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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 |
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Radio captures the horror, exhaustionBy Dave Walker TV columnist
The exasperation, sadness, shock and exhaustion in Dave Cohens voice said more than the words he was saying, and they were bad enough.
This was midday Wednesday, and Cohen was manning the microphone at WWL AM 870, the New Orleans news-talk station that was providing a lifeline of information to thousands of evacuees around the region, one of them me.
The hole in the levee allowing Lake Pontchartrain to dump into unflooded portions of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had not been mended. The bowl effect was going to be achieved, with the city filling with water, maybe all the way to the brim created by the walls built to protect it.
Cohen sounded defeated by the implications. Toxic contamination, structural wasting by weeks of submersion, the horrific liquid funk that would harbor insects, disease, more death.
The possibility that the city itself would be uninhabitable, even once the breach was blocked and the water was drained and the destroyed trees and houses and corpses cleaned up and the looters at last in retreat, seemed utterly real and likely to Cohen, and, no doubt, many of his listeners.
That WWL had stayed on the air at all was a dramatic tale that will be told here in fuller detail in later weeks and, Im sure, years.
WWL abandoned its downtown cluster of studios overlooking the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina blew out all of the office windows.
Listeners who heard host Garland Robinettes narration of the live, on-the-air retreat farther inside the building as Katrina pounded away, heard horrible/wonderful broadcasting a horror to listen to, but a wonder, too.
Literally blown out, a broadcast skeleton crew moved to the basement of the Jefferson Parish emergency operations center, according to a spokesman for Entercom Communications, the Pennsylvania-based parent company to WWL and several other New Orleans radio stations.
As last-gasp efforts were underway to remove the thousands of people still trapped in New Orleans on Wednesday, Entercom was making plans to remove its makeshift studio all the way to Baton Rouge, which has become the local media staging area for post-Katrina coverage.
With cable news carrying pictures of the USS Bataan steaming into position to provide a command center for the relief effort, it was hard not to frame the day in Biblical context.
Wednesday began with TV and radio coverage of live prayers by the governor and a collection of holy men. By the time New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas joined Cohen and Chris Miller on WWL in mid-afternoon, the things hed seen in the streets were going to be literally unforgettable.
Hed seen a body, probably many, in the water on a reconnaissance boat trip.
I still see that body, he said. I see his position. I see the color of the clothes he had on.
Hed seen looters, too, and asked anybody with ulterior intentions to get on your knees and pray for intervention.
Hed seen hell where a kind of heaven should be.
Hed heard references to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Maybe Gods going to cleanse us, said Thomas.
No place is that wicked.
TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at davewala@yahoo.com.
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Ant balls not an urban mythIn addition to all of the other horrors befalling New Orleanians during the flood was the creepy discovery that red ants form themselves into floating clusters to avoid drowning. As Dante Ramos and I paddled along Carrollton Avenue on Wednesday, I saw two glittering, golf ball-sized masses of ants floating beside our canoe.
- Doug MacCash
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Diving in to help othersNew Orleans resident Cynthia Shephard took several steps closer to heaven on Tuesday, when she left the safety of her room at the W Hotel in order to rescue flood refugees stranded along the Interstate. When I encountered her on Oak St., her Ford pickup was crowded with 10 people.
Between draws on her cigarette, Shephard explained her motives: "They needed it. It's crowded out there. Law enforcement is too busy. I can't get a straight answer. So I took it on myself. And I'm in a truck, so I should utilize it."
- Doug MacCash
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Causeway closed but hardly damagedWednesday, 11:35 p.m.
By Meghan Gordon St. Tammany bureau
Although still closed to civilian traffic, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway sustained only minor damage from Katrinas storm surge, General Manager Robert Lambert said Wednesday night in the first official report on the twin bridges' condition.
Theres no questions about the safety, the integrity of the Causeway, Lambert said from his Metairie office.
The bridges northbound lanes have been used since Tuesday strictly for emergency vehicles shuttling rescuers and critical supplies to the south shore. The southbound lanes remain closed while Boh Bros. Construction Co. repairs two small segments of limestone and concrete that connect the bridge to land. Lambert said the work is likely to take about six days.
Lambert said multiple teams of engineers, including federal and state officials, inspected the bridge from boats and from the roadway. He said divers would inspect the hundreds of underwater pilings Thursday.
They stopped and checked every inch of this bridge, he said.
Lambert said that even though both directions of the bridge would be passable in six days, he will not open them to the public until officials in St. Tammany and Jefferson parishes allow evacuees back in.
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Desperation, death on road to safetyWednesday, 11:09 p.m.
By Keith Spera Staff writer
At 91 years old, Booker Harris ended his days propped on a lawn chair, covered by a yellow quilt and abandoned, dead, in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Mr. Harris died in the back of a Ryder panel truck Wednesday afternoon, as he and his 93-year-old wife, Allie, were evacuated from eastern New Orleans. The truck's driver deposited Allie and her husband's body on the Convention Center Boulevard neutral ground.
And there it remained.
With 3,000 or more evacuees stranded at the convention center -- and with no apparent contingency plan or authority to deal with them -- collecting a body was no one's priority. It was just another casualty in Hurricane Katrina's wake.
A steady stream of often angry or despondent people, many from flooded Central City, trickled first toward Lee Circle and then to the convention center, hoping to be saved from increasingly desperate straits. Food, water and options had dwindled across Uptown and Central City, where looters seemed to rage almost at will, clearing out boutique clothing shops and drug stores alike. Hospitals would no longer accept emergencies, as staffers prepared to evacuate with patients.
"If you get shot," said a security guard at Touro Infirmary, "youve got to go somewhere else."
As a blazing sun and stifling humidity took their toll, 65-year-old Faye Taplin rested alone on the steps of the Christ Cathedral in the 2900 block of St. Charles Avenue. Rising water had finally chased her from her Central City home. She clutched two plastic bags containing bedding, a little food and water and insulin to treat her diabetes.
She needed help but was unsure where to find it. She wanted to walk more than 15 blocks to a rumored evacuation pickup point beneath the Pontchartrain Expressway, but she doubted that was possible.
"I'm tired," she said. "My feet have swollen up on me. I can't walk that far."
The church custodian, Ken Elder, hoped to free his car from the parking lot behind the church as soon as the water went down. He rode out Katrina on the Episcopal churchs altar steps and was well stocked with food. But he feared the marauding looters that roamed St. Charles Avenue after dark.
"I lived in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots," Elder said. "That was a piece of cake compared to this."
Clara Wallace pushed her brother in a wheelchair down St. Charles from Fourth Street to the Pontchartrain Expressway. Suffering from diabetes and the after-effects of a stroke, he wore only a hospital robe and endured part of the journey through standing water.
"Nobody has a bathroom he can use," Wallace, 59, said of her brother. "Nobody would even stop to tell us if we were at the right place. What are we supposed to do?"
A man in a passing pickup truck from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finally directed Wallace and the 50 other evacuees under the overpass to the convention center.
But they would find little relief there.
New evacuees were being dropped off after being pulled from inundated eastern New Orleans and Carrollton, pooling with those who arrived on foot. Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions. They waited both inside and outside the cavernous building.
The influx overwhelmed the few staffers and Louisiana National Guardsmen on hand.
With so much need and so few resources, the weakest and frailest were bound to suffer the most. Seated next to her husband's body on the neutral ground beneath the St. Joseph Street sign, Allie Harris munched on crackers, seemingly unaware of all the tragedy unfolding around her. Eventually, guardsmen loaded her into a truck and hauled her off with other elderly evacuees.
Mr. Harris' body was left behind.
Such a breakdown did not bode well for other evacuees. As the afternoon wore on, hope faded, replaced by anger.
"This is 2005," John Murray shouted, standing in the street near Mr. Harris' body. "It should not be like this for no catastrophe. This is pathetic."
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Refugee archbishopBy SUSAN FINCH Staff writer BATON ROUGE - Forced out of his New Orleans headquarters by Hurricane Katrina, Archbishop Alfred Hughes was busy here Tuesday praying fellow storm evacuees, then huddling with top aides to make plans for a Capitol City administrative headquarters in exile. Our first concern is for the people - the people who have died, the people who are left behind, the people who rescued and who were rescued, said Hughes, who ministered to evacuees gathered at the Baton Rouge Centroplex and three Baton Rouge Catholic churches. His itinerary included stops at St. George Catholic Church to visit with residents brought here from the Chateau de Notre Dame nursing home in Uptown New Orleans and at St. Timothy Catholic Church, where his audience was a group from eastern New Orleans, many of them Vietnamese. I am also a refugee, Hughes said. Its not easy to be so drastically dislocated without any early hope of being able to return." Sounding like other storm evacuees anxious for details about whats happening back home, Hughes said the archdiocese is still waiting to find out how the 2,600 residents of Christopher Homes apartments fared in the storm. We dont know if some have died; We are waiting for confirmation, Hughes said. Christopher Homes is made up of more than 30 apartment complexes for the elderly, families and people with physical disabilities. Hughes said he received news Tuesday that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced that bishops will set aside a particular Sunday service to take up a special collection to help with the hurricane relief effort. In light of the damage Katrina left in New Orleans, Hughes said the archdiocese wants to develop a Baton Rouge headquarters because it looks like were going to be located here for the foreseeable future. Telephone connection problems in the storms wake have prompted Hughes and his team to get cellphones with 985 area code numbers. Their old cellphones, hooked into the 504 area code, were putting through only about one out of every 25 calls, he said.
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Along Esplanade, pleas for helpWednesday, 10:30 p.m.
By Doug MacCash and Dante Ramos Staff writers
Esplanade Avenue, one of New Orleans' historic high grounds, was submerged for most of its length Wednesday afternoon in 2 to 3 feet of murky water. It was impasswable to most vehicles between North Rampart Street at the edge of the French Quarter to Moss Street beside Bayou St. John.
A few small boats navigated downed power lines, large tree branches and other jetsam, including a memorial wreath for a recent murder vicitim. Meanwhile, desperate staff at homes for elderly people alongside Esplanade sought medical help for their charges.
The scene there -- and in the areas of Mid-City near City Park -- suggested an eerie, post-cataclysmic urban version of a swamp tour.
At Esplanade and North Claiborne Avenue, an agitated woman tried to hail a boat to carry off patients from nearby St. Martin's Home. Patients had fled up floor to floor as waters rose. The woman was especially fearful for a wheelchar-bound womanb patient with a stent in her stomach. This patient could not even have her dressing changed without clean water, which was in short supply.
Near Esplanade and Broad Street, attendants sat on the porch of the Bethany Home. The 30 patients, attendants said, were incapable of traveling out of New Orleans before the storm. The home's supply of drinking water was almost exhausted, and two patients had died.
Hanging from the roofline was a banner spellling out the facility's predicament: "HELP. THIS IS A HEALTH-CARE FACILITY. NEED MEDICINE. NO FOOD."
Others in Mid-City tried to make the best of the situation. A man sat on his front steps on North Carrollton Avenue, lathering his hair and face and rinsing away the soap suds with the passing floodwater.
Some stranded residents got relief from a National Guard helicopter that hovered low near Dumaine Street and North Carrollton. The Black Hawk chopper dropped bottles water in front of one woman's home. She couldn't get to it because it fell in the floodwaters, however, and she couldn't enter the water because of her chemotherapy.
A neighbor soon waded to her assistance.
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Joe Horn wants to make a differenceWednesday, 10:10 p.m.
By Mike Triplett
Staff writer
FREMONT, CALIF - An obviously distraught Joe Horn said he feels impassioned to do something that can make a difference in New Orleans.
Few Saints players are as tied to the community as the veteran wide receiver, who is in his sixth season with the team. He said when the players get three days off this weekend, he plans to head in to the city.
Im going to try to get in there. Im going to try to do something, Horn said. Im going to try to help, donate money and try to feed the families. Im going to do whatever I can, because I feel like thats a part of my family thats starving.
If I have to spend a million dollars in getting food, trying to help people get food, whatever I have to do to help people, help monetarily, help all I can, Im going to do it.
Horn is a North Carolina native, but he considers New Orleans a second home. His wife and six children have taken up temporary residence in Tupelo, Miss., he said.
Horn touched upon a variety of subjects during a brief chat with the media, saying he has been glued to the television set and the images he sees are sad, very sad.
Just to see kids like that, its horrible, its sad. Just to sit back and watch babies that cant even eat, that are suffering, Horn said. Im just hoping that the government goes in, sends ships in and gets people out as quickly as possible and tries to rebound from this catastrophe.
Horn said he hopes people learned that they have to evacuate when a hurricane approaches. The people that couldnt make it out or couldnt afford to make it out or just were too ill or not financially able, I understand," he said. "But the people who rode through hurricanes before, to take it as a joke, as if it were a movie or something
my heart goes out to them. When something like that magnitude comes through and they give you warning to leave, you have to go.
I talked to one lady at Dennys before I left, and I said, You have to get out of here. She said, Well, Ive been through three before. You have to understand, some people love New Orleans that much, just to stay and risk their lives. She said, Ill be on top of my house trying to survive. You have people who love New Orleans enough to die for New Orleans, you have people who thought it was a game. And you have people who just couldnt afford to get out. Horn also said he understands the actions of some of the looters. If people are there trying to survive, I have no problem with that, because I would be doing the same thing. If I was in New Orleans and my children needed to eat, and they were on top of a building, or I can take a boat and try to go to a Winn-Dixie, or a Target or the mall to get something to wear for my kids or eat, guess what? Youd be calling Joe Horn a looter.
Right now its a catastrophe. Police officers with guns, trying to make people drop stuff, they should put their guns up and throw them in the water and try to get people out of there. Thats the most disappointing part to me, people trying to make it out like looters, its terrible. So what? Its people whose lives have to be saved here. You think I give a damn about a TV or something like that? Its just a sad situation right now.
GAME NOTE: Rookie quarterback Adrian McPherson said he expects to play the entire second half against Oakland tonight. McPherson became the undisputed No. 3 quarterback when the team released Kliff Kingsbury on Saturday, but he said, Thats great, its a great opportunity, but if I dont get the job done, theyll bring somebody else in to replace me.
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