This sounds like a retelling of one of the stories from this week's episode
of This American Life w/ Ira Glass...heard on our own WUTC at 8pm on Sunday.
Though it could be a very similar story.


On 9/15/05 2:04 PM, "Shalonna Williams" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> THIS IS LONG, BUT VERY WORTH READING!
> 
> I am not sure how true it is, but it is another perspective.  Perhaps
> some food for thought.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Lisa Moore
> To: 
> Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 10:13 AM
> Subject: a survivor's story: Katrina in New Orleans
> 
> 
> i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise
> made it out of New Orleans; she's at her brother's in
> Baton Rouge. from what she told me:
> 
> her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in
> to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital
> (historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us
> from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother,
> her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she
> figured they'd be safe at the hospital. they went to
> Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room
> to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room,
> two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off
> time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her
> family were booted out; their room was given up to the
> new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay
> at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away)
> to ride out the storm at her mother's apartment. her
> mother stayed at the hospital.
> 
> she described it as the scariest time in her life. 3
> of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved
> in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled
> under a mattress in the hall. she thought she would
> die from either the storm or a heart attack. after the
> storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter
> (this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the electricity was
> out, they were running on generators, there was no air conditioning.
> Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. they moved patients
> upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be streets. they were told
> that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming. then they were
> told they would have to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and
> S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in hip-deep water, only
> to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what y'all call the
> median) for 3 1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest
> Morial Convention Center. (yes, the convention center you've all seen on
> TV.)
> 
> 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.
> 
> the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her.
> the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her.
> Denise told me the people around her all thought they
> had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the
> only buses that came were full; they dropped off more
> and more people, but nobody was being picked up and
> taken away. they found out that those being dropped
> off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they
> got off the buses delirious from lack of water and
> food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep
> them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had
> mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.
> 
> inside the convention center, the place was one huge
> bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other
> people's shit. the floors were black and slick with
> shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was
> so bad. but outside wasn't much better: between the
> heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and
> very young dying from dehydration... and there was no
> place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they
> slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.
> 
> Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there.
> but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal
> Street and "looted," and brought back food and water
> for the old people and the babies, because nobody had
> eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and
> yelled out "the buses are coming," the young men with
> guns organized the crowd in order: old people in
> front, women and children next, men in the back. just
> so that when the buses came, there would be priorities
> of who got out first.
> 
> Denise said the fights she saw between the young men
> with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their
> guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd.
> but she said that there were a handful of people shot
> in the convention center; their bodies were left
> inside, along with other dead babies and old people.
> 
> Denise said the people thought there were being sent
> there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody
> being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off.
> national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and
> yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a
> certain point all the people thought the cops were
> coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young
> man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit;
> he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot
> him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw
> many groups of people decide that they were going to
> walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those
> same groups would return, saying that they were met at
> the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to
> turn around, that they weren't allowed to leave.
> 
> so they all believed they were sent there to die.
> 
> Denise's niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to
> call her mother's boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and
> finally got through and told him where they were. the boyfriend, and
> Denise's brother, drove down from Baton Rouge and came and got them.
> they had to bribe a few cops, and talk a few into letting them into the
> city ("come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at the Convention Center!"),
> then they took back roads to get to them.
> 
> after arriving at my other cousin's apartment in Baton
> Rouge, they saw the images on TV, and couldn't believe
> how the media was portraying the people of New
> Orleans. she kept repeating to me on the phone last
> night: make sure you tell everybody that they left us
> there to die. nobody came. those young men with guns
> were protecting us. if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't
> have had the little water and food they had found.
> 
> that's Denise Moore's story.
> 
> Lisa C. Moore