[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Paramedics: Police Prevent People from Leaving New Orleans

[Chuck Minne]

A compelling report by visiting paramedics trapped in N.O.

Dan Stafford <aqmstaffo at mailbag.com> wrote: 
Subject: [PDI] Paramedics: Police Prevent People from Leaving New Orleans

Paramedics: Police Prevent People from Leaving New Orleans

http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml

Hurricane Katrina - Our Experiences
By Parmedics Larry Bradsahw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
EMSNetwork News

Tuesday 06 September 2005

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 
fucking 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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

-- 
One person, One vote, It Counts! Do it, America!
http://www.illinoisprogressives.org/pdi/

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