Useful Fools

Two friends of my daughter were tourists in New Orleans. They spent several horrifying days in the SuperDome, and this is her report on a phone call from one, now that they are in a Dallas hotel. Earlier she had gotten alarming text messages while they were in the dome - they didn’t expect to survive. I won’t bother to justify their reasons for staying through the storm - they shouldn’t have. We expect more details in the future, after they get some sleep.

Account from the Superdome

Two friends of mine went to New Orleans last weekend, and refused to listen when told to evacuate. They decided to stick it out in their French Quarter hotel. During the actual storm, their window blew out, but the hotel stayed solid. Monday, the two decided to leave and seek shelter. They walked to I-10, where hundreds were already standing and waiting. Between them and the Superdome was rising water, but the situation on the road looked bad, so they trekked out through the water to the Dome.

While walking and swimming through various levels of water, they encountered a dead baby floating away. The water smelled like gasoline and grime. When they made it to the Superdome, armed guards simply asked them to drop any weapons into a box (filled with guns, they noted) and let them pass. At this point the Superdome was still relatively clean, and they changed clothing in the bathroom and tossed out their soiled wet clothes.

Quickly, they realized things were going to get bad. Looters broke into the restaurants and vending outlets, bringing out liquor bottles and cases of beer. They were offered beer at $1 per can. Soon, fighting broke out, and people were left bleeding or dead in the corridors. No one came to help the sick or dead.

Hoping to find safety, they set out to find a place to hide. A trash can held the corpse of a 4 and a half year old girl. The mourners nearby said she had been raped and killed. A storage unit looked promising, and the duo hid out for several hours listening to the chaos beyond. Deciding that they would get mauled if found hiding, they left the unit and went down to the field, where they saw Army and National Guard troops. The Army told them they couldn’t hang around for safety, so they went to where the National Guard was forming a ring. The Guardsmen told them they could hang around the perimeter if they wanted, so they sat about 10 feet away from where two Guards were posting entrance to their circle. At some point after, a man came out of the flooded areas of the Dome with a pipe. He hit one of the Guards, a woman, on the head. He then shot the other guard in the leg (origin of gun unknown). The female Guard ran screaming away. The perpetrator ran back to the water. He was found with just his nose above the surface, and locked up.

While all this was taking place, the Superdome became increasingly dirty and the people panicked.

They watched two women beat a man to death after he tried to grab one of their daughter’s, presumably to rape. Before his cell phone battery died, he text-messaged me how scared he was, and that he didn’t think he would make it out.

As the bathrooms became disgusting and were quite unsafe, my friends stopped eating and only drank the available grape juice, so as to not need to use the restrooms. They urinated in bottles. One friend began vomiting by Wednesday on this diet. When they were finally told to go outside to line up for bus convoys, they thought relief was in sight. Hardly. The masses stampeded, crushing at least three people that they saw. They held back, staying away from the fray. A Guardsman told them that 53 people had died over the previous night (Tues/Weds), and my friends think most were murders. A morgue tent was set up in the middle of the Dome.

By Thursday, they decided to enter the lines leaving the complex. By then it smelled so horrid neither friend could find a word to describe the odor. They were at first glad to be on the bridge outside, but soon found themselves hot, squished, and scared. A woman behind the pair had two German Shepards that were getting violent, and had nipped at my friends. One friend finally turned around and asked her to keep her dogs away from them. She screamed, “It’s just because you hate black people!” “Uh-oh”, they thought, “we’re dead now!” Luckily, the crowd didn’t turn on them, and they were safe. After 14 hours they made it to the front of the line. The pair got separated, and one got on a bus 4 hours before the other. The last one to get a bus told me of how the bus driver gave every seat a trash bag, asking the people to use them. After arriving in Dallas Saturday morning, however, the bus was strewn with litter.

He told me of how wonderful the people of Texas were. Every time the bus stopped, volunteers gave them food and water, and a soldier even hugged him. The volunteers at the convention center were very welcoming, and my friend has now vowed that Texas is the greatest state in the nation. He was very angry at the mayor and governor of Louisiana, for their lack of preparedness for a storm that they knew was coming. Neither friend ever wants to step foot in New Orleans again.