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Overview
What I do know for sure is that the streets are falling
apart, a long term result of first, Katrina flooding,
and currently a result of drought conditions that are
prevailing: water and fire. I may not know for sure why,
but I do know for sure there are craters appearing
seemingly overnight—I said “craters” because I didn't
mean your garden-variety, average urban city pothole; I
mean axle-busting, big-ass holes in the asphalt. I'm
telling you what I know from experience driving these
machine-eating streets. I know once I get home and pull
into the driveway, I've got to be extra careful. And I
know I can't fully close the den door. That's what I
know for sure.
Cracking Up
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Denise said she thought she was in hell. They were there
for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise,
her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and
2-year-old grandniece. When they arrived, there were already
thousands of people there. They were told that buses were
coming. Police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs.
National Guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with
guns cocked and aimed at them. Nobody stopped to drop off water.
A helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles
exploded on impact due to the height of the helicopter.
Katrina Survivor Stories
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It's weird, but as we were leaving Heron St. for Fussell
Cemetery Road, I reached for my passport, passport pictures, my
laptop and zip disks, and a Faruk Turunz oud. Linda packed
important papers (as we've always done) and reached for some
memorabilia and jewelry. I still can't understand why we didn't
pause to notice what we were doing long enough to see that we
should have also packed up the jeep with clothes and other
items. We left the Jeep behind. All our clothes – and my
clothes and luggage for Turkey – we left behind.
Somewhere in our psyches, we thought, as New
Orleanians always think during hurricane season, "We'll be
back in a day or two. Surely, this one will veer east or west or
downgrade to a Category One hurricane and all we'll get is a lot
of wind and a few
wind-felled trees."
Katrina did veer east, but it didn't matter.
The eye of this Category Five hurricane was 30 miles wide and
its wind gusts were 150 miles an hour. And it traveled slowly,
very slowly, taking its time chewing up our worlds.
Eh La Bas
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Table
"Everyone should have been evacuated 50
hours, 60 hours or more before the hurricane come. I think that
dam broke on purpose, that's what I think. I think they wanted
to clear New Orleans, and get all of the Black people from out
there. I don't think they want nobody to come back. But I am
going back."
Hootkins's feelings about the future of the
city were echoed by Roy Camry, a tenth-grade student at the
(former) McDonald Senior High in New Orleans, "It's not
going to be really for Black people. To tell you the truth, I
think they're going to make it all a big suburb."
Ms. Mudro and Ms. Johnson also spoke of their
harrowing trip out of Jefferson Parish and into Houston. Felicia
Mudro recounted her experience, "They treated us like dogs, the
military police. They wouldn't give us water, wouldn't
give us food, passed us up for three days on the highway
with our children. The whole world needs to know they
are screwing us over."
Survivors of New Orleans say
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* * I tried to get the police to help us,
but I realized we rescued a lot of police officers in the flat
boat from the Fifth District police station. The boat. The
guy that was driving the boat, he rescued a lot of them and
brought them to different places where they could be saved.
We understood that the police couldn't help us. But we
could not understand why the National Guard and them couldn't
help us, because we kept seeing them. But they never would
stop and help us.
Transcript of Charmaine Nevilles Story
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* "What of the people who are being cycled
out of here?" "What are we sending into the
population?" If people are sick and contagious, where are
the precautions to separate the vulnerable? What of precautions
such as masks and gloves to keep the medical professionals and
first responders safe? All the here and now is suspended in the
hope that maybe tomorrow will take care of itself and the worst
won't happen.
Those are the question we asked on the first day. NO ONE IS IN
CHARGE!!!
Whos Helping the Helpers
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* updated 1 November
2007 |
