No Ordinary Heroes:. Demaree Inglese
Paul answered.
Mike’s eyes widened. “I’m not drinking water from a garbage can.”
“You’d rather die of thirst?” Paul looked at Mike expectantly. “These cans are clean. Besides, the water isn’t even touching them. It’s in the bags.”
Mike folded his arms. “Don’t care.”
“When your dogs need water, you’ll be glad we have it.” Paul wasn’t put off by Mike’s stubborn stance. “And when we lose water, we can use it to flush the toilets.”
“I’m more worried about losing power,” Brady said. “No power means no elevators and no air-conditioning.”
The air-conditioning system on the second floor barely kept the humidity and temperature tolerable, but it helped. The thought of losing it in a Louisiana August wasn’t pleasant. Something else occurred to me. The doors to hundreds of inmates’ cells were also powered by electricity. What would happen if they couldn’t be opened…or shut? How would the prisoners react to being trapped? Or what if they got loose? A hint of anxiety made me hungry again.
“Think I’ll make another turkey sandwich.” I stood up.
Mike squinted at me with a critical eye. “Don’t you think you’re fat enough?”
“Not for a hurricane.” I was beginning to reach back to what I had learned in air force survival training. At a solid 180 pounds, I was fit and athletic, but I didn’t want my muscle mass to be lost to starvation rations. If things got as bad as they were predicting, we might end up without food for days. I was going to build up my body’s reserves, just in case.
“Let’s take the dogs out,” Brady said to Mike. “I’m startin’ to go a little stir-crazy.”
Apprehension, even with good reason, wasn’t programmed into Brady’s bayou mind-set. He was energetic, enthusiastic, and ready for anything—sometimes to the point of recklessness. Walking Moby and Georgie probably eased his tension. Gary and I decided to go with them.
When Mike opened the Medical Administration door, he paused before going through. “Oh, my God.”
I looked out and gasped, too. In the last hour the crowd had not only doubled but had also dug in, like misplaced people in a refugee camp. Civilians now sprawled on prison mattresses all over the foyer floor. Islands of pale green plastic demarcated the territory each family had staked out. Somehow, we managed to navigate the packed floor to the security door without stepping on anyone.
Down in the lobby, more people jammed in, watching Katrina’s opening salvo. The windows and doors had not been boarded up yet. Streetlights and lights from the DA’s office across the way illuminated the parking lot and road, and the pine trees along the street bent in heavy gusts of wind. Although the porch overhang afforded some protection from the storm, most of the onlookers stayed inside.
Mike and Brady took the dogs around to the back porch, where the building provided better protection from the driving wind and rain. I wasn’t ready to let the storm get the best of me just yet, and when Gary couldn’t dissuade me from getting a better view, he joined me out front.
The wind battered two tall trees near the front steps. A large branch broke and fell off as we watched. The rain blurred the outline of the Old Prison behind the police mechanic shop to the right, creating a ghostly aura around the structure. Small houses in the other direction looked gray and forlorn.
As we turned to go back inside, Captain Verret walked out. “Do you need anything for Medical?” he asked.
“An airlift to Chicago,” I joked. I told him again that Gary, Mike, and I would be in the Correctional Center to respond to any medical problems that might arise. So far the only glitch was the limited range of the yellow radios.
When another blast of wind rocked Gary back a step and pelted us with rain, we went in. Verret held the door open for some deputies who carried sheets of plywood out of the lobby.
Mike, Brady, and the dogs passed us on their way back upstairs. With the hurricane’s landfall still hours away, they wanted to get as much rest as possible. Gary and I should have taken the hint, but even on less than four hours’ sleep, I couldn’t resist one more look at Katrina’s first attack.
A large group of spectators had gathered on the back porch. The storm was growing steadily in strength, and gusts whipped streams of leaves around the corners of the building. The young oaks lining the street swayed, and the heavy rain began to flood the small courtyard between the onlookers and the kitchen.
Gary and I watched the storm unfold for nearly an hour. When a burst of wind tore a glass-and-metal light fixture off the porch overhang, showering glass on the spectators, we decided to turn in. Even if Katrina surprised us—as Ivan did, with less than an inch of rain—we’d still have a busy day tomorrow.
When we walked back through the lobby, the anxiety I had suppressed all night surfaced. A disturbing sense of claustrophobia set in as Verret and his deputies secured the last sheet of plywood over the front windows, shutting off the outside view. I felt as closed in as the 800 inmates locked upstairs. Now we’re all prisoners of the storm.
Chapter 9
Early morning:
At 2 a.m. Katrina makes a slight turn north.
The storm is 150 miles in diameter, with winds of 155 mph and advancing at 10 mph.
Around 3 a.m. the 17th Street Canal levee is breached.
City power is lost, forcing jail buildings to switch to generator power.
By 5 a.m. Katrina’s eye is 90 miles from New Orleans, with winds of 150 mph.
At 6:10 a.m. Katrina makes landfall in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, as a category 4 hurricane.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Gary and I finally went up to Medical Administration. The smell of dogs was overpowering, and there was no room on the floor of my small office to stretch out. Every other bit of space was occupied by sleeping staff.
“Why don’t we go to my office?” Gary said. He held up his keys. As the jail’s director of infection control, Gary’s desk was several floors above.
We carried our bedding, Gary’s cooler, some food, and water up a few more flights of stairs. Although we were bone-tired, we didn’t regret the move. There was plenty of space in the large windowless room where Gary and eight medical assistants worked. And, as a bonus, Infection Control had excellent air-conditioning. Gary even found a gift basket of Sugar Daddy candy, Clark Bars, and KitKats on an assistant’s desk.
“It is an emergency,” Gary said, unwrapping a Clark bar before he plugged in an electric pump and inflated his air mattress.
There was another welcome discovery. Infection Control had an unexpected cache of water—a five-gallon jug in the water cooler.
“Gary, how many other offices up here have water coolers?” I asked, unrolling the floor mat that I had slept on in Korea.
“I don’t know. Let’s go look. We might need the supplies.” Gary followed me out.
We searched several administrative floors and found a number of unlocked offices with two partial and two full five-gallon jugs. We also found more bottled water and Gatorade in office refrigerators. If circumstances ever became desperate, the water stash up here might be a lifesaver.
We set our cell phone alarms for 6 a.m. and crashed. The glow of computer screensavers around us added an eerie image to the scene. As we dozed off, an intense drama began to unfold downstairs.
Captain Verret carried two sandwiches as he walked out the rear door of the Correctional Center onto the back porch. He had to remember to thank the kitchen staff for leaving the turkey and cheese trays in the hall. His deputies were too busy to eat on a schedule. He himself hadn’t even