| Part 1 of 2 Hurricane Katrina made an indelible mark on the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents on August 29, 2005. It is a tragedy that is so difficult to get your mind around because there are literally thousands of individual stories to be told that together comprise the history of Katrina: the tragedy, the neglect, and the compassion. What follows is three of those stories told by individuals who had different vantage points with Hurricane Katrina. Keith Chancley had decided he was going to ride Hurricane Katrina out in the New Orleans East housing complex he lived in on Tower Road. He didn't want to face all that traffic. "Usually, it takes you 45 minutes to get to Baton Rouge," Chancley said. "It took people eight hours to get there when everyone was evacuating. How long would it take to get somewhere else? Everyone can't leave out at once. The traffic was backed up all the way there. The only way out was west because the storm was coming from the east." The winds of Katrina came and went on August 29 and Chancley thought he had weathered the worst of the storm. "Everything was calm after the hurricane passed," Chancley recalled. "I was standing outside watching the wind blow. The wind was feeling good." It's mighty hot in New Orleans in late summer. But then, as Chancley was enjoying the breeze on the second floor balcony of the apartment building he lived in, he looked north and didn't like what he saw. "All of a sudden, we saw water come across I-10. And it kept on coming and kept on coming. I mean you only see this in the movies. But I saw this water coming from the levee and I wondered when it was going to stop. Then the car got flooded. Then we went to the second floor and it kept coming up." The water would eventually reach the ceilings in the first floor apartments, at least 10 feet high. Little did Chancley and the other residents trapped on the second floor realize, but they would be stuck there for seven days. Most thought the waters would recede after a day or so. At first, the residents coped with the situation pretty well. Since there was no electricity, they got the food out of people's refrigerators. Chancley barbequed for the rest of the residents who were trapped. "We didn't have that much grill stuff, so I used wood and newspaper," he said. Eventually, the food and water did start to run out. People who were sick were hoisted up on the roof so they could be rescued by helicopter. "Everybody got so frustrated," Chancley said. "People were okay for a couple of days. After that, people got frustrated. They didn't have anything to eat. You couldn't use the bathroom anymore because it wasn't working and it got all stinky in your house. It got terrible. Then the rescue people came around and told us to just be patient. How are you going to be patient sitting up there for seven days and can't take a bath and you can't do this and you can't do that. And then a stranger was asking us to be patient." The things that people needed to do were pretty clear to Chancley. "All you could do was try to survive and stay alive or pass out and die," he emphasized. "When you can't help yourself, something's wrong. I tried to talk to everyone around me to keep them calm. If you don't keep everyone calm, you're in trouble. Otherwise, you crack up and everyone else cracks up and then you lose people. They get heart attacks and this and that and you have a lot of problems." The people in the boats did come back in a couple of days and Chancley and the others were rescued. They were put out south of where they had been, on the "high ground" of Chef Menteur Highway. They had to walk about two miles to get to the place where they would be evacuated from New Orleans East. However, unbeknownst to them, they would be going from the frying pan into the fire. They were headed to the Morial Convention Center on the east bank of the Mississippi River. While the convention center was built on high ground and wasn't significantly damaged by Katrina or the flooding, it also wasn' capable of having tens of thousands of people live inside for an extended period of time without running water and a working sewer system. Chancley would spend seven days at the center. As a convention center goes, it was a comfortable place at first. Chancley had his spot in section G. But then the systems started to break down. "Thousands and thousands of people were sitting there. We couldn't use the bathrooms and we had to sleep outside. Then, you could see the frustration start building. People started getting panicky and huffy. You can't describe it what was happening. Every day, you could see the frustration growing. There wasn't any water. Then, a man got shot in the middle of the street." There wasn't anyone there to keep the peace. "There were people hurting others for food and killing people for food," Chancley said. "When a man had ice, he got mobbed so badly. He kept shouting for everyone to get away. They kept saying 'Give me some of that ice.' Ice was worth a million dollars." While people began to barbeque food they had found at the convention center, Chancley ate as little as possible because he feared the meat had gone bad. It just didn' taste right to him. Chancley had been out in that hot summer sun for over 10 days before he started to think about breaking the law. With the sweat and the grime caused by high heat and high humidity, a person wants to crawl out of their skin --and their clothes. "I told my people I was going to get some clothes," Chancley said. "We went looting. You had to loot for clothes. We had to change clothes. I went and got everyone some clothes. We got some shirts, some shoes, some socks, and some underwear. We couldn't bathe, but at least we could change clothes. I got the clothes out of Riverwalk. [Riverwalk is a tourist shopping mall adjacent to the convention center.] It wasn't about looting. It was about survival. If you were out there for seven days and started smelling yourself, you'd get out of your clothes. And what little water you had, you used it to wash your face and your underarms. Either way, you had to sacrifice for what you had to do. People looked down on the looters. But people were looting because they needed to survive. It was hot and people were sweating. There wasn't much shade. The sun this time of year isn't nice." Things continued to deteriorate at the convention center until the army finally arrived. "When the army came and people got something to eat, things got a little calmer," Chancley said. "They gave us water. They started getting things organized for the buses to come. Everything went kind of smooth after that. But until then, you had to be there to see it." Chancley and others were shipped by bus to San Antonio, Texas. They were given MREs to eat. Life started getting better. "They built a shelter there for us at a mall," he said. "We took a shower at Kelly's. That was the best thing in the world, that hot shower. They had a long line for the showers. It was a crying shame because no one ever wanted to get out. It was like heaven. Water was heaven. People were nice to us out there." When November rolled around, Chancley decided to head back to New Orleans. While he wasn't trained to do it, Chancley found work as a roofer. "They have work," Chancley emphasized. "They don't care if you are good or not, as long as you get up there and do some work. There's a lot of labor work." *** Gregory Broadway saw Hurricane Katrina from another perspective. He works on the big oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico. He works three weeks on the rigs and one week off. He left New Orleans August 9 for his shift on one of the rigs, but as Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf of Mexico, Broadway's crew was evacuated to Corpus Christi, Texas where they worked on some rigs on dry land. But as Katrina approached, he kept an eye on the storm's progress via the Internet. And he didn't like what he saw. "I called Momma (Maxine) and said 'This is a real one,'" Broadway said. "'You need to get out.'" She kept telling me she wasn' going anywhere. We don't leave unless a big hurricane comes along. Everybody didn't know it was a big hurricane coming. We can't pack up and leave and come back the next day to find out that nothing is wrong. But I was following it on the computer and I told Momma that she had to get out. She thought she would be all right. But I told her it was the big one, like Betsy. I called Saturday and she was still here. 'I'm not going anywhere.' "Normally, I work out there in the gulf on the oil rigs. They evacuated us off there. I was trying to convince them to get out of New Orleans. I called my ex-wife and children and told them they had to go. She said, 'No, I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying in my house.' I told her this hurricane wasn't any joke. My ex-wife left Sunday with my kids." When Broadway woke up Monday morning and saw what was happening in New Orleans, he was very fearful for his family. He didn't know if they were dead or alive. The phone system was out and so; all he could do for the moment was watch the events unfold on the television. "I saw my brother and some others on television at the Superdome," Broadway said. "I left my car here in New Orleans in case something like this did happen. My brother took my car and went to the Superdome. They were there in a long line at the Superdome. And you know me; I was looking for my car, wondering where it was. I had just bought it." Eventually, phone service in other parts of Louisiana was restored and Broadway began to get in touch with his loved ones once more. "My ex-wife and my children made it to Baton Rouge, but things were crowded there, so they went to Hammonds," Broadway said. "She felt they weren't treating her right, so she called me. I was already staying in a hotel, so my job told me to get my family down there. They stayed in the hotel with me for about a week and then went to a shelter." Broadway continued to work in Corpus Christi, but longed to get back to New Orleans. Although the company he worked for offered to find him housing in Corpus Christi and his ex-wife decided to stay there with their children, Broadway did return to New Orleans. "This is where I was born," Broadway said. This is where I want to live. This is where I want to die." Broadway knows what it means to miss New Orleans. Next Issue: Maxine Broadway, Gregory's mother, finds kindness in all the right places. Plus we have an exclusive interview with New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan, who raised a stir when he walked off of ABC-TV's "Nightline" late night news program. |
| Surviving Katrina and its aftermath True Grit by Jonathan Gramling |
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| Maxine Broadway (left, standing) shows her trailer-home in New Orleans |
| Keith Chancley and the building he spent seven days in before being rescued by boat. |
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