'They're Not
Giving Us What
We Need To Survive'
By Jamie Doward
04 September, 2005
The
Observer
Only
now, a week after Hurricane Katrina roared across the Deep South, leaving
a trail of devastation across America's psyche, is the true story of
the Battle of New Orleans emerging.As convoys of commandeered school
buses and Greyhound coaches transported tens of thousands of refugees
out of the submerged city yesterday, in a belated and much-criticised
relief operation, each vehicle brought with it new tales of horror.
Those trapped inside
the two main shelters, the Superdome and the Convention Centre, paint
a picture of a city that was subsumed beneath waves of violence, rape
and death and accuse the police and National Guard of standing by, ignoring
their pleas for help.
The claims are rejected
by the federal and state authorities, who instead suggest the looting
and lawlessness which followed the extensive flooding of the city was
the result of a series of isolated incidents perpetrated by a few.
But it is clear
from talking to survivors that what happened in New Orleans last week
was far more extensive, bloody and terrifying than the authorities have
admitted so far.
'We had to wrap
dead people in white sheets and throw them outside while the police
stood by and did nothing,' said Correll Williams, a 19-year-old meat
cutter from the Crowder Road district in the east of the city, who waded
two miles through waist-high water to make it to the Convention Centre
after hearing on the radio it was being turned into a refuge.
'The police were
in boats watching us. They were just laughing at us. Five of them to
a boat, not trying to help nobody. Helicopters were riding by just looking
at us. They weren't helping. We were pulling people on bits of wood,
and the National Guard would come driving by in their empty military
trucks.'
Williams only left
his apartment after the authorities took the decision to flood his district
in an apparent attempt to sluice out some of the water that had submerged
a neighbouring district. Like hundreds of others he had heard the news
of the decision to flood his district on the radio. The authorities
had given people in the district until 5pm on Tuesday to get out - after
that they would open the floodgates.
'We thought we could
live without electricity for a few weeks because we had food. But then
they told us they were opening the floodgates,' said Arineatta Walker,
who fled the area with her daughter and two grandchildren.
'So about two o'clock
we went on to the streets and we asked the army, "Where can we
go?". And they said, "Just take off because there's no one
going to come back for you." They kicked my family out of there.
If I knew how to hotwire a car I would have,' Walker said.
Once inside the
Convention Centre, Walker confronted a new hell. 'People were being
raped, there were cries and screams, there were gunshots, but the police
did nothing,' Walker said.
'The police were
afraid to do anything,' said Chantelle, a black 22- year-old. 'They
wouldn't come in. They took two white guys out one night but left the
rest of us in here.'
Williams said: 'The
floor was a swamp, you couldn't live in there. The police kept telling
us buses were coming but they didn't. People started getting aggravated
and then one policeman got mad, he caught an attitude with somebody
and they caught an attitude back and started banging on his car, and
that's how it started. He called for back-up and the next thing I know
the military are down there throwing stun grenades. Everybody started
running, bumping into each other, hurting each other.'
As the repeated
promises of buses failed to materialise, people in the shelters started
stealing cars. 'How do you expect people to act right when they're starving
to death?' asked Williams. 'There were bodies all over. We were just
throwing them out the front. They (the authorities) are blaming it on
the people, making it look like it was the people's fault, but it's
really their fault because they're not giving us what we need to survive.
So now people are going and getting guns in order to fight back, in
order to survive cos they don't want to help us.'
Outside the Convention
Centre, where an estimated 15,000 people were seeking refuge, bodies
lay ignored. A woman in a wheelchair and an elderly man on a chaise
longue could be seen festering in the heat. On Wednesday, eight 11-strong
teams from the Louisiana State Police entered the centre, where they
were repelled by angry gangs, some of whom were armed. Yesterday scores
of police officers were said to have resigned from the force, complaining
their jobs had become too dangerous.
Until Friday morning
only two buses had arrived at the Convention Centre to transport those
inside out of the city, according to several trapped inside. The revelation
suggests that the police and National Guard's inability to handle the
crisis stemmed from chronic paralysis at the highest levels of the relief
operation.
Outside the Superdome,
which was at one stage home to some 25,000 people, a member of the National
Guard was shot in the leg by his own gun as he was rushed by a crowd
angry at the wait for buses to take them to Houston.
The authorities'
failure to respond to the situation has prompted outpourings of national
revulsion and calls for high-level resignations.
There was confusion
yesterday as to why thousands of people had made for the Convention
Centre. Officials said it was never intended that the centre be used
as a refuge.
Michael Brown, director
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the much-criticised
body charged with coordinating the relief effort, told US television
networks they had not been aware of the crowds in the centre until Thursday.
'The federal government
did not even know about the Convention Centre people until today,' New
Orleans major Ray Nagin told CNN on Thursday evening.
The shock confession
prompted calls for Brown to be fired. 'That was just a boneheaded statement,'
said Mississippi Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson. 'The President
will have to change the leadership so that a response this bad will
never, never happen again for the American people,' Thompson added.
On Friday evening
1,000 members of the National Guard and 60 police officers arrived outside
the centre to restore order.
The chronic failure
to resolve the situation in the Convention Centre - and to a lesser
extent the Superdome, where the situation was apparently more calm -
was described as a 'national disgrace' by the increasingly angry Nagin.
'You would think
that on day five of the worst natural disaster in the history of the
United States, and possibly the world, we would not still be waiting
for troops and buses,' Nagin said on Thursday.