"Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences"
Thursday, 8 September 2005 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daI don't know if this has made the rounds fully yet, but it was news to me. Verified examples of police preventing New Orleans refugees from leaving New Orleans into Gretna, the (richer) town directly to the southeast, which was not flooded.
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.
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 article was written by two paramedics who were in New Orleans for a paramedics convention. I found the story hard to believe, but significant portions of it are corroborated in the comments, including a link to a video-clip with Geraldo Rivera in tears on Fox News, asking "Why won't they let people walk out of here?"
Ugh. Just, ugh.
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.
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 article was written by two paramedics who were in New Orleans for a paramedics convention. I found the story hard to believe, but significant portions of it are corroborated in the comments, including a link to a video-clip with Geraldo Rivera in tears on Fox News, asking "Why won't they let people walk out of here?"
Ugh. Just, ugh.
no subject
Date: Friday, 9 September 2005 02:08 am (UTC)I thought I was getting inured to this.
Apparently not.
Words fail me. But if they didn't, I suspect "lousy motherfuckers" would be among them.