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If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break.
I guess somebody was putting out some bad news that it was totally unsafe. It's not
unsafe to come in here and help these people.
No water, no Ice, no sea rations, nothing, for the last four days.
Dead people around the walls of the convention center, laying in the middle of the street.
Babies, two babies, dehydrated and died. I tell ya, I couldn't take it.
They won't, they won't let them walk out of there because I'm standing right above
that convention center, and what they've done is, they've locked them in there.
The government said "you go here, and you'll get help" and "you go in that superdome and
you'll get help" and they didn't get help. They got locked in there
and they watched people being killed around them and they watched people starving
and they watched elderly people not get any medicine,
and now they know it's happening because we've been telling them, repeatedly over and over
everyday.
Well, when Denise Moore finally made her way out of New Orleans, she had been at the convention
center, she was surprised to see the coverage.
I kept hearing the word animal, and I didn't see animals. We were trapped like animals,
but I saw the greatest humanity I've never seen from the most unlikely places.
Denise Moore eventually ended up at the convention center with her mom, her niece, and her niece's
two year old daughter. But the day before the storm, because Denise's mom worked at
Memorial Hospital in New Orleans, and because hospital employees are allowed to stay there
during hurricanes, all of them went to the hospital. They were given a room to stay in,
but later they were kicked out of the room for two white nurses.
Yeah, so I got really mad. So I went home. So I went to the house. I set up my twin bed
in the hallway. The hallway, supposedly structurally, is the best place to be if the building is
going to be moving around if there's high winds. And good thing I did. Somewhere around
5 o'clock in the morning, I jumped up out of bed. The ceiling started crashing down
around me. I was riding that bed like a horse. I was so scared. I had never been that scared
for that long. We lived on the second floor, so I was scared it was going to fall through.
That even in the hallways, that the building was swaying so much that I'd fall through
the floor and end up injured down there, and nobody would find me.
Next thing I know, the water is pouring through the ceiling. And people were calling on the
phone, you should have stayed at the hospital. It was ridiculous. I was scared fearing for
my life for eight full hours. My heart was in my throat. I was like, when this is over,
I'm going back to the hospital. And so I went back to the hospital.
Can I ask you, before you tell what happens next, why not just evacuate?
Well, first of all, my Mom is essential personnel, so she couldn't leave. I don't have a car,
so I couldn't leave. My niece was going to go with her mother, but we didn't want them
to get trapped on the highway in the storm with the baby. So we thought it would be safer
to just stay at the hospital, because we rode out the last hurricane at home, but we sent
my niece to the hospital with her baby. That's just been the way it goes, the hospital was
the safest place to be if you were going to stay in the city.
So you walk back to the hospital, and what do you find there?
Well, there's a lot of people roaming around with their kids, and we're sharing food, and
we're having a good old time just waiting for a chance to go back home. Then the levees
broke. And the next morning, I was able to go back to the house, because I wanted to
pick up my degrees, I earned them. I wanted to make sure they weren't wet. And frankly,
I was looking for a carton of cigarettes that I knew was in that house somewhere.
And so did you find the cigarettes?
I found the cigarettes.
And were they dry?
And I found my degrees. And I grabbed my vital papers, my social security card, my-- none
of that was wet, because it was in a little purse. And I brought my vital papers back
to the hospital, and my mom is saying, we're going to go back to the house to go get theirs.
But the water started rising, so within a couple of hours, you weren't able to get back
to the house. It just kept rising. We thought, OK, now we're trapped in here, and we don't
know how high this water is going to get. So it finally covered the basement, so the
generators went out. It covered the first floor.
And when you say cover the first floor, was it actually coming inside the hospital building?
Yeah. So the heartbreaking thing was watching them turn people away who had waded through
that water to get to the hospital for safe haven. It was amazing. It was heartbreaking.
How often do you see that?
That happened over and over again. The person who sticks out most in my mind is a man who
had his wife and his two children, and his baby-- his daughter was so dehydrated. The
people were yelling at him, you can't come in here. We were on the smoking patio, which
is on the second floor, so we saw them. And we were yelling at them, man, leave the baby.
Man, leave the baby. And he was like, I can't leave my baby. We don't have a house. How
am I going to find my baby if I leave him with you? I don't know where you're going
to take him. I've been in this water for two days. It was just devastating to just see
that.
We knew that nobody was going to be able to come up in there. And so the people on the
smoking balcony, we would throw them water, and we tried to throw them food.
And where'd they send him to?
I don't know. We don't know where he went. But I did find out later that they were letting
in people with gunshot wounds and snake bites, so it wasn't like they turned everybody away.
It was just that, I guess they were thinking we got 3,000 people in this hospital we have
to evacuate, we cannot take on any more responsibility. So I understood why they had to turn them
away. It was just heartbreaking to see.
So you are in hospital until-- and there's no power in the hospital, but there's water,
and it sounds like there's food too.
We didn't have water after that first night.
Oh really?
Yeah, we ran out of everything, because people were sharing with each other, and we just
thought we'd be able to go home in a minute. That's the thing. It's like, you survived
the hurricane. I was a happy camper, because I'd been more scared than I'd ever been in
my life, and I walked out of there. So who knew?
So how long were you in the hospital? How many days? When did you get out?
Two days, and then we were transported to that corner. And what we heard is that we
were going to be dropped off by boat to a corner, and the buses will pick us up, and
we'll be heading to Texas. That's what we were told.
And then the buses come in and they take you where?
It wasn't buses. The police had to commandeer vehicles. They were asking people in the crowd
if they knew how to drive trucks and buses. They were stealing them. The police had to
steal vehicles. And so it was totally different than what we anticipated.
So wait, they're just taking any random truck and hotwiring it?
School buses. Yeah.
And so what was the vehicle that you got to the next place in? What were you in?
There was a key and lock van.
Right, a locksmith?
Yeah, that happened to be driving around, and the police made him start taking us.
And then you go to where?
We go to the convention center. And when we arrived, there were people all over the street,
under the bridge. And we're like, why are these people on the street? Why aren't they
in the convention center? And when we got there, people were saying, you don't want
to go in there.
Did you go inside at all?
Not until the next day.
What did you see?
Inside?
Yeah.
A sewer. A sewer, literally, because I had to use the bathroom, and I was like, where's
the bathroom? So I went inside, the whole place was a bathroom. I was stepping in feces,
stepping in urine all over the carpets. I used to work as the convention center. That
was hard to see. It was a beautiful building. It was a toilet, and people were sitting close
as they could to the doors, but the smell was overwhelming.
So then what do you do? What's the best you can do?
I actually stopped eating the minute we got there. I wouldn't eat or drink anything, because
I figured if you don't put nothing in, nothing's coming out. I was in the Army. But even after
that, I still had to use the bathroom. It was ridiculous. So what I ended up doing was
getting a cup, going behind a partition, having a guy guard me while I was relieving myself
in a cup behind some partition at the convention center. And I got all kinds of stuff on my
feet. Thank God it started raining, because I have a really sensitive nose. I was sitting
down, and I could smell the crap on my feet.
And where did you all sleep?
We slept on the sidewalk. This place, there was trash all over the ground outside, and
I was thinking, how are the girls going to even lay down with their babies? There's not
a spot that's clean, nothing. There's nowhere to lay down. And then my mom wanted me to
make sure I tell you, what they kept doing the whole time was tell us to line up for
the buses that never came. It was like they were doing drills every four hours. You all
have to line up for the bus. And if you bum rush the bus, they're just going to take off
without you, and nobody is going to get to go anywhere. You have to line up. You have
to be in a straight line. We're talking about old people in wheelchairs and women with babies
in lines, waiting for buses that you know God damn well aren't coming, like they were
playing with us.
I figured it out early in the morning, but what am I supposed to do? Make an announcement?
The buses aren't coming. And so I walked up to the so-called head guy in charge of our
section, and I told him, I said, why do you have these people sitting out here in the
sun, and you know these buses aren't coming? The buses are coming. I said, you're just
playing with us. Who gives you the authority to keep lining us up like this, to stand in
this heat? He was like, well, I know the guy who can make the call for the buses. I said,
well, why hasn't he called them? People are dying.
He said, I wish I could tell you what you wanted to hear. I said, I want to hear the
truth. Are the buses coming or not? We need to get these old people and these babies out
of this heat. And he just walked away, and we were left there, without help, without
food, without water, without sanitary conditions, as if it's perfectly all right for these animals
to reside in a fricking sewer like rats. Because there was nothing but black people back there.
disposable. And then, the story became they left us here to die, they're going to
kill us.
You mean that's what people were saying to each other?
Yes.
And is that what you believed?
I was almost convinced, because I kept having a vision of them opening that floodgate on
us, of my niece and her baby floating away from me screaming. And I just knew it. And
then the next morning, I heard from somebody that they actually were going to open that
floodgate. So by the time the rumor started that the National Guard was going to kill
us, I almost halfway believed it.
And so people were saying, basically they just brought us here, they're going to leave
us here to die?
Yeah, that's what we thought.
Why can't some of the Chinook helicopters and Black Hawks that we have heard flying
over for days and days and days, simply lower pallets of water, meals ready to eat, medical
supplies, right into downtown New Orleans?
You see there are so many babies here. It's just not, I mean, it's not, you know, I, it's
not a question of objectivity; it's a question of reality.
This is, see, how do you, how do, I don't know, man, I don't know.
Let them walk out of here. Let them walk the hell out of here. Let them get on that interstate
and walk out, walk some place, walk to the Wal-Mart on the other side of the river. Walk
to some other town, walk some place where you can help them.
All you got here is thousands and thousands of people who have desperate, desperate need,
six days later. These people are in the same clothes. Where
do you think they are going to the bathroom? What the hell?
The police kept passing us by, and the National Guard kept passing us by with their guns pointed
at us. When you see a truck full of water, and people have been crying for water for
a day and a night, and the water truck passes you by, just keeps going, how are we supposed
to believe that these people were here to help us? It was almost like they were taunting
us. And then, don't forget they kept lining us up for buses that never showed up. We thought
they were playing with us in a best case scenario. In a worst case scenario, they wanted us to
either kill each other or die. Or they were going to kill us.
So we keep hearing in the news about violence inside the convention center, and people getting
killed, and women being ***. Did you know about any of that when you were there?
The convention center is section A through J, I believe. We were about at H. But where
we are was mostly old people and women with children, and I didn't see anybody get ***.
I did see people die. I saw one man die, and I saw a girl and her baby die. But I didn't
see anybody getting hurt.
And talk about, there were men just kind of like roaming with guns, packs of men.
They were securing the area. Criminals, these guys were criminals, they were. But somehow
these guys got together, figured out who had guns, and decided they were going to make
sure that no women were getting ***, because we did hear about the women get *** in the
Superdome, and that nobody was hurting babies, and nobody was hurting these old people.
They were the ones getting juice for the babies. They were the ones getting clothes for people
that walked through that water. They were the ones fanning the old people, because that's
what moved the guys, the gangster guys the most, the plight of the old people. That's
what haunted me the most, seeing those old people sitting in them chairs, and not being
able to get up and walk around or nothing.
And so these were just guys from the neighborhood?
Mm-hmm.
What else were they doing?
They started looting on Saint Charles and Napoleon. There was a Rite-Aid there. And
you would think that they would be stealing stuff that, you know, fun stuff or whatever,
because it's a free city, according to them. But they were taking juice for the baby, water,
beer for the older people, food, raincoats so that they could all be seen by each other
and stuff. And I thought it was pretty cool and very well organized.
And did you see this yourself, these guys?
Yeah, I was right there.
And so basically, they went off to this Rite-Aid, they got the stuff, they brought it back and
started distributing it?
Mm-hmm.
Like Robin Hood?
Yeah, exactly like Robin Hood. And that's why I got so mad, because they're calling
these guys animals. These guys.
It's clear, he specifically said for us to shoot looters.
That's what got to me, because I know what they did. You're calling these people animals?
Come on. And I saw what they did, and I was really touched by it, and I liked the way
that they were organized about it, and that they were thoughtful about it. Because they
had families they couldn't find too, and that they would put themselves out like that on
other people's behalf.
I never had a real high opinion of thugs myself. But I tell you one thing, I'll never look
at them the same way again.
Why didn't people just walk away? That's what I don't understand.
We weren't allowed. People kept trying to go up the bridge, so they could go to Algiers,
and they'd be turned away, and they'd be sent back down.
And literally, they would just like go a couple streets away, and somebody would send them
back?
They'd go up the bridge to go across to the West Bank where it was dry and lights were
on. And the National Guard was up there with guns. They turned them back with guns, and
the Governor gave orders to shoot to kill. You couldn't get through them.
So people would go up the bridge. Every time they lined us up for the buses, and buses
wouldn't come, people in groups would go up the bridge, trying to get across the river.
People who had family across the river couldn't get across the river. They were not letting
us out of there. They wasn't letting nobody in. So we were trapped. I can't even express
it. The tears get close to my eyes, and I have this feeling in the pit in my stomach
like if I start crying, the sobs will kill me. I guess someday it'll calm down, and I'll
be able to just cry like a normal person. But I feel like if I started crying, I'd never
stop.
Denise Moore, she's now in Baton Rouge, she's OK, she's just found a new job there.
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, if it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break,
And the water gonna come and I'll have no place to stay.