American Views Abroad

 
An American friend here in Hamburg was elated to get a message from close friends in New Orleans this week. A resident of St. Charles Avenue and the owner of a bakery sent her this report on how her family is doing:

Thank you, Betsy. We are all fine. My husband and I are with my son in Baton Rouge. He had just graduated from LSU and luckily kept his apartment here. All of our families are fine. We actually rode out the storm at home, and by that afternoon the sun had come out, and we walked around downtown surveying the damage. By the next morning, the waters began to rise, and we heard reports of looting. So we left, via the Westbank. We went down yesterday and got two of the cars (two others had been broken into and drained of gas), and brought my computer up. We have applied for unemployment. We assume that in a few weeks (8 maybe) we will go home and restart our lives. No one will be wanting wedding cakes any time soon, but the West bank and Metaire will be up and running soon. It's the Lakeview area and St. Bernard Parish (where we are from) that are so devastated. Since there is still water in those places, they will have to be bulldozed and rebuilt. St. Bernard had an oil spill from a tank at an oil refinery, so it is also covered in black toxic gook. Luckily most every one evacuated. But there are many many worse off, who had nothing to begin with, and now have less. And I have heard many sad stories. It's hard to fathom this, so we are taking it one day at a time.

Craig Morris, a native of New Orleans who lives in Freiburg, in the south of Germany, conducted an interview with a New Orleans resident on why he and his wife refuse to evacuate. The Safest Place in America: Why 'A' Stayed in New Orleans at www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20881/1.html. At one point Morris asks:

We are talking about the gangsters. What about all of the poor people who got stuck at the Superdome because they could not get out of town?

A: That is not just an embarrassment; that is a travesty. There was no contingency plan in place. The mayor told everyone to go to the Superdome as a shelter of last resort. There was no plan for what to do with them. So we had rapes, suicides, and murders there. They then had to close the Superdome because it was full, and they were putting people on the Expressway, the overpass just to keep them out of the water. Those people were up there for days without food or water. No help. No Red Cross, no FEMA.

At Hurricane Katrina -- Our Experiences paramedics Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky report on their odyssey, in particular up on the Expressway, desperating waiting for promised buses. They reside in San Francisco and were in New Orleans attending a conference when Katrina hit the city.
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805A.shtml
- posted by Gloria @ 11:23 AM