because if we had a choice, we'd say, 'We ain't going to Utah.' This was my first time flying so it was a big experience.
...They helped for most of it, but there was a lot of looting going on. They came and said we had to leave because the water was contaminated.
...No, I don't know where [my mother] is. I'm here by myself. She left Tuesday and I left Sunday. I'm guessing she's in Houston. I'm kinda messed up because I'm here by myself.
...I don't have anything right now. I don't have anything. No clothes. This is all new to me. Everyone has been nice, but I feel that since I'm out here, I need to do something because I don't have anything. My mother's house is destroyed. I want to get a job. I was a cook in New Orleans, so if I can get a job and make some money, I'll stay out here until I find my mother.
From From Hattiesburg, MS on Hurricane Katrina Debacle
We (my family) have literally lived off the good work of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army for the past few days. Those meals-ready-to-eat aren't all that bad when you're starving for something more than doritos or cheese crackers. Until yesterday, the county our house is in (Covington) was not listed a disaster area, making it unable to receive federal assistance. With a lot of phone calls and plenty of pleas from local news, it was finally added. The federal government, under our lame duck president, is making every attempt possible to save money at the expense of people's lives...
[in the comments section] Many smaller, rural towns have been completely overlooked. Waynesboro, south of Hattiesburg, had one refrigerated truck and a parking lot full of grills. They fed the entire town until the trucker needed his truck back. They said no one had been to the city to help, they needed all any supplies they could get. This was a couple of days ago. News is sporatic. I'm working on getting south to help, but I'm not sure if the highways are still closed south of Hattiesburg.
From One of the Millions of Hurricane Katrina Stories
There they packed all of us pet owners from Mid City into a cargo truck and drove us away. They promised they would take us to Baton Rouge, and from there it would be relatively easy for me to get a cab or bus and meet the family in Jackson.
But then everything went to hell. They instead locked up the truck and drove us to the refugee camp on I-10 and Causeway and dropped us off. Many refused to get out of the van but they were forced. The van drove away as quickly as it could, as the drivers appeared to be terrified, and we were suddenly in the middle of 20,000 people. I would estimate that 98% of them were African Americans and the most impoverished people in the state. It was like something out of a Kafka novel. Nobody knew how to get out. People said they had been there 5 days, and that on that day only 3 buses had shown up. I saw murdered bodies, and elderly people who had died because they had been left in the sun with no water for such a long time. I've traveled quite a bit, and I have never seen the despair and tragedy that I saw at this refugee camp. It was the saddest think I have ever seen in my life. I am still so upset that there were not hundreds of buses immediately sent to get these people to shelters.
There was a group of officials going around and taking people's animals away. It was then that I decided to try to escape...
From Katrina survivors critical of Australian Government response
Meanwhile, two of the first Australians to return from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina say they feared for their lives when they were evacuated to the city's convention centre.
Pamela Whyte, 59, and her niece, Karen Marks, 25, arrived back in Melbourne this morning.
They were in New Orleans for a three-week holiday, and spent seven days at the centre scavenging for food and water.
They say the days after the hurricane were terrifying.
"One night there we could have sworn black and blue we had gunshots. That was the first night, there was panic, and before we knew it we were at the front door, there was a stampede of people, we were at the escalator, we just, like this, I've never run so fast," she said.
"Then every night after that we just heard these strange noises, enough to panic the people."