I am writing this five days in, so things are starting to get jumbled. I thought that I would be able to write an update every day, but it has been pretty hectic here, so I apologize for not writing more earlier.
I am now sitting in the Hampton Inn in Gulfport, Mississippi, which just had power and water restored after over a week. I'm not staying here. I got five hours of sleep in my car in the parking lot of the empty Wendy's next door and came over here to use the bathroom.
I arrived in Gulfport last night around 10:30pm. Although some electricity has been restored, most of the city is still dark and all traffic signals are out, so drivers have to be very careful crossing intersections. There are military Humvees patrolling the streets. Derrick Bush, the very generous night manager here, told me that his apartment complex had not received much damage, even though other properties next door were reduced to kindling. He rode out the twelve hours of the storm in the hotel. When he got to his home, he found it had been looted. They stole his 40" TV and all of his other electronic equipment. In spite of that, he has been a bundle of good cheer. Some of you may have read that Gulfport took the worst storm damage of any city. It was too dark to see clearly last night, but if the trailer park I saw when I tried to get to the military guarded central shelter here is any example, this is a city in ruins. At least half of the trailers were torn apart, with some of them thrown across a 100 foot wide highway. Winds here hit over 200 miles an hour. The storm surge reached 40 feet and inundated areas up to six miles inland across Mississippi.
Yesterday, the Yucaipa Democratic club made a very generous donation of nearly $1000. Because of that, I was able to buy a new stock of supplies. I delivered some food to one shelter here late last night. It was the seventh shelter I have visited since arriving in Dallas. Like many of the shelters throughout the region, it was in a school. 160 people are housed there in squalor that makes it feel like a Caribbean shantytown. The shelter still has no electricity or gas. The volunteers, who have come from across the country, provide light with flashlights alone. So it is pretty dangerous.
I have enough supplies left to donate to three or four more before I leave on Saturday. By the way, American Airlines has been great. They let me switch my flight to a later date at no charge whatsoever.
So let's jump back a few days. My last journal ended with me still in North Louisiana. On Sunday, I was able to make my way down to Baton Rouge, stopping at two more church shelters along the way. In Baton Rouge, the main shelter is in the convention center/arena, which is called the River Center. When I first arrived there, it housed 6,000 people. There are hundreds of volunteers working there. I met a few people from LA County, but most are from the eastern part of the country.
For several days, I used the River Center as a base of operations, giving Blow Pops to hundreds children, helping register new arrivals, and assisting at the information and missing persons desk. I served as a runner at the Registration desk. When people sign in to the shelter, I was responsible for getting them blankets, cots, food, and for finding them space in either the convention center hall or arena. Both of them are lit by horrible fluorescent lighting. They have concrete floors. Being there really gave me a sense why so many homeless people do not like staying in shelters. The big shelters are very cold and impersonal. Smaller ones have much more of a sense of community about them.
Not surprisingly, due to it's size, the River Center shelter has some organizational problems. As of Sunday, they did not have a room set up to accommodate the sleeping needs of volunteers. There is no one running the entire operation, just leaders of various elements. Therefore, we all just do whatever we can to help, with some natural leaders stepping up to coordinate. One of my contributions was to convince the Red Cross to set aside a sleeping room for volunteers. I slept in my sleeping bag on the floor there Sunday night.
On Monday, the President of Jefferson Parish decided to allow people back in for a few hours to assess the damage to their homes and get personal items. Jefferson Parish is just outside New Orleans by the airport. While I was working at the registration desk, a wan and exhausted looking David Gallagher came to the table looking for a ride to his home in Jefferson parish. I offered a ride and we drove towards New Orleans, first on the 10 and then, as we got close, on the Airline Highway. It turned that David had been traveling for three days. He had dropped his wife in South Korea for a new job and had returned to Houston, where he told me that tensions were high. According to David, people at the Astrodome were fighting with each other over the smallest perceived slights. He was thrilled to be out of there.
Amazingly, the traffic heading towards Jefferson parish was not too bad. We made the 60 mile trip in two hours, arriving at about 1PM. David lifts just outside the outskirts of New Orleans proper, by the River Road. Thankfully, the damage in his section of Jefferson was not too bad. David's house sustained almost no damage, just a few small trees in the backyard uprooted. We had to jimmy the lock on his back door to get in because his children, who had been staying at the house, forgot to leave keys when they fled before the storm. David lives right next to a hospital, so his street was one of the few in the New Orleans area that had electricity, phone service and running water. All of the other streets in the area had no services.
While David called family members and inspected his house, I stood out in the street greeting the few people who had stayed through the storm. I met Papa Joe, a tattoo artist from California who had moved to New Orleans two years ago. Tattooed all over and tough looking, I didn't know exactly what to expect when he greeted me. He walked over, introduced himself, and then broke down crying. He told me that he had cowered alone in the small guest house he lived in down the street for the entirety of Katrina, terrified that he would be killed at any moment. To top it off, he and his girlfriend had had a fight about leaving before the storm hit and she had gone without him. Joe was so distraught all I could do was hug him for ten minutes straight with tears in my eyes. Thankfully, his girlfriend had called him from California and vowed to return to pick him up within the week.
Now let me tell you about David's bravery. David is a middle-aged man with three children, one of whom was still in college at Tulane. He is a civilian working for the division of the U.S. Navy that repairs damaged naval facilities. I told David that despite the fact that New Orleans was closed and under martial law, I wanted to see if we could get in to provide some food to any residents we could find. He agreed immediately.
At my suggestion, we drove down the River Road, passing other people returning to their Jefferson homes. The closer we got to the city of New Orleans, the less people we saw. After about ten minutes, we reached St. Charles, which is the main street in the Garden District that runs into the heart of New Orleans. We turned onto it and headed towards downtown and the French Quarter. There were few civilians there, but police and army troops were arrayed along the street every few blocks. Surprisingly, they made no effort to stop us. The Garden district is where Tulane and many of the most beautiful homes in New Orleans are located. We saw a lot of cosmetic damage, but, thankfully, little structural damage - only one church steeple collapsed.
As we got closer to the convention center and downtown, we found that we were the only civilians driving on the street. There were military and police convoys and repair teams scattered throughout the city. But for the most part, the city was empty. The convention center area was filled with empty shopping carts, thousands of chairs, signs and fences collapse in the street, and fetid, stinking garbage. Every few blocks, one of the old two story brick buildings built in the 19th century had collapsed. A few were on fire, and we could smell smoke from blocks away. Once again, however, most of the area seemed to have sustained very limited damage. We stopped to speak to an electrical grid repair crew. They said that the violence had been pretty bad and that snipers had taken shots at them at night. But they expected to have electricity restored to a few parts of the city shortly.
We left them and drove on to the French Quarter. Amazing, the Quarter appeared to have received almost no damage. It looked like there had been a particularly bad Mardi Gras evening - nothing more. So the heart of New Orleans is saved!!! I did see many broken windows where looters had broken in and stolen anything they could get there hands on. Seeing no damage and sensing that we were safe, we drove through the French Quarter to Faubourg Marigny, a poor neighborhood to the South and East of the Quarter. Here was the horror that Katrina had wrought.
Like many New Orleans boulevards, Decatur Street has a grassy median separating the four lanes. The storm and water had ripped huge oak trees from the ground, blocking half of the road and forcing us to drive on the wrong side for blocks at a time. Roofs had been torn from the houses they covered. The road had clearly been covered with water and as we drove further in, we began to see cars in the middle of the road and on the sides sunk halfway in mud. There were few residents still there, but we did find an old man, with almost no teeth, whose face had the character of a denizen of 1930s WPA photographs. We offered him as much food as he could carry. When I asked if he wanted a toothbrush. He smile a big toothless grin and said, "Not sure what I'd do with that now."
We reached the water one mile in. To the right of us (south) and the straight ahead (east), the streets and the homes were deluged with water. We could see water rising all the way to the second floor of the homes. Above the water level, the tops of street signs and lights poked out like buoys. The stories are true, the poor sections of New Orleans are gone and I would guess they are gone forever.
One scene particularly affected me. We had seen hundreds of pets, cats and dogs, roaming the streets in their collars looking for their masters. In the middle of the road at the point when we could drive no further, independent but still wearing their harnesses stood five donkeys roaming free. They were the donkeys who pull the tourist carriages and trolleys of New Orleans. They still wore there harnesses. We watched, fascinated, as they ate grass on the median and on a small hillock to our left.
As we reached the waterbound area, so did two SUVs with five newspaper photographers. It was getting close to sundown, around 6 PM, and they told us to leave before the sun set to avoid being shot at. We took their warning seriously. On the way out, we drove to the convention center to see if any refugees remained so that we could give them some supplies, but they had all been evacuated.
The best way I can describe what New Orleans looked like is to compare it to the London portrayed in 28 Days later - a ghost town suffused with an incalculable loneliness. The wealthy, downtown, and tourist sections of New Orleans will return to life soon. Given what I saw, the people who live in the Garden District, near downtown, and in the French Quarter should be back leading a semblance of a normal life within a few months. If that doesn't happen, it will only be because of government incompetence. But isn't it a tragedy of life that the worst of these disasters always befall those least able to afford it. Most of the poor of New Orleans will have to start over wherever they can. So far the Red Cross, FEMA, and state agencies have been so disorganized that they have only just begun providing help for many of the survivors. Many may never recover. It is a terrible, terrible thing to behold.
It is 7:45 AM here in Gulfport. I need to brush my teeth in the motel bathroom and go volunteer at the main distribution point now. I will write again as soon as time permits.
I am now sitting in the Hampton Inn in Gulfport, Mississippi, which just had power and water restored after over a week. I'm not staying here. I got five hours of sleep in my car in the parking lot of the empty Wendy's next door and came over here to use the bathroom.
I arrived in Gulfport last night around 10:30pm. Although some electricity has been restored, most of the city is still dark and all traffic signals are out, so drivers have to be very careful crossing intersections. There are military Humvees patrolling the streets. Derrick Bush, the very generous night manager here, told me that his apartment complex had not received much damage, even though other properties next door were reduced to kindling. He rode out the twelve hours of the storm in the hotel. When he got to his home, he found it had been looted. They stole his 40" TV and all of his other electronic equipment. In spite of that, he has been a bundle of good cheer. Some of you may have read that Gulfport took the worst storm damage of any city. It was too dark to see clearly last night, but if the trailer park I saw when I tried to get to the military guarded central shelter here is any example, this is a city in ruins. At least half of the trailers were torn apart, with some of them thrown across a 100 foot wide highway. Winds here hit over 200 miles an hour. The storm surge reached 40 feet and inundated areas up to six miles inland across Mississippi.
Yesterday, the Yucaipa Democratic club made a very generous donation of nearly $1000. Because of that, I was able to buy a new stock of supplies. I delivered some food to one shelter here late last night. It was the seventh shelter I have visited since arriving in Dallas. Like many of the shelters throughout the region, it was in a school. 160 people are housed there in squalor that makes it feel like a Caribbean shantytown. The shelter still has no electricity or gas. The volunteers, who have come from across the country, provide light with flashlights alone. So it is pretty dangerous.
I have enough supplies left to donate to three or four more before I leave on Saturday. By the way, American Airlines has been great. They let me switch my flight to a later date at no charge whatsoever.
So let's jump back a few days. My last journal ended with me still in North Louisiana. On Sunday, I was able to make my way down to Baton Rouge, stopping at two more church shelters along the way. In Baton Rouge, the main shelter is in the convention center/arena, which is called the River Center. When I first arrived there, it housed 6,000 people. There are hundreds of volunteers working there. I met a few people from LA County, but most are from the eastern part of the country.
For several days, I used the River Center as a base of operations, giving Blow Pops to hundreds children, helping register new arrivals, and assisting at the information and missing persons desk. I served as a runner at the Registration desk. When people sign in to the shelter, I was responsible for getting them blankets, cots, food, and for finding them space in either the convention center hall or arena. Both of them are lit by horrible fluorescent lighting. They have concrete floors. Being there really gave me a sense why so many homeless people do not like staying in shelters. The big shelters are very cold and impersonal. Smaller ones have much more of a sense of community about them.
Not surprisingly, due to it's size, the River Center shelter has some organizational problems. As of Sunday, they did not have a room set up to accommodate the sleeping needs of volunteers. There is no one running the entire operation, just leaders of various elements. Therefore, we all just do whatever we can to help, with some natural leaders stepping up to coordinate. One of my contributions was to convince the Red Cross to set aside a sleeping room for volunteers. I slept in my sleeping bag on the floor there Sunday night.
On Monday, the President of Jefferson Parish decided to allow people back in for a few hours to assess the damage to their homes and get personal items. Jefferson Parish is just outside New Orleans by the airport. While I was working at the registration desk, a wan and exhausted looking David Gallagher came to the table looking for a ride to his home in Jefferson parish. I offered a ride and we drove towards New Orleans, first on the 10 and then, as we got close, on the Airline Highway. It turned that David had been traveling for three days. He had dropped his wife in South Korea for a new job and had returned to Houston, where he told me that tensions were high. According to David, people at the Astrodome were fighting with each other over the smallest perceived slights. He was thrilled to be out of there.
Amazingly, the traffic heading towards Jefferson parish was not too bad. We made the 60 mile trip in two hours, arriving at about 1PM. David lifts just outside the outskirts of New Orleans proper, by the River Road. Thankfully, the damage in his section of Jefferson was not too bad. David's house sustained almost no damage, just a few small trees in the backyard uprooted. We had to jimmy the lock on his back door to get in because his children, who had been staying at the house, forgot to leave keys when they fled before the storm. David lives right next to a hospital, so his street was one of the few in the New Orleans area that had electricity, phone service and running water. All of the other streets in the area had no services.
While David called family members and inspected his house, I stood out in the street greeting the few people who had stayed through the storm. I met Papa Joe, a tattoo artist from California who had moved to New Orleans two years ago. Tattooed all over and tough looking, I didn't know exactly what to expect when he greeted me. He walked over, introduced himself, and then broke down crying. He told me that he had cowered alone in the small guest house he lived in down the street for the entirety of Katrina, terrified that he would be killed at any moment. To top it off, he and his girlfriend had had a fight about leaving before the storm hit and she had gone without him. Joe was so distraught all I could do was hug him for ten minutes straight with tears in my eyes. Thankfully, his girlfriend had called him from California and vowed to return to pick him up within the week.
Now let me tell you about David's bravery. David is a middle-aged man with three children, one of whom was still in college at Tulane. He is a civilian working for the division of the U.S. Navy that repairs damaged naval facilities. I told David that despite the fact that New Orleans was closed and under martial law, I wanted to see if we could get in to provide some food to any residents we could find. He agreed immediately.
At my suggestion, we drove down the River Road, passing other people returning to their Jefferson homes. The closer we got to the city of New Orleans, the less people we saw. After about ten minutes, we reached St. Charles, which is the main street in the Garden District that runs into the heart of New Orleans. We turned onto it and headed towards downtown and the French Quarter. There were few civilians there, but police and army troops were arrayed along the street every few blocks. Surprisingly, they made no effort to stop us. The Garden district is where Tulane and many of the most beautiful homes in New Orleans are located. We saw a lot of cosmetic damage, but, thankfully, little structural damage - only one church steeple collapsed.
As we got closer to the convention center and downtown, we found that we were the only civilians driving on the street. There were military and police convoys and repair teams scattered throughout the city. But for the most part, the city was empty. The convention center area was filled with empty shopping carts, thousands of chairs, signs and fences collapse in the street, and fetid, stinking garbage. Every few blocks, one of the old two story brick buildings built in the 19th century had collapsed. A few were on fire, and we could smell smoke from blocks away. Once again, however, most of the area seemed to have sustained very limited damage. We stopped to speak to an electrical grid repair crew. They said that the violence had been pretty bad and that snipers had taken shots at them at night. But they expected to have electricity restored to a few parts of the city shortly.
We left them and drove on to the French Quarter. Amazing, the Quarter appeared to have received almost no damage. It looked like there had been a particularly bad Mardi Gras evening - nothing more. So the heart of New Orleans is saved!!! I did see many broken windows where looters had broken in and stolen anything they could get there hands on. Seeing no damage and sensing that we were safe, we drove through the French Quarter to Faubourg Marigny, a poor neighborhood to the South and East of the Quarter. Here was the horror that Katrina had wrought.
Like many New Orleans boulevards, Decatur Street has a grassy median separating the four lanes. The storm and water had ripped huge oak trees from the ground, blocking half of the road and forcing us to drive on the wrong side for blocks at a time. Roofs had been torn from the houses they covered. The road had clearly been covered with water and as we drove further in, we began to see cars in the middle of the road and on the sides sunk halfway in mud. There were few residents still there, but we did find an old man, with almost no teeth, whose face had the character of a denizen of 1930s WPA photographs. We offered him as much food as he could carry. When I asked if he wanted a toothbrush. He smile a big toothless grin and said, "Not sure what I'd do with that now."
We reached the water one mile in. To the right of us (south) and the straight ahead (east), the streets and the homes were deluged with water. We could see water rising all the way to the second floor of the homes. Above the water level, the tops of street signs and lights poked out like buoys. The stories are true, the poor sections of New Orleans are gone and I would guess they are gone forever.
One scene particularly affected me. We had seen hundreds of pets, cats and dogs, roaming the streets in their collars looking for their masters. In the middle of the road at the point when we could drive no further, independent but still wearing their harnesses stood five donkeys roaming free. They were the donkeys who pull the tourist carriages and trolleys of New Orleans. They still wore there harnesses. We watched, fascinated, as they ate grass on the median and on a small hillock to our left.
As we reached the waterbound area, so did two SUVs with five newspaper photographers. It was getting close to sundown, around 6 PM, and they told us to leave before the sun set to avoid being shot at. We took their warning seriously. On the way out, we drove to the convention center to see if any refugees remained so that we could give them some supplies, but they had all been evacuated.
The best way I can describe what New Orleans looked like is to compare it to the London portrayed in 28 Days later - a ghost town suffused with an incalculable loneliness. The wealthy, downtown, and tourist sections of New Orleans will return to life soon. Given what I saw, the people who live in the Garden District, near downtown, and in the French Quarter should be back leading a semblance of a normal life within a few months. If that doesn't happen, it will only be because of government incompetence. But isn't it a tragedy of life that the worst of these disasters always befall those least able to afford it. Most of the poor of New Orleans will have to start over wherever they can. So far the Red Cross, FEMA, and state agencies have been so disorganized that they have only just begun providing help for many of the survivors. Many may never recover. It is a terrible, terrible thing to behold.
It is 7:45 AM here in Gulfport. I need to brush my teeth in the motel bathroom and go volunteer at the main distribution point now. I will write again as soon as time permits.
posted by Josh Futterman at 4:06 PM
1 Comments:
I have bookmarked your blog and will visit again. Thank you for sharing your experience.
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