My Katrina

The River Center

Dear friends and family,

Today, one of our hosts, Maryann, went down to the River Center. It’s the largest refugee shelter in Baton Rouge. It started taking evacuees early on and the numbers seem to keep on increasing. There are around 5000 people there now, making it very crowded.

Maryann had gone there a couple of days ago to offer to bring some people back here to use our showers and have the chance to relax for a little while and get cleaned up. She connected with a woman and her four grandchildren and although they couldn’t do it that day, Maryann arranged to pick them up today. So off she went in the morning. She was going to take them to a McDonald’s for some lunch, then bring them here, but after a few hours she still hadn’t returned. We finally got a call from her (on the perpetually degrading phone system) saying she was standing in a line outside the River Center still waiting to get inside.

Evidently the security has been ratcheted up quite considerably in the past few days. When Maryann was there on Wednesday there were fewer people being housed there and she had just been able to walk in the door and talk with people. Today, there was a highly visible military presence. She said where she was standing there were a couple of guards, one with his rifle slung over his shoulder, the other with it ready in his hands.

The overcrowding, the tension, the lack of privacy, the lack of security for the few belongings people still possess, the unsettling rumour mill, the fears of unrest after FEMA’s debit card fiasco (did you hear about that one? the emergency agency gave away $2000 debit cards on a “trial basis” to refugees at the Astrodome while those in other shelters waited; then the program was scrapped after the first ones were given out). All these things have led to increased security.

When people leave the River Center to get a breath of fresh air or, conversely, to have a smoke, they have to sign out with those in charge. Then, to get back in again, they have to queue up, in the same line Maryann found herself in. That means just to go out and have a stretch may take several hours. And the queueing up is all done in the 94F degree heat, with the smokers smoking as much as they can in the line before they get back inside to the no-smoking zone. Meanwhile, you have to make sure you leave someone looking after your stuff inside or it may disappear. So, you leave someone waiting rooted to your little bit of space inside while you take hours to get back in.

Maryann talked to quite a few people there. One older woman was sitting in the shade. She told Maryann she really wanted to get back inside, but she had bad knees and so she was trying to rest up before she got on that long line, hoping it might grow a bit shorter in the meantime. Maryann said she’d get in line on the woman’s behalf and then get her in when she reached the head of the queue. And that’s what she did.

In the queue, one of the women behind her, when she realised Maryann lived in town, started begging her for any accommodation at all that she knew of. She was saying “I just need a small place to be by myself. I’ll clean house. I’m a good worker, I’m honest, I have references. I just need a little space.” Maryann pointed out a woman standing away from the queue, who had told her earlier she had a boarding house and was taking names of people for the rooms, and that she might be able to help. But the woman was too scared to give up her place in the queue to go over to the boarding house woman. She’d already waited for hours, and the woman was already taking other people’s names, so even if she left the queue she might not get a room. It was heartbreaking.

When Maryann finally got inside, although she’d had the woman she was to meet paged, she couldn’t find her anyway. After hours, she gave up and came home.

And that’s what it’s like in the River Center. Many of the people there spent days in intolerable conditions in New Orleans after Katrina hit, so you could say it’s an improvement.

I spent the day researching an article for the Herald on using the Internet for disaster relief. I find it really hard to concentrate on my usual writing about computers, so one of my editors has come up with this story, which is central to my thinking.

Lillie had a really tough day. Now that we are sure we’re moving to Houston, and moving soon, she’s faced with separation from the rest of her family. She had hoped to see her dad before we leave Baton Rouge, but he’s currently on the road to Atlanta with Lillie’s sister Laurie, going there to pick up his wife, so the chances of seeing him any time soon are slim. Jane’s in northern Louisiana, staying at a camp (local word for a cabin in the woods or on a bayou) near Tallulah. Lillie will make the trip up there tomorrow to see her. I can’t take the time to go with her, as I have to try to earn some money and need to help out at the newly reestablished Death Penalty Discourse Center here, before I abandon them for Texas (I’ll still do the online management for the Center from Texas, but I won’t be on hand to do computer training and troubleshooting). Ann and Glenn are still camped with their son, Stephen, here in Baton Rouge. It’s quite a sight, seeing Ann, Glenn and Lisa all piled into a household with Stephen and his two flatmates and assorted girlfriends. We’re hoping to have time with them on Monday before we leave.

It’s going to be such an enormous wrench for Lillie. Right at the time she needs to be near them most, she’s going to have to leave her family. We’re already really missing our friends, so this is going to be extraordinarily hard.

One thing people who haven’t spent time in the South might not realise is how important family is. I think this may be even more the case in New Orleans than for other places in the South. Families stick together. Lillie’s family all live within a few miles of one another and she and her three sisters have always talked on the phone almost every day. They all adore their dad. And the connection is not just immediate family: they have really strong ties to a very extended network of aunts, uncles and cousins.

This is the usual way of things in New Orleans. We were talking to a couple at the refugee gathering last week, and they have family dinner every single Sunday with 60 people in their home. There families have lived in Louisiana since the 1700s (they’re African American), and being separated is beyond comprehension.

That’s one of the great tragedies of this disaster which may not be visible to those from outside this culture. It has wrenched these closely-knit families apart, flinging them off in all directions.

With hundreds of thousands of people being forced to do what they don’t want to do – leave their families and friends, accept unpalatable work, live in places not of their choosing – I think the depression factor down the road is going to be enormous. Lillie was certainly feeling it today.

Love,

Rose

Schools and language

Dear family and friends,

Two Houston schools which closed last year because they didn't have enough students have opened again, exclusively for young refugees from Katrina. What a strange set up that will be.

Here in Baton Rouge, the schools are all taking on large numbers of New Orleans students. I’m currently staying in a house just near St Thomas Moore, one of the Catholic schools (known locally as ‘parochial’ schools). It’s enrolling 200 refugee students and the influx will change the racial mix of the school markedly, as many of those from New Orleans are African American. That’s where Lillie’s niece, Lisa, is going.

Schooling has been a huge stress for families who’ve fled New Orleans. For most students, the school year had just begun when Katrina hit. In the US, young people have to go to school a set number of days a year. If, due to blizzard or a fire burning down the school or a hurricane wiping out the local school system, they miss some school days, they must make up those days during the holidays or on weekends or with longer days. Hence the big focus on getting them back into school as soon as possible.

One of the many ironies of Katrina is that, after agonising over which school Lisa should go to for much of the past year (she’s moving into a secondary school) and taking everything into careful consideration, suddenly that school is out of operation, and Glenn and Ann and Lisa have had to decide on a new school in a matter of days. So did tens of thousands of other families.

Luckily, with some help from Sister Helen Prejean with whom I’m staying, Ann and Glenn managed to get Lisa and one of her closest friends into St Thomas Moore, squeaking in at the last minute. The school has been great, providing uniforms and other equipment, as have many of the schools around here.

Now comes the tougher job of helping thousands of recently traumatised young people settle in. I know how difficult it has been for me to focus on anything other than Katrina-related stuff for the last week and a half; I don’t think it’s going to be any easier for all those students, especially the ones who have really suffered, to get into the swing of things.

On Omidyar.net, Tom Munnecke said he’d been talking to Heather Wood Ion (co-author of Against Terrible Odds: Lessons in Resilience from our Children) who said to “expect the recovery from the effects of this on victims and their families to take two generations.”

Although staggering, I found that statement comforting. That’s because here’s someone who clearly takes what has happened seriously. Really seriously.

I know many people are shocked and horrified by Katrina and its aftermath, but I’m not sure how many people actually “get it”. How many people understand that it’s not merely an event that has happened, but an ongoing series of events which will unfold in people’s lives for a long, long time to come.

One small sign of this is the unwillingness to use the term “refugee”. We’re told we’re not “refugees”, we’re “evacuees”. Or, preferably, we’re “Americans” (even though not all of us are Americans). It’s been suggested that the use of the term refugee is racist.

I think what’s racist is to say “refugee” is a term you apply to those poor people in Africa, fleeing the genocide in Darfur, but not to US citizens.

The UN definition may say a “refugee” is someone displaced from their own country, while a “displaced person” is someone displaced within their own country, but as far as I’m concerned, a refugee is someone who has no home and who seeks refuge. All the New Orleanians I’ve talked to, white and black, have used the term about themselves because it’s accurate. Unfortunately, it’s also distasteful to those who don’t want to think of the enormity of what has happened. “Evacuees” has such a pleasant temporary feel in comparison.

When you come to think of it, given the UN definition, “refugee” might be the perfect term for poor black residents of New Orleans. I remember Helen Prejean saying that when she lived in the housing projects in New Orleans it was like living in an entirely different country. That there are two Americas: the mostly comfortable, mostly white one so many of us live in; and the grinding poverty of that other America, where so many black people live.

Watching poor black people left behind in overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers after Katrina, it was starkly clear that there are two New Orleans. And it’s not just two New Orleans. It’s two Americas. And so the term refugee seems particularly apt for those who have been swept out of ‘their part of town’ and herded off to seek refuge in a different America.

Whatever I am, I’m incredibly busy. The phones here have become worse, which is hard to believe. Yesterday, neither Lillie nor I received a single call on our cell phones, despite almost a dozen people letting us know by other means that they’d tried. And so trying to accomplish a simple task, such as having the power put on at our new apartment in Houston, becomes an hours-long nightmare. If we finally manage to get through, often our calls are dropped after 15 minutes of talking to people on the phone. Then it’s back to square one. This happened three times to Lillie with one company. It’s not uncommon to hear cries of frustration around the house as people lose hard-won connections.

Now that Lillie’s firm has made the commitment to setting up in Houston, they want her there as soon as possible. That means we’ll have to pack up house (an absurdly trivial chore these days) and get ourselves there by mid-week. Lillie’s still hoping to see her dad before then, as she hasn’t seen him since the hurricane, but that may not be possible. I'm trying to help the new Death Penalty Discourse Center get established and online once more before I leave. Once in Texas, I'll be focussing on managing the Center's Web sites and handling Helen Prejean's blog and audio blog.

Love,

Rose

Bodies and burials

Dear friends and family,

Conversation here over dinner tonight was of bodies and burials. All six of us (four evacuees and two hosts) had dinner together while watching the Lehrer News Hour, a really well-done news program. Mitch Landrieu, the Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana – he’s one of many Landrieus in political life, including his sister, Senator Mary Landrieu, whom you may have seen alongside Governor Kathleen Blanco in some of the press conferences – was saying that the worst is yet to come and that the body retrieval phase will be particularly hard. It’s hard to imagine that the worst is to come, but so many of the bodies are going to be in an advanced stage of decomposition, many will never be identified and it will be a nightmare process for those trying to identify their family members. Identification will be made even harder because identification records, such as dental records, are submerged, too.

We’ve heard reports of many alligators, which may be feeding on the bodies, in the waters in New Orleans. I can only assume it’s true because there are so many alligators in the waters around the city. Waterways within the city itself, such as Bayou St John which runs right up through City Park and Mid-City, have regular alligator sightings. Every now and then one of them will wander out of the bayou into a rather more public place. The only surprise is that they can survive the toxic waters post Katrina.

When the waters finally recede, I assume we’re going to have to deal with quite a few animals in our houses, including snakes, which abound. And all the animals in the New Orleans Aquarium – a true marvel of a place – have died. The animals in the zoo were on relatively high land, but I assume many of them have been without food for a long time now.There were also earlier reports that buried bodies were rising out of the graves into the flood waters, but I think that will prove to be one of the many ill-founded rumours which have abounded.

Graves, by the way, are a big deal in New Orleans. Because it’s below sea level, people are buried in raised tombs or grass plots built above ground level, to prevent bodies from rising up to the surface. So the city is dotted with fascinating cemeteries full of mausoleums. They’ve said that all the Katrina victims will be buried in individual graves; we’re not sure where yet. They’re setting up a morgue at St Gabriel’s, which is where the dreadful prison for women is located. (Prisons across the south are astoundingly harsh and gruesome.)

Part of the Lehrer Hour dealt with the body problem, much of the rest of it focused on Baton Rouge, which really is struggling to manage the influx of refugees. It’s so crowded on the roads we have to make strategic decisions about trips out to the shops and post office and shelters and so on. Local people have been amazing in the way they’ve opened their houses to us. Almost everyone in Baton Rouge has someone staying with them, and many people are housing a dozen or more refugees.

The city has a weird feeling to it and rumours are rampant. People are anxious about what the sudden doubling of the population might do to the place and helicopters fly overhead constantly throughout the day. Most of them are headed to New Orleans. They come back up here to refuel and sometimes to get supplies, then head back down to New Orleans once more to pick up people still stranded or to supply rescue crews. Makes me feel like I’m in a military zone, which is not far from the truth.

Cities in Texas are also under a strain. Texas has taken a quarter of a million of us, which is a lot to absorb. It’ll be interesting when we get to Houston to see how the local community is responding to the influx and the prospect of many of them being long-term visitors. I’m concerned that after the initial horror and caring die away, things will become tense in all these crowded cities. Of course, that may not be a bad thing: my real worry is that Americans other than New Orleanians will return to normal and forgot about us; having a whole bunch of cities across the south focused on the “refugee problem” may help keep the story front and centre.

Bush continues to be loathsome. I’ve never seen a leader so completely and utterly clueless in the face of a natural disaster. He is constantly smiling in this “you’re fine, you’re in my hands and everything will be hunky dory” way. People around here keep talking about it. “Why’s he smiling?” The generous interpretation is that he’s nervous in the face of the most hostile questioning he’s ever encountered. I can’t believe he’s going to head the investigation into why the emergency response went so wrong. He’s trying to put the blame onto “bureaucracy”. As Nancy Pelosi (house Democrats leader) puts it: “He need only look in the mirror.”

It was good to hear a reporter questioning a White House spokesman:

Reporter: “Where does the buck stop in this administration?”

Spokesman: “The President.”

Reporter: “So he will be held accountable as the head of the government for the federal response that he's already acknowledged was inadequate and unacceptable?”

Spokesman: “The President's most important responsibility is the safety and security of the American people…” [followed by more waffle].

I have to say this is the first time in a very long time that I’ve heard the White House press corps really put Bush on the spot.

The rest of the administration and much of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) appear to be not much better. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said the storm had been far worse than predicted and “there had been no evidence to suggest the levees in New Orleans would be breached.” The man is either a liar or completely ignorant. People in New Orleans have been talking about the inevitability of levee breaches, if flood protection funding was not increased, for years. About three years ago the Times Picayune ran an extensive and detailed series on the topic. I can’t believe someone in the administration thinks he could get away with saying such a thing. And the Director of FEMA, Michael Brown, has blamed the high death toll on “people who did not heed the advance warnings”, completely ignoring the fact that the city and FEMA had no plan whatsoever for evacuating the poor or providing adequate shelter.

The other thing we watched on the news tonight was the water being pumped out of the city. A sight which should give us great joy, but which is the start of another tragedy. That filthy toxic water is going to kill Lake Ponchartrain. After years of hard work, the lake had finally gotten to the stage of being reasonably clean and dolphins and other marine animals had been spotted in it for the first time in a long time. Now, almost everything in it is going to be killed. It’s heartbreaking. The water being pumped out is truly dreadful. We’ve been told that even after it has been pumped out, even after the houses have been left to dry, the city will be really dangerous. A biologist who has tested the water said “the bacterial count could not be worse” and they say we’ll need protective gear to get into our houses (if we can get in).

In amongst this, people are simply wonderful. When Lillie was in WalMart yesterday buying some essentials, she started talking to a woman stocking the shelves. She’d been working for 13 hours to help replenish much-diminished supplies and she said that she was really concerned about the evacuees’ needs. She has donated $2000 to the relief effort – on a shelf-stocker’s wages. Lillie started crying when she told her that, and the woman hugged her and comforted her.Public crying is not all that unusual here; in stores you see people stop and stare and tears well up in their eyes. It happens to me a lot. Shopping is really hard. When I was in WholeFoods yesterday, one of my favourite health food and grocery stores, I felt nauseated being there. It felt like an outrage to be doing something normal and I found it hard to believe so many people were walking around as if things were no different. Cindy, one of the people at the gathering we went to last night, said she experienced the same thing.

Love,

Rose

The refugee community

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s been another busy and exhausting day. I was up early writing an artcle which may appear in The Sydney Morning Herald and/or The Age newspapers.

Our days are incredibly busy, filled with filling in forms for emergency assistance and housing, trying to get through to our banks to stop direct debits and find out why credit cards are getting declined, contacting friends to make sure they’re doing okay.

This arvo, the people we’re staying with went down to the River Center here in Baton Rouge with food, clothing and blankets for the refugees there, and to volunteer their time. Lillie and I headed off to a gathering of fellow refugees, hosted by one of the women from my old book club and her family, who have all evacuated to Baton Rouge. They made red beans and rice and jambalaya, all traditional New Orleans dishes, and we spent time making connections and swampping stories and discussing ways we can help those who haven’t fared as well as us.

It was a wonderful gathering. Social crowds are not usually my favourite thing, especially when I don’t know most of the people there. But this was different. We all share a bond, we all care about how each is doing, and we’re all suffering many similar things.

It was a great mixed group of white and black folk, one a journalist with The Times Picayune, another the Director of Coastal and Marine Conservation for The Nature Conservancy, who has close experience of the way the Bush administration and previous administrations have neglected the coastal wetlands, to the terrible detriment of New Orleans. Those coastlands used to be a big buffer from hurricanes, but their continued erosion -- at the rate of a football field a day -- has made the city far, far more vulnerable. It’s something which has been known for a long time, but adequate funding has been denied over and over.

It was so good to be with people who know. And, at the same time, really hard. So very strange to look around a room and to think "each and every one of these people is a refugee". It’s something which will affect us all for the rest of our lives.

A couple was there with their 7-month-old baby, Jacob. It was so wonderful to see his glowing, positive face and spend time holding him and singing to him and being in a place of joy with him. Great therapy!

Here's a satellite photo which shows our house after the flooding. This photo is oriented with east at the top, west at the bottom. Lake Ponchartrain is out of picture, about a mile and a half to the north (left). The downtown area of New Orleans is out of picture about 5-6 miles south. The 17th Street Canal which breached so badly is out of picture two blocks to the west (bottom). The big wide horizontal stretch of water just above the middle of the photo is the very broad neutral ground (our local term for a median strip) between West End Boulevard and Ponchartrain Boulevard. It shows the water rushing across the ground.

I’ve put a red line around our house and backyard. You can see our beautiful live oak tree covering the whole of our backyard and over our neighbour’s roof. It’s almost certain it will die, along with many of the other live oaks in the inundated areas. Ours was well over 100 years old and one of the main reasons we bought the house.

It’s hard to get an idea of the depth of the water from this shot, but my truck, parked high up in the driveway on the west side of the house, is completely invisible. Reports say water level is in the attic of single-storey homes, so it’s probably into our second storey.

Time for bed.

Lots of love,

Rose

That New Orleans look

Dear family and friends,

It’s Saturday night. A week since I evacuated to Baton Rouge. At the time we evacuated, the storm still looked like it might come in as a Category 3 (winds up to 130 mph) and make landfall well clear of New Orleans. So many of us left New Orleans with almost nothing, because we thought it’d be like all the previous hurricanes, and we’d be back in several days to deal with the wind damage. By Sunday morning, the picture was entirely different, and it was clearly going to be the killer storm it turned out to be.

Ever since our power came back on Monday night, we’ve been watching television coverage of the hurricane. Most local media – the New Orleans and Baton Rouge TV stations, radio stations and newspapers – have been wonderful. All the New Orleans media operations have ceased, but many of them moved in with their counterparts in Baton Rouge, so news desks have someone from New Orleans who can provide very detailed reporting. Local TV has become much more radio-like: highly interactive, responding directly to local people’s requests, often more personal than polished and professional. The coverage is almost non-stop. I think the national media is a little slower in understanding what has happened. I heard one reporter, commenting on evacuees getting off buses on arrival at the Houston Astrodome, say that it “resembles a refugee camp”. It doesn’t resemble one; it is one. I think it’s very hard for Americans to accept that what they are used to seeing (or ignoring) in Africa or Asia or the Middle East is happening here.

Our local politicians have been amazing. I have rarely seen such widespread displays of real leadership by a group of politicians. Governor Kathleen Blanco has been unable to hide her emotions but has not let that stop her for one second being visible, strong and an ever-welcome face on the TV. Senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, from opposite sides of the political fence, have been equally good, as have all the other local representatives I’ve seen. I feel a huge amount of affection and concern for them: their faces are increasingly exhausted and you can tell many of them have been crying; it’s clear they’ve been working extremely long hours; and it’s clear they’ve seen sights that have horrified them. When Blanco speaks, Landrieu often stands just behind and beside her, watching her with clear concern. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has stayed in the city the whole time, in the Hyatt Hotel, whose entire north face windows were blown out in the storm. He has emerged occasionally to deliver scathing criticism about the slowness of the federal response.

The one politician who has been pure politician has been President Bush. I found his responses in his interview with Diane Sawyer the other day, and with other reporters since, truly offensive in their inanity and ignorance.

It’s clear, though, that the terrible failure of the response is due to ingrained and long-term policies at all levels.

By this evening, they have finally managed to get most people evacuated from the Superdome and have started on the Convention Center, where 25,000 people were gathered. The suffering of everyone left in the city is so extreme. And, of course, they’re almost all poor and black.

If you’ve never visited New Orleans in the summer, it may be hard to appreciate how awful it is simply to be outside for five days. The heat and the humidity are ferocious. Yesterday, when Lillie and I were heading down to Grammercy to see Ann and Glenn and Lisa, we waited in a parking lot for 15 minutes in Baton Rouge to meet up with Stephen. Just standing in the heat for those 15 minutes, with water at hand, was really unpleasant. I don’t know how people survived it for all those days in awful conditions. I remember when I first moved to New Orleans and experienced the heat and the summers which occupy half the year, I got a whole new outlook on just how terrible it must have been for the slaves, working in the fields picking cotton in that weather. That’s what this week has reminded me of.

Once people get evacuated from New Orleans, things improve but sometimes not much. All the shelters in the region and throughout Texas and other surrounding states are jam packed. Numerous times they halted the evacuations in the past couple of days not because they didn’t have the buses available, but because there was nowhere for the buses to go.

Baton Rouge itself is under severe strain. It has rotten traffic flow even on a good day before all this happened, so now the roads are choked with cars. The only saving grace for the traffic is that petrol is in such short supply and (in American eyes) so expensive that people are starting to stay home and conserve what they have.

Food is in short supply, computers are in short supply, cell phones, too. Whole aisles in grocery stores are empty. The phone networks, both mobile and land, work only sometimes. Hibernia (the main regional bank) had no ATMs or electronic facilities available for people from New Orleans until today, because their network was submerged. Credit cards get declined; I’m not sure why, but I assume the networks are so clogged the approvals just don’t go through. Of course, it’s all infinitely comfortable in comparison to what so many have suffered and continue to suffer.

Baton Rouge, like so many other US cities, has terrible public transport, so life for car-less refugees is going to be exceedingly difficult. And if the petrol pressure doesn’t ease, the lack of efficient public transport is going to strand people.

I keep hoping all this will have a real jolting effect on the country.

We keep hearing from more and more friends who have survived. We’ve also heard of others who didn’t. Some people we know lost friends in Pass Christian, a Mississippi town which was almost erased by Katrina’s storm surge. Mostly, we’ve been very fortunate. We worry about Lillie’s dad and her uncle and aunt. This has been a terrible blow for old people, clearly too much for many of them. And, at this stage of their lives, they’ve been tossed to different parts of the country, away from their friends and family.

Lillie’s dad sounds so exhausted (we talk to him when we can get through on the phone to Monroe in the north of the state, where he is with Lillie’s sister Jane and her Aunt Norma). Norma has Alzheimer’s, and so the evacuation has been a terrible and bewildering ordeal for her, and so, so hard for those with her. Friends report that their parents have been really hit hard.We keep thinking of things we’ve lost. All our favourite restaurants! We used to go to a great Indian place, Taj Mahal, in our neighourhood, so regularly that Lillie and I were known as “The flowers of Taj Mahal”. The maitre d’, Judd, was like a brother. We don’t know his last name, so we have no way of knowing how he’s doing.

And we also keep thinking of the ironies. Just two weeks ago, we had wonderful and expensive roll-down hurricane shutters installed on every window of our house. We were so pleased to at last have protection from the winds, and also to no longer need to climb on the roof to install plywood over all the windows before a storm blew in – an exhausting and sometimes dangerous job. We figure the storm shutters problem did a sterling job protecting the windows; now they’re probably doing an equally sterling job keeping the water from draining out! They’re not paid off yet…

Another irony: Lillie trying to check to make sure her mortgage payment had been debited. It’s really important to keep the payments up, because otherwise we lose any insurance on the house as well as defaulting on the mortgage. We won’t have any idea of the insurance we’ll get until we can get into New Orleans with an insurance adjustor, which will probably be months down the track.

Amusing things happen, too. When we were at Office Depot today, trying to replace some equipment we lost, a couple of women approached and said “You look familiar.” We replied that we didn’t think we knew them, but that maybe it was our New Orleans look. We said “You look like you’re from New Orleans, too.” And they were. It’s something you can see: the complete exhaustion; the red eyes and nose from crying; the somewhat bedraggled hair and clothes. It’s spottable.

These women were from St Bernard – the eastern parish that was completely swamped, and we told them we were from near the 17th St Canal, which has become our new New Orleans address. We immediately recognised fellow submariners. They said “15 feet”, we said “12 feet”. It’s a new way of identifying and empathising. We exchanged names and handshakes and good wishes all around. It’s a part of our newly defined community: a whole disbanded city of people with whom we share a common bond.

Sorry this one has gone on for so long, but you’ll get a break tomorrow. I’m going to put my feet up and take a rest if I can. You have no idea how much work it is being displaced.

Lots of love,

Rose

Ann, Glenn and Lisa's saga

Dear family and friends,

I’ve just returned from Grammercy, down towards New Orleans, where Lillie’s sister Ann and her husband Glenn and their daughter Lisa now are, safe and well. The enormous relief when we heard they were out of New Orleans was accompanied by almost instant overwhelming exhaustion. We went and met up with Stephen (their son living in Baton Rouge) and drove down to see them. It was so wonderful.

Glenn’s mum, Renette, sent the email below to all their friends and family, and it tells a little part of their story. So I’m going to leave you with her words while I head off to bed.

Love,

Rose

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All our extended family evacuees have been accounted for and scattered at various places, some still waiting to be picked up by relatives. I have 7 at my house. Joe and Candy [Glenn’s brother and sister-in-law] have 13. We are both fortunate to have power, as we know many in the area are still without.

My most exciting news is that Glenn, Ann, and Lisa are finally at Joe’s home as of this Friday afternoon. We all cried tears of joy after no communication available except for a couple of text messages Glenn was able to get through to his son Stephen. He let everyone know that he would be with the last group to get out of Memorial Hospital (formerly Baptist), helping to evacuate all patients first.

This is the story of their last night there. Glenn is a Communications Manager and to his dismay the generators failed on the computer systems, which were on ground level. They tried to get news via a small battery TV which they rationed the use of. Cell phones were useless, until someonediscovered occasional text messaging getting through. The generators ran out of gas and food and water supplies were low, even though they had stocked up ahead. Finally it was decided that all hospitals had to be evacuated. He spent most of his time helping carry patients up a difficult stair and entrance to the heliport above the hospital garage. Ann and Lisa tried to help with patients and little Lisa (13) fanned patients in the hallways and watched two die. The nurses really bragged about how brave she was. Everytime a helicopter came in they brought military meals and water, sothey were well supplied, and the cute thing is that Lisa was happy to show them how to eat military meals (one past school event). Having heard how dehydrated many others were, I had been concerned.

Well, last night they were scheduled to be out of there but snipers began firing at the helicopters, which caused a delay, and then fog set in. The National Guard had left because there was only this one group on the roof and they had two hospital security guards. Then our group heard a lot of noise in the hospital, people yelling and throwing things. Looters had come by boats to loot the hospital, probably looking for drugs. The group on the roof barricaded the entrance to the heliport and then they determined theywould take turns staying awake with guns pointed to the barricade. The two chief officers of the hospital, the two security guards, one man (a nurse’s husband) had a gun from his service duty, so they had five guns ready to use. That is the way they spent the night on the roof. Lisa and Ann said the smell was terrible because so many evacuees had pets with them while waiting to be picked up, in addition to the stench of the water and the hospital itself, and they couldn’t see to avoid it. The looters had a field day.

In the morning our group was picked up and taken to the Lakefront Airport (their helicopter was supposed to take them to New Orleans International Airport instead), which had drained dry several days ago.  Glenn said it seemed like maybe 500 people were there and had been waiting days to be picked up. Quite a dilemma. When the next helicopter arrived the medical group from the hospital said they had to get on that one to follow their patients. So they were taken off in front of an angry crowd, protected by Guards wielding rifles. Then they were deposited at the Moisant Airport [New Orleans International] to await a truck ride. Originally they expected to go to San Antonio but since so many people at Baton Rouge River Center had been picked up by relatives, there was room for them there. They were crowded into the back of a truck and the driver dropped my precious ones at the truck stop on 3125 and Joe and Candy quickly picked them up.

When I saw them as they were, Ann says "Granny, don’t touch me."  Of course, they all got hugs anyway. I thought they looked wonderful, but they could hardly wait for showers (Joe has 3 bathrooms). The one clean set of clothes had to be washed before they would use them, so they borrowed clothes and also plan to go to Wal-Mart tonight to buy an extra set, plus supplies for that big group. While I was at Joe’s, he called for Candy to come help at the hospital. Emergency room is crowded. She had been stuck in Seattle 4days and finally got a flight to Baton Rouge at night. Her car is at the N.O. airport and she used valet parking so they probably put it on the ground level. Bye, Bye car. We have an extra car here she can use.

Lillie's family are safe

Lillie’s family are all out! We’re going to pick them up from the evacuation point right now. I’ll write as soon as I get back.

A quick good night

Dear family and friends,

I don’t think I can get to sleep without giving you a brief update of how we’re going.

The biggest thing is that Ann and Glenn and Lisa are still stuck in Baptist Memorial Hospital. Stephen (Lillie’s nephew) received a text message today from them saying they expected to be evacuated soon. That was 5 hours ago and still no more word, so we’ll go to bed worrying.

Lillie finally managed to make contact with some of the people in her firm. Most of them have made their way over to Texas and they’re trying to reestablish the law firm in Houston. Hibernia Bank is one of the firm’s biggest customers and the bank has an expanding Texas presence, so Lillie’s bosses are hoping they can continue in business there. We don’t yet know whether they will have a job for Lillie, but she should, at least, be able to get some part-time work with the firm. Her company is a small outfit and incredibly caring of its employees. So we will be relocating to Houston as soon as all the family is safe. It’s not the city either of us would choose to live in, but we’re currently operating out of necessity rather than choice. Helen Prejean has already put us in touch with some local people, so we can start forming a new community of our own.

Text messaging has been the saving technology for us in this hurricane. While the normal voice circuits have been down completely (in New Orleans) or clogged (in Baton Rouge), text messages have been getting through even to those completely cut off in every other way. We managed to locate our friend Shirley that way today.

It’s interesting: so many older mobile phone users just aren’t into texting, and so they never use it. Now, they’re learning on the spot. When Shirley received our text message she had never received one before and wondered what on earth her phone was doing. She finally figured out how to read the message and reply to us, and so we now know she is safe out of New Orleans. Her husband, though, is stuck and isolated in his house. It’s too dangerous to leave so he’s going to try to hold out where he is until the national guard show up.

Thanks for all your emails. I haven’t had the energy or time to reply to them all individually -- we’ve spent almost the whole day trying to make contact with missing people. Staying at home glued to the phone and computer seems a good place to be at the moment, as Baton Rouge itself is a little out of control. The sudden influx of tens and tens of thousands of refugees has caused real problems for the city, which is still recovering from its own small brush with Hurricane Katrina. Traffic is mind boggling, phone networks are jammed, petrol panic is spiralling, food stores are empty and there are many people here who are desperate for food and shelter. You can’t empty a city of 1.3 million people into the surrounding region, then add all the refugees from the Mississippi and Alabaman coasts, and expect the region to function smoothly. This whole area is in turmoil.

Lillie and I are well but very anxious and very weary. Hearing from you helps a lot.

Love,

Rose

Another local voice

Hi everyone,

I’ve been too tired to write today, but I wanted to pass on this email I got from Emile, with whom I work. (He does all the work on finances and book sales for the Death Penalty Discourse Center and Sister Helen Prejean’s work.)

We’ve been waiting and waiting to hear from him, knowing he was stuck in the French Quarter. It was with huge relief that we got this email this afternoon.

Love,

Rose
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After harrowisng/horerific days at Omni [the Omni Royal Orleans hotel in the French Quarter] etc. many war stories to tell, but I’ll make it short at this time but will bore you with them later.  On Tues Morn. 6am my aunt got up to go to bathroom, with flashlight, and fell.  We did not discover her until 8, on floor bloody arm and possible hip or ribs broken.  No emt service so we set out for charity hosp. were moved to superdome, they wanted to evacuate to BR [Baton Rouge] without me and we refused--sat there for 7 hours without any one seeing her, no food or bathroom opportuites--I walked around until I found a used bed pan and rinsed it out with bottled water.  Finallly theyl said they were going to evacuate her to a new location at Interstate and Causway Blvd. [this is an outdoor location where thousands of people are congregating with medical triage]  I told her this might be the best since the alterrnative was to stay at the dome with no medical help and no food etc.  She agreed and they put her in the back of a truck and of course that is the last we have heard from her.  I’m sure she has been moved to who knows where. After she was taken I walked thur water,, sometimes pocket high, back to the Omni.  I did hitchhike part of the way on side of Army vehicle.  Got to Omni and was told by police they had taken over the hotel and I could not enter.  I mentioned my family, wife, daughter, son in law, granddaughter and they said every person in hotel was evacuated, led out of the city by police escort.  I told them I had just walked back from superdome, I was exhaused and I was sitting on the steps until I could decide what to do.  For a brief moment I thought the best solution was to get arrested.  Anyway, while I was sitting thinking, planning (all bad) I heard the lovely accented voice of Darryl from Scotland, second in command of the hotel--he helped get my aunt to the hospital that morning, I jumped up, he saw me we hugged and he told them I was with the hotel and we convinced them I should stay--AB justed called to come look at some TV coverage--I hadn’t seen any tv all week and I’m embarrrased how minor my problems seem when I see people dying in the street by Convention Ctr. AB let me a note with all our stuff in the room and I was able to contact her in Houston with a friend of my daughters.  Yessterd around 1pm police ordered me to leave and escorted me out of town.

Emile