bryanjazz

The journal entry below is from my close friend Brenda Quant, who, with her husband Ted, evacuated New Orleans and are now in Opelousas, Louisiana, about 150 miles west of New Orleans.
[Editor's Note: The "Bryan" referenced in the article is NOT me.]

Sunday, September 4, 2005

Ted and I are fine. We thank everyone for their prayers and kindnesses. Ted is on his way back from Selma where he transported some people who were evacuated from the superdome. We will never be able to capture all of the stories of hurricane Katrina, but here are a few.

Jackie's brother Kerwin and his family are safe at a shelter in Lafayette. Kerwin had decided to ride out the storm on the third floor of his friend Bryan's house. We all begged him to evacuate with his wife Faith and their 2 little kids, but he insisted on staying. There were lots of others in the house also, Bryan's wife and children and I think a grandchild, along with Faith's brother who is disabled and uses a wheelchair. The hurricane blew over New Orleans and the house withstood the winds, but then the storm surge came - a 20-foot high wall of water - and suddenly they were in flood water ON THE THIRD FLOOR. Bryan had spent the night putting together a makeshift raft, just in case there was street flooding. This ended up being their way out. Kerwin and Bryan put people on the raft and floated it out of the house and swam beside it, pushing it along. At some point they were able to get to Bryan's boat and some got out that way. They had to make several trips to get everyone out. There were snakes, rats and alligators in the water. For blocks, there were people calling out for help in their flooded homes. Once Kerwin and Bryan got everyone from the house onto higher ground out of the flood water, they went back and got Bryan's boat and started rescuing people from their homes. They made 7 more trips back and forth with the raft and boat and saved a lot of people, most of them elderly. Faith said that each time they went back, she was terrified she would never see them again.

Faith was later interviewed on CNN and this is how we got word that they were safe. A friend in another state saw the report, recognized Faith and called Shawn here in Opelousas. The raft itself was kept at CNN headquarters to become part of their archives.

My heart goes out to my cousins. I wish they had not had to go through this terrible ordeal. But then I can't help wondering what would have happened to all of those people Kerwin and Bryan saved if they had evacuated on Sunday as we all begged them to.

Some years ago, a hurricane evacuation plan was proposed for New Orleans and the surrounding suburban parishes. The idea was to have everyone in Orleans parish (that's the city itself) sit still while the suburban parishes evacuated first. In other words, get the majority of the white citizens out before beginning to evacuate the majority of the black citizens. This plan was rejected as overtly racist (I think this happened under Marc Morial's administration). To my knowledge, no official evacuation plan was ever agreed upon by the three parishes that would be using the same roads to get out. But what actually happened when Katrina was bearing down was that this racist plan was put into effect. Jefferson parish - the suburb west of New Orleans -- announced a mandatory evacuation on Saturday morning at 8:00. St Bernard parish - to the east of us -ordered its residents out at 12 noon. The mayor of New Orleans - and yes he is black - waited until 4 pm on Saturday to order the mandatory evacuation of our city. He hemmed and hawed all day, saying he had not made up his little mind about evacuation - but meanwhile people like us who had the means to get out had already started making their own decisions about leaving. I don't believe for one moment that the mayor was struggling with weather projections to make up his mind. He was just following the racist plan that representatives of the suburban parishes had proposed years before.

Next, our mayor did something that I would equate with a war crime for which he ought to be tried in some international court. He announced that the superdome would be the only shelter, and that it would be open only to people with special needs. Only people with disabilities, illnesses and other special needs would be allowed in the superdome. Others would be turned away. This left thousands of poor people without any means of getting to safety. Something like 40% of our residents are poor, making for a raw number of around 200,000 people. Many had no means of evacuating.

His next crime: Once looting started (the authorities are using that word, when some people were just trying to get food, water, baby formula, shoes, etc) - anyway, once order broke down, the mayor ordered the 1500 police officers conducting search and rescue in the neighborhoods to suspend life-saving operations and go after looters. Property was valued over life.

Later, he began to see what he had wrought and became hysterical - cursing Bush for FEMA's failings. For this he has apologized and kissed up. He has not apologized to our citizens however. At one point, Mayor Nagin ended up at the convention center where there were 20,000 evacuees with no way out, with no water, food, or sanitation. People were dying, there was chaos and panic. This location is near the Mississippi River, so Nagin told the people who were able to walk to start marching toward the Miss River bridge and cross over to the other side. Most of the sections of the west bank that were closest to the bridge were high and dry at that point. And then, I'm not sure who it was that opposed that plan, one of the mayors of a town on the other side of the river, I'm told - but from somewhere the word came that the west bank of the river did not want the New Orleans evacuees on their side of the river. It is my understanding that armed National Guardsmen were posted on the bridge to keep people from crossing. This is so inhuman that I pray it is not true - that it is a wild rumor.

Shawn got a cell phone call from one of his friends whose brother was trapped in New Orleans. Once the water receded some, he and others started walking west, and then at some point they came upon an abandoned US mail truck. The young man started the truck somehow and loaded people into it. He drove to Jefferson parish where rescue operations were still going on. The women and children who rode in on the mail truck were evacuated by airplane. All of the men were arrested and jailed as looters. They were heroes, really, but for our authorities it's a matter of property over life, black life anyway, and so to the police they were criminals.

A friend of Jackie's who evacuated to Atlanta called today. The friend's brother had also been stranded in New Orleans in the rising water. He was driving his father's truck, trying to get out, and was stopped by the police. He did not have his drivers license on him and so the police confiscated the truck and sent him walking. He walked when he could and swam when he had to and finally got to high ground. Once there he commandeered an abandoned van, got it started, picked up as many people as the van could hold, and drove all the way to Tennessee. His sister says that when he called this morning, he was dehydrated and delirious.

Earlier this year, I read an article in Gambit (a New Orleans weekly) that warned that the reorganization of FEMA was a big problem. FEMA officials said that since their agency had been placed under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security, their response time was greatly slowed down. Whereas they previously were able to act independently and immediately to respond to crises, now they have to go through channels and get permission for everything they want to do from bureaucrats who have no experience or expertise in the field of emergency response.

Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans 40 years ago -- September 9, 1965. The 9th ward was flooded, along with much of St Bernard parish. Mama, Joan and I had to get into the attic when the water rushed into the house. We had a little transistor radio with us and Mayor Schiro and various civil defense authorities were broadcasting all night. I remember that every time they handed Mayor Schiro the mike, he said “we gotta get to those people on Tennessee Street… gotta rescue those people from Tennessee Street…I want the people on Tennessee street to be brave…we're on the way to get you.” At that time, everyone living on Tennessee street was white. There was not even a pretense that our government valued lives equally across color lines.

We spent that night in the attic and thankfully the water stopped rising before it got to us there. The next morning, we were rescued by 2 men in a small fishing boat. These were citizen volunteers who wanted to help. They were both white and they had come in from Jefferson parish which had not been flooded. They brought their boat into the 9th ward just to be of service to strangers. I'll never forget this and will always be grateful to these men whose names I don't even know. As I watched the coverage of hurricane Katrina, I thought of those men who came to help and kept wondering why there were no volunteers this time. Thousands of people in south Louisiana have boats, and we should have been seeing some of them among the rescuers. Soon I learned that such people were being turned away so that the official rescuers could handle (mishandle) the whole situation.

I missed 2 days of hurricane coverage because I got overwhelmed. But then I looked at the TV screen two days ago and saw that Jesse Jackson was getting people out on buses that he brought in. This is the kind of response that gives some hope to the people watching. Our friends in Selma called Friday to say that they had gotten 2 buses and needed some advice on the best route to take to avoid water and avoid being turned away by authorities. I was sorry to have to say I had no idea and no way of getting that information.

Last night I heard that Charmaine Nevelle had gotten a bus and was driving it into the city herself to rescue people. But then Ted called from the road and told me the real story. When the water came into Charmaine's 9th ward neighborhood, Charmaine and her neighbors got everyone into the neighborhood school for shelter. They were there for days with no food or water. The experience was horrible. Charmaine was attacked by some thug in the shelter. When helicopters started flying overhead, they thought they would be rescued, but the helicopters just flew over them, looked down at them and kept going. After this happened repeatedly over a period of days, some of the men who had guns shot at the helicopters as they disappeared in the distance, leaving the people to die like rats. I watched the reports on TV of rescuers being shot at and it made no sense to me. Now I get it. Days passed and it became clear that they would not be rescued. Charmaine says she stole a bus. She had never driven a bus, but figured it out, loaded the people on and drove them to safety. She is a heroic person.

People are still being evacuated from New Orleans. Aaron Broussard, the mayor of Kenner (in Jefferson parish, where the airport is) has announced that he is letting the people who live there back in tomorrow so that they can check on their homes. The governor has asked him to wait until everyone is out of New Orleans before letting people in because Kenner is the evacuation route and she doesn't want the roads clogged by people trying to get in while rescuers are still getting people out who've been stranded for A WHOLE WEEK. Mayor Broussard is refusing to defer to the governor's wishes and says he intends to go ahead with his plan. His people are worried about their property, he says. I have compassion for those people too, but let's worry about property later on after everyone is evacuated. We'll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.