Posted on 09/04/2005 7:06:31 PM PDT by Cedar
Our terrifying ordeal By Sean O'Neil and Joanna Bale
TWO words on the boarding pass that secured Will Nelson a club-class seat on a flight from Dallas to Gatwick tell everything about the last week of his summer in America.
Alongside the flight details is stamped: “Hurricane Evacuee”.
Mr Nelson, and other Britons returning from New Orleans yesterday, will keep the boarding passes as souvenirs of the most frightening experience of their lives, being trapped in the city’s Superdome stadium.
As the first Britons caught by Hurricane Katrina returned home, the US authorities said that all 240,000 residents of New Orleans would have to leave before it could be rebuilt.
The death toll is likely to run into thousands and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that 131 Britons were still unaccounted for. However it emphasised that many are likely to be safe and could have left the disaster area days ago.
During seemingly endless days and sleepless nights, the British survivors’ fear of the hurricane’s destructive force was transformed into terror of the other survivors.
Mr Nelson, 21, and Jane Wheeldon, 20, told The Times how they and some 50 other foreigners — many of them British backpackers — were ordered by the US Army to gather together to protect themselves from resentful locals.
“The army told us to stick in a group and for the women to sit in the middle with the men around the outside and to be ready to defend ourselves,” Mr Nelson, from Epsom, Surrey, said. “Their urgency scared us. I sat on the outside, really scared by this point, sitting waiting for God knows what. We waited and waited, I didn’t sleep. A lot of the girls had been groped.”
Miss Wheeldon, from Carmarthen, South Wales, said that being inside the Superdome was terrifying and that she had been sexually harassed.
“The atmosphere was extremely intimidating,” the Lancaster University student said. “People stared at us all the time and men would come up to me and stroke my stomach and bottom. They would also say horrible, suggestive things. The worst time came when there was a rumour that a white man had raped a black woman. We were scared that we would be raped, robbed, or both. People were arguing, fighting and being arrested all the time.”
The “internationals”, as the army labelled the stranded tourists, were among the few white people in the stadium. Marked out by their skin colour and unfamiliar accents, they were verbally abused, while their luggage made them targets for robbery.
Mr Nelson said that local people also noticed that they received preferential treatment from the guards who gave them ration packs and water to help them to avoid food queues.
Mr Nelson, who graduated from Loughborough University in June, said: “The queues for the rations got more and more crazy. People were desperate.
“The physical conditions were horrible. It was stiflingly hot, you were sweating constantly. The smell was awful, a mix of sweat, faeces, urine — just a horrible, horrible smell.
“When the water stopped and the toilets packed up, it just got worse and worse. I can still smell it; it makes me gag.” Miss Wheeldon said: “The sights we saw you wouldn’t want anyone to see. The filth and smell were unbelievable.” The threat came from a minor-ity — mainly young men. “The majority of the people of New Orleans are absolutely lovely,” she said. “Some families were ready to give us their food even though they had nothing.”
One of the most dangerous periods came on Wednesday when the military decided that the internationals should be removed for their own safety.
Officers told them to organise themselves in groups of five and make their way to an exit. The leaders were given a blue wristband and made accountable for the others. Mr Nelson’s was still on his arm yesterday.
He said: “The people around us were suspicious and resentful. They asked where we were going and we lied. We said that we were going to sit somewhere else. I walked off, head down, tunnel vision, I didn’t stop to think. I felt guilty but there was also a tremendous sense of relief that I was getting out of there.”
The tourists were taken to an emergency medical centre where many volunteered to help. “There were very few medics and we were able to help with feeding people, carrying stretchers and just talking to people who had lost their whole lives,” said Mr Nelson. “That night we saw a soldier brought in from the dome who had been shot in the leg.”
The Britons were taken on to Dallas the following day, seeing for the first time the full devastation caused by the hurricane.
Mr Nelson said: “I knew I was going home eventually, I knew I had a family home to go to and I knew where my family was and that they were safe. I realised just how lucky I was compared to many of the people we had left behind.”
Mr Nelson had been working as a lifeguard with Camp America, which organised his flight home. But during nine hours in the air, he could not sleep. “I couldn’t wait to get home, to see my parents, my sisters and my friends and be back somewhere I knew I would be safe.”
At Gatwick, Mr Nelson and Miss Wheeldon had tearful reunions with their families. Other survivors are expected back in Britain today.
"Do you really think a MAJORITY of NO residents are responsible for the looting and other criminal activity that happened last week?"
As a practical matter, it makes no difference that the bad are in the minority if the majority do nothing to stop them.
bump for later
These young white men are just a danger to us all. The Federal Govt. needs to control them immediately.
Were you being sarcastic or did you miss this statement in the article?
"The 'internationals', as the army labelled the stranded tourists, were among the few white people in the stadium. Marked out by their skin colour and unfamiliar accents, they were verbally abused, while their luggage made them targets for robbery."
I don't have any objections to the points you made after you wrote the above. And Jabbar Gibson is a great example of brains, survival instinct, moxy, compassion, and drive. I hope someone mentors him because he could become a great force for good with all of those elements in his character.
However, I just can't go along with "But being truly color blind is not PC." Color blind is a denial of the real, and it is a false way to overcome the bad that winds up denying the good too. Color blind is artificial. We are coloured. All of us.
So now, I the Irish red headed Catholic lady who prefers the Latin Mass quotes the Protestant rock band DC TALK:
Pardon me, your epidermis is showing, sir
I couldn't help but note your shade of melanin
I tip my hat to the colorful arrangement
Cause I see the beauty in the tones of our skinWe've gotta come together
And thank the Maker of us allWe're colored people, and we live in a tainted place
We're colored people, and they call us the human race
We've got a history so full of mistakes
And we are colored people who depend on a Holy Grace
These white girls fared no worse then they would going into a Caribbean Dance Hall in A Jamaican 'hood in London on a Friday night protected by a group of extended gap year white guys. Outside the sanitation issues. The NG guys must have immediately recognized the situation also.
What's that definition of a conservative? Oh yeah, a liberal that's been mugged.
I suppose you'll need to ask the thugs who singled out these particular victims because they were white.
Save to send later.
But I know why the victim's race was relevant to them: the criminals were racist.
Hardly a justification I'd want to cite.
For 300 years, N.O. as been a worsening mass suicide pit beyond help when 80,000 sq.miles has been destroyed by one storm. There is no flood/storm proof manmade structure which could ever be build for even a $trillion. There is no adequate response when city, local and some fed agencies, in the face of gangland gunfire; "government" CANNOT save everyone when they want when >100,000 people did not prepare for survival themselves.
Water World Plantation is a socialist fiasco.
The Brits were seeing future world. This week it was N.O. and many other communities unreported on by media stars.
Looting was so widespread across the Gulf states that militias shall form up no matter what.
amazingly, they still were able to say most of the people of NO were great to them.
Practically every single building has been looted. Perhaps hundreds have been raped or murdered. N.O. has a crime rate ten times the nat'l average in the best of times. C'mon, that's not an insignificant minority acting up.
Don't know about everyone else, but if four or five people out of every ten in a given locality pose a danger to me, I'm not going to go around blabbering about what "lovely" people they are.
That makes no sense. You turned it around completely.
The MAJORITY of those left behind were not looting, raping and .
True enough. But in the breakdown of civil authority, the good probably feared for their lives if they intervened.
the lad was on the radio here this morning and said that the british embassy is washington was useless and the consulate in NO had 15 feet of water in the front garden.
both the lad and the lass were very complimentary about the US military who looked out for them to an enormous degree, said it was the only thing that kept them alive.
the lad said that the greyhound busses were cancelled on saturday evening and the trains and planes were full or cancelled. they were just stuck.
You are 100% correct!
The demon rats have blamed him from the beginning. I talkd yesterday with a fromer friend. He would NOT come right out and say Bush caused the hurricane, but he said Bush would have caused it if he could have, and he did believe it was a racist plot by Republicans, to wipe out democrats. That was the end of our 30 year friendship. No problem, I have other friends.
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