On public radio a survivor Denise Morris reports from Baton Rouge about her experiences during the storm. She says that some criminals restored order inside the Superdome. These guys, she says, stole from food supplies from Rite Aide for victims inside the dome. These guys, she reports, protected old people, women, and children from attackers. The report amazes me.
Another report concerns participants in a convention of 200 paramedics trapped at first in a hotel. These people included people from San Francisco and Boston. Participants in the convention collected $25,000 to hire buses to extract them. Then, according to the report, someone in government seized the buses. After the hotel ran out of food and water, these tourists tried to camp in front a police headquarters at the land casino.
The police told them to cross a bridge to Gretna where, he said the survivors could find buses. However, they encountered sheriff’s deputies from Gretna who threatened to shoot anyone who crossed the bridge.
Of course, there were no buses. The police officer lied. The deputies told the survivors that they would not turn Gretna into another superdome.
Fortunately, a looter gave the survivors water from a water truck that he had stolen. "Blessed be the looters," one of the survivors said. Then they found an overturned National Guard truck filled with rations. They were even able to establish a bathroom with toilet paper over a drain in the street.
Unfortunately, at evening, a Gretna sheriff deputy chased the survivors away before a police helicopter blew away this camp.
Some of the survivors got through on a telephone to a union official who knew someone who worked with FEMA. This FEMA official got the police authority to allow eight of the 200 people to cross the bridge.
If any of this is true, it exposed enough about Louisiana to wreck the tourist industry.
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