|
 E-mail Story Print Friendly
Related HELP OUT How you can help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
DONATE
WEB SITES  Journal photographer Josh Stephenson photo slide show from Hurricane Katrina.
|
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Volunteers Struggled to Cope in Katrina Chaos
Journal Staff Reports
Chaos and anarchy descended on New Orleans in the wake of Katrina's devastating sweep along Louisiana and Mississippi's gulf coasts.
A slow response and confused relief efforts forced the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown and prompted President Bush to acknowledge that his administration had failed to respond adequately.
New Mexicans who pitched in to help— with rescue efforts, medical care, security, even pet recovery— saw some of the confusion and frustration up close.
They also saw people pitching in from unexpected areas to do incredible work, especially early on. And they saw police and rescue teams working under impossible conditions.
For example:
Police in New Orleans were forced to coordinate their efforts from the trunks of cars.
Rescue teams from across the country, anxious to enter New Orleans and help save lives, spent an entire day outside the city because it wasn't safe to go in.
A medical team commended FEMA for getting them into position early. They were in the Superdome on Tuesday, before the levies broke. But conditions quickly deteriorated.
Residents in Biloxi saw their first water and ice arrive Wednesday night— two days after the hurricane— and then only to selected sites.
National Guard soldiers would have liked doing more.
These are some of the observations from Journal reporters assigned to cover the disaster:
Superdome nightmare
The New Mexico Disaster Medical Assistance Team was in the New Orleans Superdome immediately after Katrina. Its members credited FEMA for activating them even before the storm hit.
But conditions worsened inside the battered dome as 20,000 people were forced to live there for days rather than hours, as expected.
The breached levies turned it into an island with little escape.
And the team was forced to watch as an injured man lay dying because he could not be evacuated by air; aircraft had been grounded that day due to gunfire within New Orleans.
"There's going to be textbooks written on what you do when you shelter (massive) populations in one place and don't allow them to leave," said team member Byron Piatt.
-- Jeff Jones
Frustration in Biloxi
Late evening on Wednesday in Biloxi, Miss., two days after Hurricane Katrina, it seemed everyone was waiting for help.
Outside the Cedar Popps Plaza shopping center, as the town without electricity turned pitch black, hundreds of people formed a line where military personnel dispensed ice and water.
"This is the first ice and water I've seen come in since Sunday," said Mickel Wilson, a Biloxi resident who rode out the storm. "It's few and far between."
Over the next few days, it was clear that many residents— in towns strung along the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast without water or power and spotty or no communications— were frustrated by what they perceived as the lack of a quick response from public officials and relief agencies.
On Thursday, National Guard personnel delivered bottled water to shelters and other select sites. But some residents didn't have the means or the gasoline to get there, they said. Gas was unavailable in the surrounding area.
"The city, state and (federal) government has done nothing until this morning," said Guy Buras of Slidell, La., a town northeast of New Orleans. He was interviewed Friday, four days after the hurricane.
The St. Tammany Parish government delivered several cases of water and MREs (meals ready to eat) to Buras and his roommates.
Until then, he said, he only saw police officers "riding around with cameras," surveying the damage.
"They hadn't asked us a question, nothing, if we needed any help," Buras said. His apartment building was surrounded by piles of wood that had once been other people's homes.
"(Expletive), acknowledge us!" he pleaded to the powers that be but to no one in particular.
But it wasn't as though people were standing idly by.
As early as Wednesday, debris had been cleared from some major streets. Law enforcement patrolled areas such as U.S. 90 along the coast.
While there was evidence of looting, authorities tried to take charge of the situation.
In Gulfport, the devastated area toward the beach was blocked off to everyone but law enforcement. A roadside message board announced that a curfew was in effect from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Private companies heeded the call for help, as well. On Wednesday, a caravan of trucks from Tiede's Line Construction, a company based in Haysville, Kan., motored toward the devastated Gulf Coast.
-- Lloyd Jojola
Hurry up and wait
One frustrated group was the 70-member New Mexico Task Force 1.
At dawn on Sept. 1, four days after Katrina hit, hundreds of rescuers from a number of states were lined up in the suburb of Metairie, La., eager to slip inside New Orleans to begin saving lives.
The procession included desperately needed rescue trucks, boat trailers, medical trucks and other vehicles.
But eventually the convoy was ordered to stand down for the day, reportedly by FEMA because of reports of mayhem and gunfire in New Orleans.
"They can't assure our own safety," New Mexico Task Force 1 co-leader James Breen told his team. "We're not an armed force."
"It's pretty disappointing when we come this far and make the sacrifices being made and we can't come out and do our mission," Breen said.
The team was allowed in the next day, and they evacuated 51 nursing home residents and conducted house-by-house searches.
-- Jeff Jones
Deserted parish
Shortly after dawn on Sunday, Sept. 4, southeast of New Orleans, trucks and buses packed with New Mexico National Guardsmen arrived at Plaquemines Parish in southern Louisiana.
Many of the 412 New Mexicans had expected they would end up in New Orleans, trying to bring order to chaos. However, the soldiers and airmen— along with their machine guns, flak jackets and night-vision goggles— were assigned to a quiet, deserted, suburban parish.
Most of the parish sat underwater.
The initial work centered on patrolling the area in hopes of discouraging looting and searching homes for cadavers. Guardsmen found no bodies, and the official parish death toll stands at three.
Guard officials said morale among the soldiers was high. However, on the ground, several guardsmen complained that they weren't being kept busy.
Sgt. Daniel Aguilar, 25, of Las Cruces, said he spent the first three days rearranging food inventory at the local high school. After that, he and other soldiers were sent on yard-cleaning detail.
"These are homes that were pretty much just fine," said Aguilar, who spent a week in Louisiana before returning to classes at New Mexico State University. "They received no damage at all, but we were clearing tree limbs."
Sgt. Maj. Garcia said the guardsmen are performing between 150 to 200 tasks daily, including guarding stores and escorting residents back to their homes.
-- Miguel Navrot
Controlled chaos
Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White arrived in New Orleans with a convoy of patrol cars and 40 men and women on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend— seven days after Hurricane Katrina.
"When we showed up, the commanders were directing operations on the trunks of their cars," White said. "They had one radio channel."
The Bernalillo County crew was assigned a local captain, which helped avoid much of the confusion that sidelined other teams, White said.
"We heard of a lot of law enforcement agencies that came in and left," White said. "They said it was confusing and they weren't being utilized, so they went home."
White's team spent its days and nights patrolling by boat and car.
Their major snags were finding gasoline and toilets and wondering whether they were supposed to force people from their homes or only encourage them to leave.
"The forced mandatory evacuation— that changed almost by the hour," White said.
White said he spent much of one day hunting for portable toilets and finally found six. He also found, through word of mouth, that gasoline was available an hour away in St. John's Parish and officers routinely drove there to fill up.
"That I didn't understand," White said. "It's critical to the mission. You can't patrol without fuel."
Overall, White said, good work emerged from the disorder.
"All things considered, you always expect confusion and almost chaos," White said, "but, at the end of the day, we got it done."
-- Leslie Linthicum