No Ordinary Heroes:. Demaree Inglese
Hugging the back wall, Verret stared at the mounting storm. Katrina was still offshore, but the wind was already breaking off tree limbs and shattering unprotected glass. Branches, papers, trash cans, and shingles shot past the building and disappeared into the howling night. Sheets of water resembling panels of frosted glass sliced a path down the street, tearing the leaves off trees.
He had hustled the last of the late-night gawkers inside an hour ago, before the storm turned deadly. Now anyone who stepped too far away from the building risked being impaled by once-harmless objects that the hurricane had transformed into missiles. Staying close to the wall, Verret moved around the corner, toward a more protected side of the Center. He paused and looked down at the street twenty feet below the porch, where the pouring rain was creating a rushing river. Trash and other floating debris sped by like small boats on a storm-tossed sea.
Kind of how I feel, he thought. Verret had acted as warden many times before, but never during a major emergency. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Too many people—inmates, families, and staff—were counting on him. And other officers, including Sheriff Marlin Gusman, would be scrutinizing every decision he made.
Deputy Skyles appeared and interrupted his thoughts. “It’s really coming down now,” he said.
Verret glanced at his watch: It was 2:36 a.m. “Is there water in the sallyport?”
“Almost a foot,” Skyles answered evenly.
Verret nodded. The basement floor stood only two feet higher than the sallyport. The water hadn’t reached the doors yet, but it would—soon. “Guess we’d better start the pumps.”
Verret, Skyles, a crew of deputies, and a few inmates assigned to the work detail went out the basement doors to the sallyport. Wind and rain assaulted the men as they trudged through the twelve inches of water, up the driveway to the trailer that held the pumps. The machines pull-started like lawnmowers, and it took several tries to engage the pumps. Verret made sure water was being sucked up and then drained through the hoses draped over the dam wall before ordering the men back toward the building for the final phase of flood-proofing.
Verret closed and locked one of the basement doors, and Skyles and two men bolted a large steel plate in front of it. The other deputies lined the bottom with sandbags. Then they placed a second plate next to the remaining open door. The group moved back into the basement, leaving one of the inmate workers—a small, agile man—outside.
The same crew had been through this unusual drill a month earlier during preparations for Hurricane Dennis. The inmate worker still in the sallyport slid the free steel plate across the open doorway, bolted it into place, and sandbagged the bottom. The plates were two feet shorter than the actual doorway, which left a gap at the top when the doors were open. Inside, Verret stood on a chair, reached over the plate, grabbed the inmate’s outstretched arms, and pulled him through the gap and into the basement. Once the inmate was safe, Verret closed and locked the second door.
It wasn’t an elegant system, but it worked. If the sallyport continued to fill with water, the steel plates and sandbags would keep the basement dry—at least for a while.
Chapter 10
Back on the first floor, Sergeant Patrice Ross, a short, thin black woman, was keeping watch over the civilians in the lobby. As Verret came back upstairs, he ordered her and some other deputies to keep the area mopped. He knew from previous storms that water would soon be blowing in under the front doors.
As he walked away, the lights flickered and went out.
“We just lost city power,” Ross said from the darkness.
Verret tensed—until the generators kicked in and emergency lights came back on.
“That’s it for the air-conditioning,” Skyles said.
Verret nodded and said a silent prayer that the barrier in the sallyport would hold.
“What are we doing about feed-up?” Skyles ran his hand over a damp buzz cut that was so short he looked bald. “You know what the inmates are like if they miss a meal.”
“Let’s get through the storm first,” Verret answered. “Then we’ll worry about it.”
Breakfast was still a couple of hours away, and Verret wasn’t ready to think about 800 hot, hungry inmates yelling, banging on bars, and probably stopping up toilets in protest, if their meal arrived late. They’d be fed, but not on time. Without elevators, the inmate workers would have to carry food up the stairs to the tiers, and that would take several hours in the ten-story building. And with so many kids running wild in the stairwell, it was dangerous to let the workers move about too freely. He’d have to clamp down on the kid problem—after the hurricane.
“If they miss breakfast, there’s going to be trouble,” Skyles kept at it.
“They’ll live,” Verret answered dryly. “With Katrina coming, we’ve got bigger worries than breakfast.”
At 5 a.m. Verret’s radio stopped working. The relay towers that bounced the radio signal throughout the city must have gone down, he guessed. That meant the New Orleans Police Department had lost radio contact, too. The police used the same system, and the loss would seriously impede their ability to evacuate the city, enforce the curfew, and respond to emergencies.
An hour later, the front lobby of the Correctional Center was swamped with water that rushed under the front doors with each gust of wind. Puddles had accumulated in front of the information desk, and people were tracking water up the stairwell. Sergeant Ross and two deputies worked feverishly with mops and towels, trying futilely to sop up the flood while some civilians attempted to push their belongings out of the way. Other people tried to sleep, but one or two curious souls had gotten up and were peering through the gaps in the plywood sheets over the doors to see what was happening outside.
“We’ve got to sandbag the outside of the doors,” Verret told Skyles. The captain’s skin felt cold and clammy under his wet work clothes, and he grimaced at the thought of going out onto the back porch, where the heavy bags were piled. He didn’t relish another drenching, but the job had to be done.
Skyles went for a flatbed cart, and as Verret started toward the rear of the building, a deputy slipped in the stairwell and almost fell. “Keep the stairs dry,” Verret called over to Ross. “We don’t want any accidents.”
Skyles met him at the back doors and held them open, while Verret pushed the plastic-bottom cart outside. He tried to keep a firm grip on the metal handle, but as he cleared the door, the wind almost yanked the cart from his grasp.
Skyles quickly picked up a sandbag and dropped it on the cart to weigh it down. “That’s one.” The deputy yelled to be heard. “How many more?”
“Twenty should do it,” Verret shouted back. The jet-engine roar of the wind pounded all other sound into oblivion.
The hurricane was much stronger than an hour before. Oaks along the street were bent in half, and with gusts whipping around the corners, the back porch was no longer shielded from the raging tempest. Both men fought to stay on their feet as they loaded sandbags onto the cart.
When they were done, Verret waved toward one side. “That way!”
The wind was at their backs as the two men pulled the weighted cart to the corner. After they turned onto the side porch, they had to walk bent over into the wind. The rain felt like needles piercing Verret’s skin.
“Get ready!” Skyles shouted as they neared the front porch. The full force of the storm hit them as they came around the building.
Verret clung to the cart, drenched and battered by Katrina’s power. He watched as the storm hurled shrubs, lawn furniture, and street signs down the road. The street and parking lot between the Correctional Center and the district attorney’s office were covered with water, but this was no placid lake. The ferocious gale churned the water into froth, creating white-capped waves that reminded Verret of the ocean. The water had already