Official Katrina thread

[Original_Nutta]

Since i don’t seem to find anything on here, this is the thread.
This is a story from a guy on the Corvette forums…

Mods can you allow this to stay and not be absorbed into the Hurricane thread please.

First off I wanted to post what REALLY is going on in this city. Please don’t get this thread locked people. The news stations are only showing a minuscule of reality. This post may offend some people but I will post what I saw, like it or not it is REALITY.
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Well last night I was watching the 6pm news when they announced the 17th street canal pumps failed as well as another break in the levee. My house is right off St. Charles Ave. and up to 6pm yesterday is was the only part of the city that was dry. Since the pumps failed and the new break St. Charles Ave. would be under 9ft of water in the next 12-15hrs. My brother and I felt if we wanted to save anything we had to leave NOW. We loaded up flashlights, rope, our medical ID’s, both our .45 Glocks, 2 shotguns and rode out. En-route we listened to the radio which broad casted all the news about the looters and what not, in hindsight it was a mistake. My mother didn’t want us to go by dad who is a Vietnam vet told to be safe and “shoot to kill” if it ever comes to that.

One the way we had to pass 5-6 checkpoints to allow entry into the city. We stated we were medical personnel who were activated, showed our ID and off we went. On the radio reports were coming in about the officer who was shot in the head, the 2 gunman who opened fired on the NOPD station, and how looters were carjacking cars to get out of the city. This started making my brother nervous and giving seconds thoughts.

Anyway we get to the city and it looks like a freaking war zone. The best visual I can give is the movie “Blackhawk Down” when all the Somalians are rushing the city. They are people EVERYWHERE, they are pissed off, and all have weapons, 2X4’s, Axes, and guns. If this wasn’t bad enough we are 2 white boys in a truck in a sea several hundred armed pissed off blacks. There wasn’t a white person to be found. I couldn’t get over the little 8-10yr old kids with weapons, I ever saw one carry a claw hammer!

These people were absolutely nuts. They rammed trucks (stolen I’m sure) into jewelry stores, stealing items; they were tearing apart Wal-Mart carrying out TV’s, Playstations, DVD players, etc. One lady was wheeling out an entire rack of merchandise, not sure what it was but sure wasn’t clothes for food. They were all laughing and carrying on like it’s freaking Christmas.

We got stuck in traffic when we see the group of guys walking down the street w/ AK-47’s, at that point the “pucker factor” kicked in, a couple Glocks and shotguns were no match for that. We haul azz trying to get to Uptown when we see these people chopping down the front door w/ an axe of this $4-5 million dollar mansion on ST. Charles Ave. I was just in total awe because it was so surreal. Making matters worse it’s 11pm at night there is no electricity and you really can see anything or anyone until they are right up on you.

Our plan was to be in and out in 30min, this included putting his Harley on the trailer. It would have taken me 5-10min tops to get my stuff, all I wanted was my pictures from college, my clothes/shoes, and my computer tower. Well he got scared saying we are going to get jumped while putting the bike on the trailer. Keep in mind this is the only area in the city that is dry. So just like rats who move to higher ground these people were doing the same. Word must have gotten out that Uptown was dry so there started to be a large influx of people.

Needless to say he wanted to go home rather than take our chances. While it was the smart thing to do I was beyond infuriated w/ him because we made it this far. He just kept saying our lives aren’t worth it. So we turned around, our next challenge was getting out of the city while not getting jacked. Reports came out that people were jumping in the back of truck holding the drivers at gunpoint. Traffic started to slow so I just nailed it got out as fast as I could.

Even though he was the voice of reason I’m still pissed. All I have is my life and the clothes on my back. I lost my house(which is now 9ft underwater) ALL my clothes, TV, computer, furniture, and photo albums and videos from childhood and college. What makes this worse is my brother owned the house and I was a tenant and I didn’t have renters insurance, hindsight is 20/20.

I also hope everyone of the F*(king looters get Tetanus, E-Coli and F*(KING drown. I’m serious I really hope the all die for what they were doing to the city, killing people, and destroying homes. Never in my life have I ever seen people act live savages, it was truly sickening.

[Original_Nutta]

Trapped in an Arena of Suffering
• ‘We are like animals,’ a mother says inside the Louisiana Superdome, where hope and supplies are sparse.

By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS — A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.

The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina’s arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.

By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today.

“We pee on the floor. We are like animals,” said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena, which is in the central business district of New Orleans, was not spared. The air conditioning failed immediately and a swampy heat filled the dome.

An emergency generator kept some lights on, but quickly failed. Engineers have worked feverishly to keep a backup generator running, at one point swimming under the floodwater to knock a hole in the wall to install a new diesel fuel line. But the backup generator is now faltering and almost entirely submerged.

There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming. The city’s water supply, which had held up since Sunday, gave out early Wednesday, and toilets in the Superdome became inoperable and began to overflow.

“There is feces on the walls,” said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the Superdome on Monday. “There is feces all over the place.”

The Superdome is patrolled by more than 500 Louisiana National Guard troops, many of whom carry machine guns as sweaty, smelly people press against metal barricades that keep them from leaving, shouting as the soldiers pass by: “Hey! We need more water! We need help!”

Most refugees are given two 9-ounce bottles of water a day and two boxed meals: spaghetti, Thai chicken or jambalaya.

One man tried to escape Wednesday by leaping a barricade and racing toward the streets. The man was desperate, National Guard Sgt. Caleb Wells said. Everything he was able to bring to the Superdome had been stolen. His house had probably been destroyed, his relatives killed.

“We had to chase him down,” Wells said. "He said he just wanted to get out, to go somewhere. We took him to the terrace and said: ‘Look.’ "

Below, floodwaters were continuing to rise, submerging cars.

“He didn’t realize how bad things are out there,” Wells said. “He just broke down. He started bawling. We took him back inside.”

The soldiers — most are sleeping two or three hours a night, and many have lost houses — say they are doing the best they can with limited resources and no infrastructure. But they have become the target of many refugees’ anger.

“They’ve got the impression that we have everything and they have nothing,” 1st Sgt. John Jewell said. “I tell them: ‘We’re all in the same boat. We’re living like you’re living.’ Some of them understand. Some of them have lost their senses.”

Thousands of people are still wading to high ground out of the flooding, and most head for the Superdome. Officials have turned away hundreds.

“The conditions are steadily declining,” said Maj. Ed Bush. “The systems have done all they can do. We don’t know how much longer we can hold on. The game now is to squeeze everything we can out of the Superdome and then get out.”

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Wednesday that more than 100 buses were staged outside the city for today’s evacuation. He had asked officials in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La., to send all of their school buses — about 500 — to New Orleans. If all of the buses make it into the city, Nagin said, the Superdome could be cleared out by nightfall today.

Most of the people will go to Houston, where they will stay in the Astrodome. Others will be taken to Louisiana cities that escaped the hurricane.

Between 400 and 500 people, many with critical medical conditions, were airlifted or bused Wednesday from the sports complex; some were taken to Houston.

“They need to see psychologically that this is real,” Nagin said. “They need to see that they are really moving. They need to see people getting on the bus. I want to start to create a sense of hope.”

That will be difficult. There is a local legend that sports teams that have called the Superdome home have fared poorly because the facility, which broke ground in 1971, was built atop a cemetery. Perhaps, some said Wednesday, the curse is real.

Inside, a man coughed up blood and his shoulders quaked as he was wheeled through the halls. Thousands clutched their meager belongings, sitting in seats normally used for football games or lying on the artificial turf, its end zones painted with the word “Saints.”

Some slept out on the terrace, trying to get shade under a National Guard truck. Young boys who had lost their shoes hopped on the hot pavement to save their scalding feet. Grown men discarded their clothes and walked around in their briefs.

“People started shooting last night,” said Stacey Bodden, 11.

Bodden and six relatives fled their homes in the West Bank — which survived the storm in relatively good condition — to ride out the storm in the Superdome. By Wednesday evening, the family had had enough and was going to try to get out and walk home through the floodwater and across the Crescent City Connection, a massive bridge spanning the Mississippi River.

Her uncle David Rodriguez, 28, said he heard at least seven shots Tuesday night and saw one man running past him with a gun. “Don’t shoot,” he told the man, who didn’t.

“This is a nuthouse,” said April Thomas, 42, who fled to the Superdome with her 11 children. She has enlisted the older boys to take turns walking patrols at night as the rest of the family sleeps.

“You have to fend people off constantly,” she said. “You have to fight for your life. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I say is: Where are my babies? Is everyone here?”

There’s a thriving black market; the most popular items are cigarettes, which sell for $10 a pack, and anti-diuretics, which allow people to avoid using the bathroom for as long as possible.

Many of the injured, the elderly and the critically ill, and those suffering from dehydration, have been taken across a walkway to an adjoining sports center, the New Orleans Arena.

One man was lying partway on a cot, his legs flopped off the side, a forgotten blood pressure monitor attached to his right arm. Some people had wrapped plastic bags on their feet to escape the urine and wastewater seeping from piles of trash. Others, fearing the onset of disease, had surgical masks over their mouths. An alarm had been going off for more than 24 hours and no one knew how to turn it off.

Suddenly, incongruously, the first notes of Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor," the Adagio, pierced the desperation.

Samuel Thompson, 34, is trying to make it as a professional violinist. He had grabbed his instrument — made in 1996 by a Boston woman — as he fled the youth hostel Sunday where he had been staying in New Orleans for the last two months.

“It’s the most important thing I own,” he said.

He had guarded it carefully and hadn’t taken it out until Wednesday afternoon, when he was able to move from the Superdome into the New Orleans Arena, far safer accommodations. He rested the black case on a table next to a man with no legs in a wheelchair and a pile of trash and boxes, and gingerly popped open the two locks. He lifted the violin out of the red velvet encasement and held it to his neck.

Thompson closed his eyes and leaned into each stretch of the bow as he played mournfully. A woman eating crackers and sitting where a vendor typically sold pizza watched him intently. A National Guard soldier applauded quietly when the song ended, and Thompson nodded his head and began another piece, the Andante from Bach’s Sonata in A minor.

Thompson’s family in Charleston, S.C., has no idea where he is and whether he is alive. Thompson figures he is safe for now and will get in touch when he can. In the meantime he will play, and once in a while someone at the sports complex will manage a smile.

“These people have nothing,” he said. “I have a violin. And I should play for them. They should have something.”

[240sxy]

really sad

[Original_Nutta]

@zephyr

waiting for rescue

5 day old baby being rescued

Bourbon Street

kids wait with their dogs while their parents try to salvage belongings

salvaging what is left of her belongings

lucky dog :hs:

little kid being rescued from floodwaters

woman helps 89 year old woman who collapsed from heat exhaustion

elderly flood victim is rescued

Man covers body of elderly man who died while waiting for rescue

Mother reunited with daughter feared dead

[Original_Nutta]

[Original_Nutta]

[Original_Nutta]

[QUOTE=FusionZ06]

[Bero]

holy shit . . .

[system]

do you really have to post pics of dead people?

[Bero]

actually benson, i think the sight of death shocks people into understanding the severity of the problems here.
I would say it IS necessary to show it.

The hurricane spawned disaster of a whole new level. not only in damage to property, but to how people think and act. it’s when the people change that we run into the big problems.

it will be years before new orleans is even remotely close to back to normal

[jjm_240sx]

dude take that last one off its disrespectfull.

[system]

that is more of what I ment,

it is good to see it but that also does not mean we ahve to discrace the passed.

all the other pictures are great examples,
just have a little respect

[spd-dmn]

[NeveR]

I’ve been to New Orleans.

The heart of it as well as the more residential area. I have friends/relatives there.

Those pictures are crazy, especially the one of bourbon street. I remember walking down it.

My heart goes out to everyone.

[Original_Nutta]

Sorry, forgot how sensitive some people are.

Besides, how do you know she’s dead?

[240sxy]

My heart goes out to these people

this is soo tragic

[Original_Nutta]

The Hurricane business didn’t bother me as much as the looting and rioting.

Women and children were getting raped in the Superdome, dead bodies just tossed to the side and robbed.

Humanity sure has evolved.

[Original_Nutta]

[Racer_XTREME]

@Original Nutta

The Hurricane business didn’t bother me as much as the looting and rioting.

Women and children were getting raped in the Superdome, dead bodies just tossed to the side and robbed.

Humanity sure has evolved.

I totally agree, its fucking ridiculous.

… “Hey lets go loot some stuff that we can’t use, id love to have free stuff for a house i know longer have.” “Why should i be worried about dying, i dont even know what cholera is. … ooo that dead guy there has a nice watch”

[newbieracer]

@Racer XTREME

[quote=Original Nutta]The Hurricane business didn’t bother me as much as the looting and rioting.

Women and children were getting raped in the Superdome, dead bodies just tossed to the side and robbed.

Humanity sure has evolved.

I totally agree, its freaking ridiculous.

… “Hey lets go loot some stuff that we can’t use, id love to have free stuff for a house i know longer have.” “Why should i be worried about dying, i dont even know what cholera is. … ooo that dead guy there has a nice watch”[/quote]

Its a discrase, people are shooting eachother for any thing… Shooting the people that are trying the best to help them.

And people are wondering why police are walking off the job