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Chip Johnson
Police made their storm misery worse
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/09/BAGL1EL1KH1.DTL
Friday, September 9, 2005
Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, two San Francisco paramedics
trapped in New Orleans for five days last week, have a different story to tell
than many of the tales that have come out in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina.
By their account, the cops weren't necessarily the good guys, and it was
crystal clear that most of the city government structure collapsed along with
the levees that left the city at the mercy of the rising waters.
When Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, Bradshaw and his longtime live-in
girlfriend were at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans' French Quarter, in
town for a three-day paramedics conference at the convention center.
After the storm died down the next day, they were among 500 people
sheltered in hotels throughout the tourist district -- foreign tourists,
conference attendees and locals who'd checked in to ride out the storm.
The stranded crowd stared at food and water locked in a drugstore across
the street from the hotel only to be shooed away by police officers whenever
anyone approached the store. Finally, after hours of cat and mouse, the crowd
finally broke into the store.
"At that point, we had not seen any of the TV coverage or looked at a
newspaper, but we guessed there were no video images of European and white
tourists, like us, looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter,'' the couple
wrote in an eight-page account of their experience.
When it became clear that the help they so desperately needed was not
coming anytime soon, the group pooled their resources in an effort to buy
their way out of the surrounding hell. They ponied up $25,000, enough to lease
10 buses that would carry them out of the city.
But as the buses they paid for approached the city, they were immediately
commandeered by the National Guard forces that were in New Orleans, Bradshaw
and Slonsky said Thursday in an interview back home.
"If they used the buses to get the most severely ill out of the Superdome
and convention center, I have no problem with that,'' Bradshaw said. "The
thing that gets me is that if we could get on the phone and get 10 buses, why
couldn't FEMA make that call?''
With no food, no water and no transportation out of the city, about 200 of
the former hotel guests wandered the streets and tried to set up a camp next
to a police command center on Canal Street, where they hoped to get aid,
protection and information, the couple said.
But officers told them they couldn't stay, they had no water for them, and
they needed to get up on Highway 90, a bridge that spans the Mississippi
River, and walk until they saw the rescue buses they promised would be waiting
for them.
So late Wednesday afternoon, the group set out for a bridge called the
Crescent City Connection, where they would find the help they so desperately
needed. But when they arrived atop the highway, the paramedics said, they were
met by more police officers, this time from neighboring Gretna, La., who
weren't letting anyone pass.
"If I weren't there, and hadn't witnessed it for myself, I don't think I
would have ever believed this," Bradshaw said.
The officers fired warning shots into the air and then leveled their
weapons at members of the crowd, Bradshaw said. He approached, hands in the
air, displaying his paramedic's badge.
"They told us that there would be no Superdomes in their city,'' the couple
wrote. "These were code words that if you are poor and black, you are not
crossing the Mississippi River -- and you weren't getting out of New
Orleans.''
And when exhausted hurricane victims set up temporary shelters on the
highway, Gretna police came back a few hours later, fired shots into the air
again, told people to "get the f -- off the bridge" and used a helicopter to
blow down all the makeshift shelters, the paramedics said.
When the officers had pushed the crowd back far enough, one of them took
the group's food and water, dropped it in the trunk of a patrol car and drove
away.
Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his officers were under
his orders to seal off the suburban city of 17,500 residents.
"We had individuals bused into Gretna and dropped off, and we had no idea
they were coming. No one ever called us -- we have no shelter in Gretna, and
our citizens were under a mandatory evacuation. This place was already locked
down.''
The few buses that did show up received much the same treatment as
Bradshaw, Slonsky and their compatriots: Gretna police officers did not allow
anyone off the buses, and like their brothers in blue across the river, they
sent them packing.
Police officers in Gretna also went into the city's lone sporting goods
store and pawn shop and removed more than 1,400 weapons from the shelves to
ensure the public safety, Lawson said.
Throughout the ordeal, Slonsky said members of the group they camped with
became a community that helped each other, shared with each other and, in the
end, relied on each other for their very survival.
The San Francisco paramedics were finally airlifted Friday to San Antonio,
where they endured another couple of days in cramped conditions while they
were examined for disease before being released.
"We got out of there with only the clothes on our back,'' Bradshaw said.
"And the money in my underwear,'' added Slonsky.
Chip Johnson's column appears on Mondays and Fridays. E-mail him at
chjohnson@sfchronicle.com
Below are some of those eight pages. They were being passed around on the
internet and the Zine sent out emails asking for confirmation and contact info
saying we did not want to publish what was below, given how horrible a tale it
told, until we knew it was true. Someone sent us the above article so now you
can read what we first got. It is not pretty.
Here is a first hand account of New Orleans passed on by a
friend from
Berkeley. Report forwarded to me:
Two friends of mine-paramedics attending a conference-were trapped in
New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is their eyewitness report. --PG
Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at
the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display
case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without
electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were
beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked
up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside
Walgreen's windows,
residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the
windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The
cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit
juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did
not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away
the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home
yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a
newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or
front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the
Walgreen's in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of
the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims"
of the Hurricane. 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.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French
Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like
ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from
Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of
New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the
National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and
the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up
with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did
not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did
have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12
hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had.
We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies.
We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The
buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City
limits, they were
commandeered by the military.
By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously
abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as
water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors,
telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to
wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally
encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed
into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a
humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's
only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and
squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally,
we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our
alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did
not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous
encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".
We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were
told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water
to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide
a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We
would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible
embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not
stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the
police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he
had a
solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater
New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the
City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and
explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and
wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The
commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that
the buses are there."
We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great
excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals
saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We
told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few
belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in
strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and
others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up
the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did
not dampen our enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the
foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing
their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various
directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward
and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of
our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances.
The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied
to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was
little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was
not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their
City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not
crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain
under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an
encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide,
between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible
to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we
could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip
up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some
chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated
and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from
self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank
further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by
vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and
any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape
the misery New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck
and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the
freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn.
We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the
two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity
flowered. We organized a
clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from
wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom
and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken
umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where
individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and
candies for kids!).
This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When
individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for
yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or
food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look
out for each other, working together and constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the
first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not
have set in.
Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and
individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90
people.
From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was
talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news
organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked
what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway?
The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a
sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct.
Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol
vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway".
A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy
structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and
water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law
enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into
groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or
"riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible
because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered
once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought
refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We
were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we
were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and
shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New
Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search
and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a
ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the
limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section
of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable
to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport
had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as
flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the
airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we
arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort
continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were
forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy
overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any
possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were
subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at
the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had
been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for
hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any
communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt
reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give
her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us
money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief
effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be.
Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.
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