Words Whispered in Water. Sandy Rosenthal
and 15,000 people had converged on the Superdome and at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.35 Supplies were slowly reaching the Superdome, but none were brought to the convention center. Apparently, Brigadier General Matthew Broderick had access in Washington, DC, to high-tech capabilities but hadn’t consulted a basic street map. He thought they were part of the same complex when, in fact, the two structures were a mile apart.36
There was another casualty caused by the lack of communication. Rescue of special-needs patients from hospitals and the Superdome was suspended due to rumors of an organized riot. In truth, bands of young black men—many of them armed—were indeed roaming the corridors of both venues, but they were acting as self-deputized sheriffs rather than gangs of marauders.37 They were searching for food and water. Nonetheless, it contributed to a rumor that there would be an attempt to take control of the buses at ten in the morning. In response, the National Guard blocked busloads of supplies from entering the city because there were not enough soldiers to protect the drivers.38 When the buses were finally allowed in, it appeared that these same “marauding youths” were the ones who organized the crowds and moved older people to the front of the line.
***
At seven o’clock, just as the sun was setting, Harvey’s bus arrived at the Astrodome. There were about a thousand cots on the ground floor, all taken. Harvey went to the second floor and saw a woman in a Red Cross uniform. He asked her if he could make a phone call. She replied that along the edge of the stairs were phones and Harvey could call anywhere in the United States for free. In therapy months later, Harvey would recall that the woman looked as though a golden aura surrounded her. He walked to a phone and called his daughter Beth.
“Dad! Where are you?” she almost hollered.
“I am in the Astrodome in Houston,” he answered.
“I heard from Mom,” Beth said. “She’s in Lafayette in a hospital.”
Beth explained that her husband’s parents in Lake Charles were driving to Lafayette to get Renee. Her husband’s brother Pat offered to drive to Houston and fetch Harvey. Harvey suggested that Pat try the south entrance because no one seemed to be there. They agreed to meet at 12:30 a.m.
***
Thursday night (September 1), Mayor Nagin, who had sheltered with his staff at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, called Garland, who was, as usual, on the air at WWL (AM) radio. It was now more than three and a half days since the levees had broken, and no cavalry was in sight. Nagin’s frustration was more than apparent in his tirade which was heard across twelve states.
“This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans… This is a major, major, major deal. And I can’t emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy… Don’t tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They’re not here. It’s too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something. And let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.”39
The interview was looped for days on the local stations that could broadcast it, on CNN, and on all the networks. The interview commanded attention from leaders all the way to the White House.
***
Harvey Miller was still in survival mode. At 12:15 a.m. on Friday (September 2), Harvey sat in the dark at the south entrance to the Astrodome. Down the road, huge searchlights shined. Harvey waited as 12:30 a.m. came and went. Then at 12:50 a.m., Harvey saw a silhouette moving toward him and knew—just knew—that it was Pat.
“He’s here to save me!” thought Harvey.
He stumbled to the tall figure, who was indeed his son-in-law’s brother, and wrapped his arms around him for a long moment. And, just like that, Harvey changed. Up until then, Harvey’s mind was always working, surviving, trying this and trying that. But after Pat found him, it was as though Harvey’s mind partially shut down.
For the entire car ride, Pat talked about watching television—or, more accurately, being glued to it—and how no one was able to do anything else. There seemed to be only one broadcast, said Pat, being piped to all the television stations around the nation.
Harvey listened in silence.
***
For Steve, Stanford, and me, most of that day (Friday, September 2, four days after the levees broke) was spent in the car. We drove seventy-five minutes from Lafayette to Baton Rouge and checked out the Episcopal High School. But we were too late! The school had already maxed out on the applicants that it could accept. Just then, an unusual thing happened. Stanford’s cell phone rang! It was his classmate Reid Chadwick from Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. Reid and his first cousin Mark Allain were staying with family members in New Iberia, twenty-four miles south of Lafayette. Stanford was good friends with both. He and Mark had just enrolled with the Episcopal School of Acadiana, a small town about midway between New Iberia and Lafayette. And the school still had openings for the ninth grade!
We leaped into the car, got back onto I-10, and flew back to Lafayette before turning south onto I-90. Ninety minutes later, we pulled up to the little school. To me, it looked magical with the air of a summer camp. But Stanford was most interested in being in the same place as his New Orleans classmates. After a tour of the school, we met with the principal for about twenty minutes and requested enrollment for the fall semester. The principal was obliging but had a caveat: we needed to pay tuition for the entire year. Otherwise, he said, the school could not make ends meet. We complied. We had little choice.
When the administrative assistant was finished processing Stanford’s enrollment, she turned to us and said that she understood how we felt. “I can relate!” she said. She explained that the previous year, while no one was home, lightning struck her house and burned it to the ground. We smiled in appreciation at her attempt to be supportive. But we imagined that she couldn’t understand at all. As devastating as that must been—losing her entire home and its contents—at least she still had her family, friends, neighborhood, and all the things that create a community. We said goodbye, climbed into the car, and drove the thirty minutes back to the Drury Inn. As always, we turned on the radio and listened to the nonstop coverage of the levee failures and flooding.
***
Garland raged at the indignities. What was taking the cavalry so long? Two days after Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004, FEMA had moved two million meals into Florida and 8.1 million pounds of ice.40 It was now four days after the hurricane’s winds had died. A Republican-dominated House investigative committee would later note, “We cannot ignore the disparities between the lavish treatment by FEMA of Hurricane Charley survivors and the survivors of this 2005 hurricane.”41
Later that day (Friday September 2), one thousand troops finally arrived. Their commander was Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, a cigar-chomping, no-nonsense leader.42 He brought the army’s 82nd Airborne and 1st Cavalry Divisions. After stopping at the Superdome, he walked the half block to the staging area for the troops and talked to guard commanders. These troops were not under his command and were expecting to see chaos. But he told them to keep their weapons lowered at all times.
“This is not a military operation,” the lieutenant general barked. “This is not Iraq.”43
Video footage shows Honoré ordering them to lower their guns and cursing at those slow to obey. Lieutenant General Honoré’s strength was his restraint.44
With the ever-present cigar, Honoré got into the lead vehicle, and the convoy headed toward the convention center at 12:25 p.m. and was greeted with cheers. One little boy saluted. It took about twenty minutes for the general to establish control and set up six food-distribution stations along the length of the convention center. A team of Arkansas guardsmen were assigned to sweep the enormous building. A hundred people were splayed out on the floor, nearly dead of heat, dehydration, and starvation. But they found no gangs of thugs.
As described by Jed Horne with the Times-Picayune,45 “Rumors of gang rapes and wanton murder needed to be repeated only two or three times before reporters decided the rumors had been corroborated and repeated them in print.” In the end,