Unbelieiveable
By James Varney
Staff writer
Reports from throughout New Orleans indicate that widespread looting is
continuing.
At an empty lot on Elysian Fields, people are driving in used cars,
removing the stickers and selling them themselves.
At a Winn Dixie grocery store on St. Louis Street near the Municipal
Auditorium, looters have stripped the shelves bare.
“I had to get some food and it was pretty wild in there,” said Ross
Troggio, 25, a Jackson Squre artist who lives in the French Quarter. I
was scared, but I had to get some food.
“The floor was real slippery and slushy and they were running around
screaming and really trashing the place,” he said.
Police are trying to set up command posts at several locations in the
city.
At one set up at the limousine entrance to the Harrah’s Casino,
officers said they fed more than 400 police on Tuesday, and they have enough
supplies to keep police fed for only another four or five days.
Johnny White’s Sport Bar on Bourbon Street at Orleans Avenue didn’t
close Tuesday night, and had six patrons at 8 a.m. drinking at the bar.
“Monday night, they came by after curfew and wanted us to close,”
bartender Perry Bailey, 60, said of officers then patrolling the French
Quarter. But all we did was shut the doors and stayed open.”
Access to the edge of the lower 9th Ward from the French Quarter is
still possible along Royal and Chartres streets.
At one of the rare high spots in the lower 9th Ward-Bywater area, the
approach to the St. Claude Bridge over the Industrial Canal at Poland
Avenue, several hundred residents stood in the street amidst shattered
glass and plastic bags containing their belongings Wednesday morning,
waiting for transportation to the Superdome or elsewhere.
All had been plucked from rooftops and balconies the night before after
water had risen to the eaves of their roofs.
For the past two days, a flotilla of small boats commanded by officers
with the New Orleans Police Department, Coast Guard, Department of
Wildlife and Fisheries, and a smattering of private boats, had been
plucking people from oases of safety in what looks like an ocean of
water-surrounded rooftops, and brought them to the bridge.
The last of the group arrived around dusk on Tuesday, when the
flotilla ceased operations for safety reasons, but the last National Guard
truck left at about that same time, and as of 10:30 a.m., no more had
arrived.
And that’s got people concerned. When someone drove through the area
in a truck towing a boat, a group of people surged around it, screaming
at the driver.
Rumors were rife among those waiting.
There were hundreds of bodies floating in the water flooding the Lower
9th Ward, some people said. But several people captaining rescue boats
say they’ve only seen one or two bodies in the water, although they’re
convinced the toll will rise when the water drains and homes are
searched.
The other unquenchable rumor is that someone blew up the levee along
the Industrial Canal on Sunday, well before Katrina came ashore. Several
among the crowd said water was rising rapidly in their neighborhood on
Sunday night.
It’s unclear exactly when water traveling up the Mississippi River-Gulf
Outlet from the Gulf met water pouring into the Industrial Canal from
Lake Pontchartrain and began topping levees along the canal, officials
say. But no dynamite was involved.
Joe Vanison, 67, who lived in the 2600 block of Gordon Street was
sitting on a piece of carboard under a tree on Poland avenue Wednesday
morning.
He said they took him off his roof at noon as he watched entire houses
floating by on Tuesday. He reached the bridge at 2 p.m.
“The last trucks left at 5 p.m. and we couldn’t get on it,” Vanison said.
“I stayed on the bridge last night and I guess I’m doing as well as can
be expected. I’m going to sit here and wait. I have no
choice. I can’t walk to the Dome.”
But at 11 a.m., handfuls of stragglers started walking towards the
French Quarter, prompted by reports that the water was continuing to rise.
Dan Halley, 53, lived in the 1400 block of France Street.
“We done lost everfything and I’m headed for a shelter,” Halley said. “I’ve got to move, keep going. I don’t think anyone else is going to come here for
people.”
He and other residents said they heard sporadic gunfire throughout the
night.
Along the streets on the way to the Quarter, many storefronts are
smashed in, interior shelves empty.
On the walls of some Faubourg-Marigny warehouses, someone has
spray-painted on the walls, “Looters will be shot on sight.”
Fearing they would lose everything to looters, several store and bar
owners made their way to their French Quarter businesses just as
Katrina’s winds were picking up.
At the Royal Street Grocery, a customer asked the owner, “Robert, do
you have any cigs?”
Robert Buras, whose family has owned the business at Royal and St. Anne
for 41 years, smiled.
“I put the smokes up high, so let the water recede and then come by and
yell up to that top window,” he said, pointing up to an apartment above
and behind the store. “ And I’ll throw you down some smokes. But if
they’re talking a month before people can come back, it might only be
four.”
He then turned to another person and said, “I’ve got to ration stuff,
you know. All the National Guard that knows how to fight hurricanes is
over in Iraq. They took my cavalry, man.”
Meanwhile, water was still spreading through Uptown Wednesday morning,
and was making its way over St. Charles Avenue towards the river.
On Marengo Street, water was 3 to 10 feet high in stretches between
Claiborne and St. Charles avenues and between Napoleon Avenue and
Louisiana.
Water lapped into the bottom floors of houses, and residents were
being evacuated by boat on Marengo and surrounding streets.
Along Prytania Street, the water was a foot high and still rising at
10:30 a.m.
And while water was still running in Uptown faucets Tuesday night, the
flow stopped Wednesday.
- Staff writer Terri Troncale contributed to this report