# Hurricane Katrina



## Matzos (Sep 1, 2005)

All our hearts must go out to the families and freinds of the poor people that have lost lives and their homes during Hurricane Katrina.
Being the country it is, the US will rebuild and lives will carry on, but for a very high price.
sal;


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

Matzos, The devastation this storm caused will never be truly understood. I was at work at the penitentiary at Angola, Louisiana when it hit us and even though we were some 90 miles from the eye, we all felt its impact. I was able toreceive some pics of the devatation and flooding and will post them so people can get an idea of the damage this thing did. Thank you for thinking of us.


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## Reloader (Sep 1, 2005)

*Strength Born of Pain*

Eagledriver, thinking of you all over there and I hope that you and your loved ones stay safe. I found this recently and thought I might share it with you all.

  I would say to those who mourn... look upon each day that comes as a
challenge, as a test of courage. The pain will come in waves, some days
worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Do not suppress

it. Never attempt to hide grief from yourself. Little by little, just as the

deaf, the blind, the handicapped develop with time an extra sense to balance

disability, so the bereaved, the widowed, will find new strength, new

vision, born of the very pain and loneliness which seems, at first,

impossible to master.



Strength Born of Pain

Daphne Du Maurier,

From "The Rebecca Notebook"​


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

Thank you, Reloader. That was very touching. Herein I am posting some of the pics I have received. Credits go to the National Weather bureau and local networks.

The first pic is a CAsino that was moved across I-90 by the hurricane. Note the cars on the highway.

The second is of the I-10 bridge from New Orleans to Slidell, LA.

The third is of a man trapped in the attic of his house by rising waters.

The fourth is of people wading to higher ground.

The fifth is a satelite picture of Katrina.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

More shots of Katrina.


Refugees in the Superdome.


Wrecked boats at the Yacht club.

Boats pushed up on land.

An oil rig that broke loose and rammed a bridge.

Orleans Parish prison inmates on a ramp waiting to be bused to my work place- Louisiana State Penitentiary.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

The death toll is expected to be in the hundreds and estimates say even the thousands. Looting is rampant and 1,500 city police have been pulled from search and rescue efforts to bring a stop to the looting. One policeman was shot in the back of the head by a looter but is expected to recover. More news as I get it. God bless you all.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

More shots of Kristina aftermath.

downtown New Orleans

A house in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Biloxi, Ms.

An I-10 ramp.


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## Drone_pilot (Sep 1, 2005)

Just glad you and your family are O.K.

saw the images of the prisoners on the BBC world news, just makes you think how fragile the human existence is.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

How true, How true. No amount of money could persuade me to live in a city like New Orleans. Well, four last pics for now. These are cars in Biloxi, Mississippi, a breahed levee in New Orleans, a flooded highway in Mobile, Alabama, and a flood of refugees.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 1, 2005)

Sorry about that a double post.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 2, 2005)

*Anarchy in New Orleans*

Ok, guys this is from New Orleans.

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

Thursday, September 1, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken. "This is a desperate SOS," mayor Ray Nagin said.​"We are out here like pure animals," the Rev. Issac Clark said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where he and other evacuees had been waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive," said tourist Larry Mitzel of Saskatoon, Canada, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. "I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire."

Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.

New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.

"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses."

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.

"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."

The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up."

Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.

At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ..."

"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.

"We've got people dying out here - two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell - it's every man for himself.'"

"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."

At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.

After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.

One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.

Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.

"If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be worse than what we've been through."

By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.

As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out.

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings - and not all the crimes were driven by greed.

When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"

Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.

"I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there," he said.

Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."

While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. He said contractors had completed building a rock road to let heavy equipment roll to the area by midnight.

The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.

In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.

The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this - whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."

Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.

"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"

----

Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this report.


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## Reloader (Sep 2, 2005)

Glad you & yours are safe, Eagledriver and that you are very lucky not to be in New Orleans. Been watching the TV reports and can't believe how the situation is deteriorating, especially reports that search & rescue attempts had to stop because rescuers were being shot at! This morning, it was reported that a helicopter had to withdraw because it was being fired upon!
There's also a lot of angry people out there, over the delays in getting aid in. Just as a matter of interest, a Sky News poll of whether President Bush had responded quickly enough to the disaster, showed that 93% voted 'No', only 7% 'Yes'.


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## Reloader (Sep 2, 2005)

Here's a guy who works for Louisiana Fisheries and Wildlife, who are involved in search and rescue, but had to call off yesterday because of police and rescuers being shot at. He's posted a lot of pics on this website:-

http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewimages.html


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## Eagledriver (Sep 5, 2005)

More news on New Orleans, people. Bodies are starting to float now and the dearh estimate has risen into the tens of thousands. Not only are alligators being sighted but unbelievably sharks have been seen in the city swimming in the high waters. No one is sure where they came from- either the Aquarium of the Americas or Lake Ponchartrain which is brackish. What is known is the possibility that these are Bull sharks, which are the only saltwater fish that can live in fresh water.A lot of bodies have been tied to light poles and signs to keep them from floating away. A dismal sight to say the least.


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## Eagledriver (Sep 5, 2005)

The latest news on New Orleans.




> Police Try to Keep Order in New Orleans
> 
> Monday, September 5, 2005
> 
> ...


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## Eagledriver (Sep 16, 2005)

More pics from Katrina, fellas.

Image 1. Bridge span from New Orleans to Slidell.

Image 2. I-10 into N. O.

Image 3. Cars on house.

Image 4. The makeshift grave of a lady named Vera

Image 5. A downed rescue helicopter.


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## BravoZulu (Mar 28, 2020)




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