More First Person Accounts

My mailbox is overflowing with personal stories, links to news and useful information, and listserv discussions of NOLA. Notes from Inside New Orleans landed in my box today. Jordan Flaherty describes his experience in a "refugee camp" in a highly personal essay about a city he unashamedly loves (emphasis added):

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going... If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp...

I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess...

There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.

And MSNBC reports from the NOLA convention center (emphasis added):

People at the center said that at least 22 bodies were stored inside the building, but troops guarding the building refused to confirm that and threatened to beat reporters seeking access to the center's makeshift morgue.

Just when I think it's not possible for this to get worse, I'm proved wrong. Read both articles; this is being done in our names.

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Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Politics