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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Katrina, firsthand report
  • Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 12:58:01 -0400

At IPC7 I brought up the subject of Permaculture for refugees, and folks thought it a topic worthy of consideration. Here's a report to help us understand some of the particular challenges of refugees.

Subject: FW: Katrina, firsthand report

This message is available on the Internet at
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences

Note: Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics from California that
were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradshaw
is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and
Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local
790.[California]

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the
Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets
remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible
through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity,
running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were
beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers
had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled
the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew
increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized
and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was
an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and
distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an
organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they
spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the
looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and
arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the
TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that
there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or
affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero"
images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling
to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but
what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the
hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans.

The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and
disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the
generators running. The electricians who improvised thick
extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little
electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking
lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent
many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of
unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks
stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards,
"stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs
in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could
be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service
workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal
meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from
members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in
the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference
attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels
for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone
contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were
repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National
Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses
and the other resources must have been invisible because none of
us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and
came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the
City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket
were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for
48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing
outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We
created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new
born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent"
arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned
that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were
commandeered by the military.

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. As we entered the center of the City, we finally
encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be
allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had
descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards
further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention
Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the
police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we
asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what
was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our
problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This
would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and
hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street
and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they
did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We
held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to
camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible
to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment
to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay.
Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order,
the police commander came across the street to address our group.
He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain
Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the
police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed
cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained
to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and
wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting
for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically,
"I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge
with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the
convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic
group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great
news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and
quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in
strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping
walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles
to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now
began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line
across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to
speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent
the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered
and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage
some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our
conversation with the police commander and of the commander's
assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting.
The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially
as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded
that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there
would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if
you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River
and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter
from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the
end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the
Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe
and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to
everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway
and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen
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 only way
across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks,
buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be
hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery
New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water
delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting!
A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of
pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to
our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities,
food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered.
We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar
poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated
a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate
enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other
scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where
individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for
babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant
looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to
find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these
basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other,
working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and
water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration
and the ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing
families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our
encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the
media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every
relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City.
Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all
those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded
they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking
feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City)
was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up,
jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces,
screaming, "Get off the ------- freeway". A helicopter arrived and
used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures.
As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and
water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the
law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated
or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of
"victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our
"we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would
force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we
scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the
dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the
freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal
elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the
police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and
shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact
with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out
by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the
airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The
two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the
Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their
unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were
unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun.
The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a
press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while
George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After
being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San
Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief
effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large
field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the
buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us
were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those
who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few
belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two
different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been
confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal
detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women,
children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be
"medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any
communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm,
heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw
one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot.
Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words
of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous,
inept, and racist.

There was more suffering than need be.

Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.


--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 1209
Black Mountain, NC 28711
(828)669-6336

also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
Culture's Edge at Earthaven Ecovillage
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
http://www.earthaven.org
http://www.bioregionalcongress.org


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  • Re: [permaculture] Katrina, firsthand report, Keith Johnson, 09/23/2005

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