 CITY'S
NUMBED SURVIVORS DWELL IN A 'MAD MAX' HORROR WORLD OF THE APOCALYPSE
By JIM HINCH &
MATTHEW McDERMOTT
- SEPTEMBER 6, 2005
WELCOME to the
underworld.
Welcome to a post-apocalyptic society where violence comes to your front
door in the form of looters with AK-47s.
Where people walk
around in a daze. Where they live behind barricades in looted motels and
supermarkets, huddling in fear when gunfire erupts.
Where the stench
of death is ever-present.
Two days after the
last desperate victims were evacuated from the city's Superdome and
convention center, only 10,000 people remain in the Big Easy.
They are too
stubborn, too confused or too attached to their neighborhoods to leave.
So they are
creating their own form of survival in the crevices of this sodden city.
They are eking out
a filthy and dangerous existence wherever they can find it — in motels
and grocery stores or on soggy pillows pulled from the fetid
floodwaters.
It's like the Mel
Gibson "Mad Max" movies, where — after a nuclear holocaust —
civilization has died and bands of bikers roam the desolate roads,
looking for people to kill.
Post photographer
Matt McDermott and I witnessed this firsthand yesterday when we drove
along Chef Menteur Boulevard in the Gentilly section of East New Orleans
— one of the city's poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods.
At the Friendly
Inn, where the parking lot is submerged under 2 feet of water and the
office is filled with mud, 25 hardy souls are holding on.
They eat
stockpiled food from the Winn Dixie supermarket down the street, brew
coffee over candles and huddle in their rooms when shooting erupts.
"Just after
the storm, the firemen said, 'You won't have any supplies. You're going
to have to open up that Winn Dixie and get what you need,' " said Henry
Revelle, 47.
He was speaking
from his new home — the hotel's Room 302 — that he shares with
girlfriend Geraline Lee, 63.
A grizzly Teddy
Jacob, 42, said hotel residents also dine on an occasional treat — fish
swimming in the flooded parking lot.
The day after the
storm, he caught a 2-foot bass.
"We couldn't
believe it — fish in the parking lot," Jacob said.
But life at the
hotel carries dangers.
On Sunday morning,
cops chased six looters with AK-47s into the motel and shot one of them
dead. Blood from his body still stains the driveway.
Drug dealers also
commandeered a motel across the street. And the food in the Winn-Dixie
is running out.
But the motel
dwellers hang on, fashioning a life from scraps.
They cook grits on
a barbecue in the morning.
Phillips took
books and magazines from the store and reads them when there's daylight.
Darrel Perkins, a
construction worker, reads his Bible, where he said he learned the
reason for Katrina.
"I think God is
saying, 'This city needs to be cleansed.' There was too much violence
and corruption here.
"Life was hard
here before, too," he said. "I couldn't get a job. I was cutting grass
just to make it."
The residents were
thrilled to see us, happy that someone would take an interest in them.
They opened their
makeshift barricade of plywood and bed frames over the driveway and
welcomed us in.
They asked us to
pose for pictures with them, then waved us off with a smile.
Down the road at
the looted Winn Dixie, we found a family living in a back office, having
laid pillows and blankets on the floor. It was actually a family we met
Friday, the last time we were in this neighborhood.
Then, they were at
a gas station, lost and confused. Now they had a place to live.
"Welcome to my
house," said Connie Conway, gesturing us inside the ruined market.
Rotting meat and
torn boxes littered the aisles. A table of plums was furred over with
brown mold.
Huddled against
the roof — seemingly rising above the fetid air — were four silver
helium balloons.
"Get well soon,"
they read.
The liquor aisles
were fully stocked. People had taken fruit, water, diapers and bread.
Conway said she is
desperate to leave New Orleans. But her brother wants to stick it out.
She can't bring
herself to use the supermarket bathroom. So her sister-in-law rigged up
a toilet using a bucket and bleach.
Conway goes
outside when she can't stand the smell in the supermarket.
"I really want to
go," she said. "I'm not getting much sleep."
Farther down the
road, a National Guard truck had broken down. Four refugees and a half-
dozen soldiers sat in the sweltering sun, waiting to be picked up.
As they sat,
people ambled past, pushing shopping carts full of supplies back to
their houses.
"We're seeing
people in motels. People are running to any place they can get to," said
National Guardsman Rob Roy from Baton Rouge.
"We're having
trouble getting them to leave. We tell them they're going to get sick
and die. They still won't leave."
Roy said he didn't
know how much longer soldiers would continue pulling people out.
Eventually, he said, work will turn to cleaning up. And then, the flow
of food and water will stop.
As we drove back
on the freeway, I saw a man and boy poking through an abandoned mail
truck covered in gang graffiti. It was Hurey Esteen and his 13-year-old
mentally handicapped son, Uri.
The two have eked
out a day-to-day existence since the storm hit — sleeping on soggy
pillows, scrounging for food in mounds of trash and trying to keep away
from looters.
Esteen's house was
submerged by the floodwaters. But he said that after he heard horror
stories of conditions at the Superdome and convention center, he was too
scared to be picked up by rescuers.
So he and Uri
scrambled to survive.
"Me and him been
holding on by our fingertips," Esteen said.
As he spoke, Uri
held up something he had picked out of the truck, which looters had
filled with goods, then abandoned.
It was a lighter
that played a tune when snapped open. Uri grinned and flicked it
repeatedly.
"Water has been
our biggest issue," said Esteen, picking through the trash in search of
a left shoe. "I've been trying to keep him comfy. I slept two nights on
a chair to keep an eye on him. I'm tired." |
