Rape threat to our women (more Terror Dome accounts)

AUSTRALIAN survivors of Hurricane Katrina told last night of their dramatic escape from New Orleans and the unfolding civil disaster in city.

The group, joyful at fleeing the nightmare of the Louisiana city, lauded one of its members as a hero. Bud Hopes, of Brisbane, was praised for saving dozens of tourists as the supposed safe haven of the city's Superdome became a hellhole.

"I would have to say that Bud is solely responsible for our evacuation," Vanessa Cullington, 22, of Sydney, told the Sunday Herald Sun by mobile phone from a bus carrying 10 Australians to safety in Dallas, Texas.

"I dread to think what would have happened if we hadn't got out. It's so great to be free."

News of the group's escape came as reports said as many as 10,000 people might have been killed by the hurricane and its aftermath, and President George Bush ordered more troops and an increased aid effort for the stricken Gulf of Mexico states.

As the Australians left the Superdome, food and water were almost non-existent and the stiflingly hot arena was filled with 25,000 people and the stench of human waste. Gangs stalked the tourists and women were threatened with rape.

"Bud took control. He was calm and kept it together the whole time," Ms Cullington said.

Mr Hopes, 32, said: "That was the worst place in the universe. Ninety-eight per cent of the people around the world are good. In that place, 98 per cent of the people were bad.

"Everyone brought their drugs, they brought guns, they brought knives. Soldiers were shot.

"It was full on. It was the worst thing I have seen in my life. I have never been so frightened."

Realising that foreigners were a target, Mr Hopes and the other Aussies gathered tourists from Europe, South America and elsewhere into one part of the building.

"There were 65 of us, so we were able to look after each other -- especially the girls who were being grabbed and threatened." Mr Hopes said.

He said they had organised escorts for the women when they had gone for food or to the toilet, and rosters to keep guard while others slept.

"We sat through the night just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning."

John McNeil, 20, of Brisbane, said the worst point had come after two days when soldiers had told them the power in the dome was failing and there was only 10 minutes worth of gas left.

"The gangs . . . knew where we were. If the lights had gone out we would have been in deep trouble. We prayed for a miracle and the lights stayed on."

Mr Hopes said the Australians owed their lives to a National Guard Staff Sgt Garland Ogden, who had broken the rules to get the tourists out of the dome, with 60 people being evacuated to a medical centre.

"We did some shifts at the hospital to help nurse the sick to say thank you. It was a real Aussie thing," he said.

As the bus carrying the Australians crossed the Texan border, spirits were high.

Later, the bus arrived at Dallas Convention Centre, where the Australians were processed.

Family and friends gathered at the Brisbane home of Mr McNeil's parents, Peter and Mary, where they were joined by Mr Hopes's sister, Debbie Browne.

"There have been times during this past week when we didn't know if we would see him again," she said.

"They've been traumatised," he said. "I think they've witnessed several atrocities."

The other Australians on the bus were Emma Hardwick, of Sydney; Simon Wood, of Wyalkatchem, WA; Michael Ryan, of Lithgow, NSW; Yasmin Bright, of Newcastle; Michelle and Lisa van Grinsven, of Sydney; and Elise Sims, Tea Tree Gully, Adelaide.

Meanwhile, three Australian couples were safe in Los Angeles, awaiting flights home after being rescued from New Orleans by a Channel 7 news crew.

Tim and Joanne Miller, of Rockhampton, Garry and Cynthia Jones, of Brisbane, and Jack and Gloria Slinger, of Perth, crammed into a four-wheel-drive vehicle with reporter Mike Amor and two colleagues for the early morning dash.

The crew had arranged to pick up two couples from the building where they were holed up and found the Slingers on the streets.

"They were very wary about about coming out of the building. It was a pretty frightening scene -- bodies, shootings, looters," Amor said.

A phone call in the middle of the night gave hope to relatives of Brisbane's Fiona Seidel and her sister-in-law, Katie Maclean.

Mrs Maclean's husband, Andrew, was contacted by a New Orleans police officer who said he had seen the pair get on a bus.

Here's another little gem for you. Mayor Nagin learned nothing from hurricane Ivan last year and repeated same mistakes all over.

Their "plan" has always been the same: let the people fend for themselves, and stick their hands out for money when it's over.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/091904ccktWWLIvanFlaws.132602486.html

---Those who had the money to flee Hurricane Ivan ran into hours-long traffic jams. Those too poor to leave the city had to find their own shelter - a policy that was eventually reversed, but only a few hours before the deadly storm struck land.
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws in the Big Easy's civil disaster plans.
Much of New Orleans is below sea level, kept dry by a system of pumps and levees. As Ivan charged through the Gulf of Mexico, more than a million people were urged to flee. Forecasters warned that a direct hit on the city could send torrents of Mississippi River backwash over the city's levees, creating a 20-foot-deep cesspool of human and industrial waste.
Residents with cars took to the highways. Others wondered what to do.
"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."
Advocates for the poor were indignant.
"If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.
It's always been a problem, but the situation is worse now that the Red Cross has stopped providing shelters in New Orleans for hurricanes rated above Category 2. Stronger hurricanes are too dangerous, and Ivan was a much more powerful Category 4.
In this case, city officials first said they would provide no shelter, then agreed that the state-owned Louisiana Superdome would open to those with special medical needs. Only Wednesday afternoon, with Ivan just hours away, did the city open the 20-story-high domed stadium to the public.
Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.
"Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said.
Callers to talk radio complained about the late decision to open up the dome, but the mayor said he would do nothing different.
"We did the compassionate thing by opening the shelter," Nagin said. "We wanted to make sure we didn't have a repeat performance of what happened before. We didn't want to see people cooped up in the Superdome for days."
When another dangerous hurricane, Georges, appeared headed for the city in 1998, the Superdome was opened as a shelter and an estimated 14,000 people poured in. But there were problems, including theft and vandalism.
This time far fewer took refuge from the storm - an estimated 1,100 - at the Superdome and there was far greater security: 300 National Guardsmen.
The main safety measure - getting people out of town - raised its own problems.
More than 1 million people tried to leave the city and surrounding suburbs on Tuesday, creating a traffic jam as bad as or worse than the evacuation that followed Georges. In the afternoon, state police took action, reversing inbound lanes on southeastern Louisiana interstates to provide more escape routes. Bottlenecks persisted, however.
Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said he believes his agency acted appropriately, but also acknowledged he never expected a seven-hour-long crawl for the 60 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
It was so bad that some broadcasters were telling people to stay home, that they had missed their window of opportunity to leave. They claimed the interstates had turned into parking lots where trapped people could die in a storm surge.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans.
But Blanco and other state officials stressed that, while irritating, the clogged escape routes got people out of the most vulnerable areas.
"We were able to get people out," state Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc said. "It was successful. There was frustration, yes. But we got people out of harm's way."---

I think we'll be okay after the race-baiting DemocRATS and their toadies in the "media" brand these Aussies as "racists."

We don't have to go that far. We have plenty of Al Sharpton wanna-bes right here on FR.

I'm sure the crew in the above ping list will be more than happy to label everyone in Australia "racist," along with the posters on this thread, everyone else in the entire world who owns a TV set, and the writer of the headline "Rape threat to our women." "They're 'racial bigots," they're all racists, they're all conspiring against me." Especially the Freeper who posted #16:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1477460/posts?page=16#16

"If white women were being targeted for rape by black thugs I would say the onus of racism is not on the Aussies but on the black would-be rapists - or is that racist to admit?"

Apparently the Aussie tourists don't agree with our own FR Jesse Jacksons' theory of "one bad apple":

"That was the worst place in the universe. Ninety-eight per cent of the people around the world are good. In that place, 98 per cent of the people were bad."

Is it possible that the mud the press is throwing on The President, FEMA, Homeland Security is all aimed at three things:

1) make the President look bad (that is a given)

2)deflect attention from the inept, corrupt Government in what we call Louisiana, USA and 3)pretend that liberalism didn't breed these gangs of thugs.

I posted earlier in the week about Lt. Governor Landrieu getting legislation passed to basically give the criminals a slap on the wrist instead of serious prison time for their crimes;

We've seen the CrimeTv article on the police department and how corrupt it is...

The only way to keep the nasty truth from coming out is to place blame on the President which the MSM all love to do in the best of circumstances.

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