elko9 (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} elko9) wrote,@ 2005-09-12 11:36:00 |
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Current Events
"Charmaine Neville, local jazz and funk singer, described her experience of evacuating her 9th Ward home, rescuing neighbors to a school in a flatboat, finding food and feeding people, seeing many, many dead bodies, boating people to the Quarter and eventually ’stealing’ a bus to drive these folks out of town". This link: www.wafb.com has a link to her interview. It is really heartbreaking... but so amazing that she was that strong.
Last night I met up with a friend from New Orleans that had stayed behind because he had been told that the I-10E was closed. He met with a couple of friends and hoped for the best while hiding out in a local hospital. Boats came and pulled people out of the hospital and dropped them off at an intersection where they just waited and waited. Finally a bus pulled up and took them to the Convention Center, where apparently they had no security and they checked no one for weapons. It was so unruly that the cops left each day at sundown. Kent slept on the sidewalk out front with 20 others because if they went inside they would be followed and continuously threatened. Each time they tried to walk away they were followed by gangs of people who threatened to follow them or kill them if they left them behind. So they stayed. Midnight on their 3rd night there a truck pulled up and a man got out while Kent and his friends were sleeping on the sidewalk with their belongings. The man told them to get up and walk around the corner quietly and get into a bus that was waiting around the corner for them. Nobody moved. The man was a sheriff and promised them that they would be safe. That there was a SWAT team ready with grenades and firearms if anybody tried anything. So they got up... they were told to leave all of their belongings behind. There was no room on the bus for it. Kent got on the bus with his two dogs, his clothes on his back and his wallet. Was forced to leave behind his laptop and all camera gear. He is a professional photographer.... so he was pretty much forced to leave his career behind. Who knows who ended up with it. The bus drove them just outside of New Orleans where there were doctors and clothes and food. From that point on it has been a pilgrimage from one point to the next. He hitchhiked a ride to Baton Rouge and slept at a strangers house... met up with some other New Orleans refugees and drove towards the E.Coast.
I can't fathom any of the above.... and apparently he edited down the story to 30 minutes... but said the crazy shit that he went through would take hours to describe.
"Charmaine Neville, local jazz and funk singer, described her experience of evacuating her 9th Ward home, rescuing neighbors to a school in a flatboat, finding food and feeding people, seeing many, many dead bodies, boating people to the Quarter and eventually ’stealing’ a bus to drive these folks out of town". This link: www.wafb.com has a link to her interview. It is really heartbreaking... but so amazing that she was that strong.
Last night I met up with a friend from New Orleans that had stayed behind because he had been told that the I-10E was closed. He met with a couple of friends and hoped for the best while hiding out in a local hospital. Boats came and pulled people out of the hospital and dropped them off at an intersection where they just waited and waited. Finally a bus pulled up and took them to the Convention Center, where apparently they had no security and they checked no one for weapons. It was so unruly that the cops left each day at sundown. Kent slept on the sidewalk out front with 20 others because if they went inside they would be followed and continuously threatened. Each time they tried to walk away they were followed by gangs of people who threatened to follow them or kill them if they left them behind. So they stayed. Midnight on their 3rd night there a truck pulled up and a man got out while Kent and his friends were sleeping on the sidewalk with their belongings. The man told them to get up and walk around the corner quietly and get into a bus that was waiting around the corner for them. Nobody moved. The man was a sheriff and promised them that they would be safe. That there was a SWAT team ready with grenades and firearms if anybody tried anything. So they got up... they were told to leave all of their belongings behind. There was no room on the bus for it. Kent got on the bus with his two dogs, his clothes on his back and his wallet. Was forced to leave behind his laptop and all camera gear. He is a professional photographer.... so he was pretty much forced to leave his career behind. Who knows who ended up with it. The bus drove them just outside of New Orleans where there were doctors and clothes and food. From that point on it has been a pilgrimage from one point to the next. He hitchhiked a ride to Baton Rouge and slept at a strangers house... met up with some other New Orleans refugees and drove towards the E.Coast.
I can't fathom any of the above.... and apparently he edited down the story to 30 minutes... but said the crazy shit that he went through would take hours to describe.
