Posted on 09/09/2005 10:50:28 AM PDT by jbwbubba
Yes, it is amazing and pure BS.
First of all the Washington Times needs a geography lesson. The Bridge go East out of New Orleans not west.
Second, The Bridge is Always Closed as a hurricane approaches. Would you want to walking or even driving across a bridge 300 feet above the Mississippi River as a at Cat 4 Storm moves across the city?
RE; Closing bridges and trapping evacuees:
Actually it was the Chief of Police from Gretna Louisiana who showed that "leadership."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1481211/posts
The Bridge is always closed prior to a hurricane.
And that is done not for the security of the West Bank but for the safety of the people on the Bridge while the storm hits.
Here's another first hand account that corroborates the story, for what it's worth.
St. Louis lawyer and his wife spent most all of four days in a French Quarter hotel while the streets outside were filled with looters. Finally, they escaped New Orleans in the back of a pickup.
At one point, Tim Scheer and his wife, Judy, were among some 500 hotel guests who paid $22,500 for 10 buses to rescue them from the city. However, the buses were commandeered by police just minutes from the hotel and were redirected to help to evacuate people waiting at the Superdome.
"There was mass looting going on, the Walgreens next to us was wiped out clean," said Scheer, 36, a self-employed lawyer. "We never once saw a National Guard presence anywhere in the Quarter. We had to walk by gangs of thugs on the sidewalks with lead pipes, golf clubs, pistols under their shirts. We tried to maintain tunnel vision."
In an interview from a Houston airport where he was awaiting a flight back to St. Louis, Scheer said he and his wife arrived at the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans on Thursday of last week to celebrate his wife's birthday. On Saturday morning, the couple saw that there were long lines at gas stations and learned a voluntary evacuation was underway because a hurricane was heading toward the
city.
"We called the airport and tried to get an early flight out, but there were none," Scheer said. "The guests who had cars left. The hotel said it had three backup generators, and they weren't kicking us out."
The couple bought some supplies at a store in the Quarter and followed the hotel's advice to fill the bathtub of their room with water.
"At 10 a.m. Sunday, the winds really started to whip up, it was dark and desolate in the Quarter," Scheer said. "We didn't leave the hotel the rest of the day. The first thing Monday morning, we lost power and water. It got
scarier and scarier. But we never felt threatened in our room."
The hotel provided food and water on Monday, and the Scheers ventured out on Tuesday to inspect the storm's damage. "Lampposts were down, canopies from hotels and bars were bent, walls were collapsed onto cars," Scheer said. "But the Quarter seem to weather the storm pretty good. Then all hell broke loose."
Levees had broken and floodwater was pouring into the city, reaching the edge of the Quarter. Martial law was declared and no civilian traffic was allowed.
"There was no security, looting was going on in the streets," Scheer said. "Things were deteriorating. I called everybody I knew and said we needed some security on the ground. Right then, I knew we were in trouble."
Wednesday, the Scheers and three other couples came up with a plan. They would walk across the Mississippi River bridge, out of the city, to be picked up by Scheer's cousin, who lives 135 miles from the French Quarter in New Iberia, La. But before they embarked on their walk, the hotel announced that buses were coming.
"They had arranged for buses with a police escort to come down from Shreveport. Guests at our hotel and another one were given first preference and they sold 500 tickets at $45 each," Scheer said. "We got a call that the buses were 10 minutes away, then we lost contact with the convoy. We found out they had been commandeered as they entered the city and sent to the Superdome."
A group of about 200 Monteleone guests decided to try to walk out of the city to the east, and got to the on-ramp at the Crescent Connection bridge, where they were met by Gretna, La., police with shotguns. "They told us the bridge was closed to foot traffic," Scheer said. "Some locals had joined us and became extremely unruly, threatening to rush the officers. They fired their shotguns into the air."
The Scheers and the three other couples began walking to the west down a highway, where they flagged down two locals in a pickup who offered to drive them to a shelter about 12 miles away in Kenner, La., to meet Scheer's cousin.
"Bottom line, we're in the back of the pickup, riding like hell through the rain," Scheer said. "They didn't want anything, but we forced several hundred dollars on them. Those guys saved our ass."
See http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/emaf.nsf/Popup?ReadForm&db=stltoday%5Cnews%5Cstories.nsf&docid=93EB4BF112FE926C862570710012D2D2
So first you are saying the bridge doesn't go west ... but now mention that the West Bank is involved.
And this wasn't about closing the bridge for the hurricane ... but keeping it closed well afterwards so people trapped in NOLA couldn't come across the bridge.
Any more apologizing you care to do today?
"But he could have exercised his leadership without letting on that he was a cop. Those people needed someone, and he became a sheep and melded in."
How? I didn't see his race in the article, but even worse if he is white.
"Granted, not all police are suited to leadership. At least some portion of them are just plain bureaucrats and couldn't lead a dead bug. But this guy was part of the problem, not the solution."
I think you are wrong. The instant he started drawing that kind of attention to himself (he says they suspected him as LEO anyway) he would have been in serious trouble.
Yeah, it's much more important to protect property than it is to allow starving, dehyrated despreate people passage out of NOLA.
Nice priorities you have there.
Must admit, Geraldo was very funny as he screamed into the camera to let the people cross the bridge so they could get food and water.
He did not know at the time, they would have only gotten bullet sandwiches.
Nice priorities you have there.
Well thank you.
Im sure you would be condeming those who crossed the bridge by foot and maybe burned the city to the ground.
What you don't know or may care to ignore is, once they cross the bridge,about 3 miles depending on the on ramp, they are going to have to travel at least another 2 miles by foot or if they stole cars to get to a place that may or may not have water and food. Because it was most likely had been looted.
They would have had a better chance of getting food and water by the convention center considering all the stores/shops around there.
We are also not talking about the safest area in NO to be going to.
So inform yourself before you start talking about someone's priorities.
FYI, I meant IN THE END.
Tell it to UPI. They are publishing remarks from the Gretna police chief that tell a far different story of why the bridge closed before the hurricane and remained closed AFTER THE HURRICANE.
You obviously didn't even read the link. Your agenda is showing.
" Workers of the World Unite to Throw of Your Chains of Oppression and Join Us in Overcoming The Vast Injustice of the Corrupt Ruler Class" and " We Never Met A Police Officer Or Other Gov't Lackey Who Was Not Conditioned To Deprive The People Of Their Most Basic Rights And Needs. While At The Same Time Propping Up The Racist Regime Of the Rightwing Warmongering Haliburon Whores".
That's all gold. I'm swiping that.
Time to go to cafepress.org and print up plenty of shirts for the Federalist Society to pimp around my school. ;)
I want to know how closing the Crescent City Connection affects the Louisiana State Hurricane Evacuation Plan. That bridge was the only one determined safe by FEMA on Tuesday.
I was not there, so I readily admit that I cannot say with certainty that I would have acted differently.
But the biggest problem I see, is that there was NO leadership whatsoever. None. In a culture such as New Orleans had (high illegitimate birthrates, drug usage, violent crime, fatherless children, lack of respect for police/authorities, etc) there were few people in the community to step up to the plate and provide leadership.
Those people could have gotten through that mess better than they did. It made me angry. (This excerpts, of course, people who were chronically ill or physically vulnerable for some reason. Those unfortunate people are always going to live on the edge where if medical care or nourishment is denied for whatever reason, their lives are at risk.) What really ticked me off is 45 year old obese women sitting in a lawn chair screaming at a camera saying "We're starving here! They left us to die, and it is because we are black..." (or poor, or aged or whatever) I was embarrased for them. How pathetic. Our guys we left on the Bataan Peninsula in the Phillipines in 1942 had a legitimate complaint along those lines. They were left behind, and they were starving.
They needed someone to stand up and say something like:
"We may be here for days on our own. We aren't going to starve in that time, our biggest issues are drinking water, shelter and hygiene. If we pool whatever we have, ration it out, set up areas for people to go to the bathroom in, make shelter, we can survive until help arrives. I need volunteers to collect broken furniture or other wood we can use to boil water..."
And so on. This is not rocket science. Anyone who has taken any kind of survival training knows that fear and panic kill you faster than anything else can.
There was nobody there to bring any of these people back to earth. He could have helped. Somebody could have helped. Instead they all watched out for themselves. As he did.
Maybe I am being harsh. But I know what I am going to do if there is ever a huge disaster where I live. And it isn't going to be smashing windows, looting electronics or raping, or cowering in a corner hoping nobody notices me. If nobody wants to help, I will do what I can to survive and help those around me. If the people around me don't want to be helped, and interfere with me, then I will take whomever I can to a place we CAN work together to survive.
Hi, I agree with your reply fully. Given that this guy, not part of the NOPD machine, was ALONE in the convention center, and given some of the reports I have seen, I certainly can imagine seeing anonymity as my only hope of survival, though he apparently was involved in trying to keep some dehydration victims alive.
If I assume a minority of the young males in the area were essentially armed brigands with a BIG chip on their shoulder who have been held in check only by the threat of armed force/imprisonment much of their adult lives, a person trying to impose any sort of rational order in the area might find themselves a target.
If he was white, of course, then all bets are off, no wonder he would say he was a tourist.
Agreed. And that is why I do find some piece of sympathy for his story.
This guys account I do not doubt, since it is not embellished and gives explanations for what happened. The account by the two EMTs took some facts and twisted them to present their view. This other guy's account seems very objective so I trust it.
Thanks, swipe away. I forgot a T in Haliburton.
That's okay. It only adds to the air of authenticity. :)
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