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Short filmTranscript
00:28Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
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03:08We had rain, and we had thunder, and we had all the things that make up a storm, but we
03:17heard something that sounded like an explosion.
03:28I guess that was the levees breaking at that time.
03:33That's when the water went from the tire of the car —
03:38And I mean the bottom of the car to the second floor within, like, 20 minutes.
03:53The water was steady rising and rising.
03:55I looked outside and noticed that it was flooding.
03:58Well, you know, we know the drainage systems is bad down here, so I started getting worried.
04:08The water started coming in different.
04:10The water started changing colors.
04:13Actually, we even saw fish in the water when it first started coming, but the water got higher and higher.
04:20We got up this morning, and we just went up this morning, and we just went and rained, and all
04:23of a sudden the water just started rising.
04:26The water started rising faster and faster.
04:29The water started rising faster and faster.
04:30We went back in the command post and said, this thing is a lot worse than we thought.
04:34And at the time when this was happening, we didn't really know the cause.
04:39Water came up.
04:41Three minutes.
04:42It went from the ground to the roof.
04:44I said, where is water coming from?
04:47We realized it's not a normal hurricane aftermath.
04:53Something's wrong.
04:55Something's wrong.
05:01It came in like a tidal wave.
05:04Car lights started popping on as the water got higher, you know.
05:08We were wondering when it was going to stop.
05:11When I looked out the window and I saw the cars starting to be swallowed, I said, oh, well, I've
05:19lost everything.
05:21Once the water came into the house, you know, there was nothing else that could be done.
05:27The water was just inching up higher and higher and higher.
05:31It reached a good six feet inside of the house.
05:37It's a disaster.
05:38The houses down here are destroyed.
05:42I've never seen that like this before.
05:44My mother's 83 years old, so I don't know how well she made out.
05:48The water's in the house?
05:49Yes, in the lower night war.
05:51The calls started coming and it was almost at one burst.
05:57And you could hear the emergency because all of the phones started going off at the same time.
06:03Folks from St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish.
06:07And then we started getting the calls from folks in the lower ninth ward.
06:13There were so many people with the same issues trapped.
06:17And the lines were furiously busy.
06:30We were asking folks what their addresses were.
06:33And then finding out it didn't matter what your address was.
06:36Because the force of the water had moved homes off of their foundations.
06:42It was so much water.
06:45You know, it was just like opening a faucet.
06:48It was just pouring in.
06:51And the house was knocked off of its foundation.
06:56So the house was teetering.
06:59So we're all signaling to each other, you know, wait, wait, wait.
07:02Don't move.
07:03Don't move.
07:04You stay on this side.
07:06You stay right there.
07:07We're level right now.
07:08Then as the water would move the house, we had to adjust.
07:13We were like, okay, you go by the front door.
07:15You go there.
07:17You stay here.
07:18Everybody had their own portion of something to this recipe of survival.
07:28And then we start hearing barrels from off the railroad track or wherever they came from.
07:33They're hitting the stairs.
07:34And we thought the neighbors were dead or dying downstairs.
07:46The water, it's moving at such a fast rate.
07:50I could see the water running in through the baseboards, under the door.
07:57You're looking at your life, the life that your parents provided for you.
08:02Your belongings being ruined.
08:06Your mother's furniture that she prided is being thrown against a wall.
08:11Your icebox or refrigerator is floating.
08:16You move things to a higher level.
08:19You get as much in the attic as you possibly can.
08:24But when you go towards the front of the house and you realize that that water is at least that
08:31high in the street or higher,
08:33then you're worried about an exit plan.
08:38You got to get out.
08:49No, it's safe to say that house is history.
08:52It's going to burn down through the water line.
08:54If I have a hard time picking that one up on the camera, I see it behind the trees.
08:58We were at the Lake Marina Tower, just right on the other side of 17th Street Canal.
09:04And me and firefighter Gabe King and Captain Paul Helmers were watching the winds on the south side of Lake
09:12Marina Tower.
09:18Well, I brought my camera with me for obvious reason that it's very likely you will have things that you
09:25want to film in a Category 5 hurricane.
09:28Oh, wow, the water's getting pretty deep down there.
09:32I have to keep an eye on the water and see what it looks like in another 30 minutes.
09:36When you see water coming up that much at 6 inches every 15 minutes, that's 2 feet an hour.
09:41You're just talking an incredible flow of water.
09:45So, yeah, when I spotted the 200-foot area of water coming through, I was 100% certain of what
09:51I was looking at.
09:52It looks like there's a possible levee breach on the 17th Street Canal right on the angle behind that burning
10:00house.
10:00I don't see any levee in distance there.
10:02Looks like it's at least 3 feet higher than outside.
10:06You want to see it better, Joe? Let me focus in with this.
10:10I was hesitant to make the report because we didn't have a confirmation.
10:14But Captain Helmers, he zoomed in on that breach.
10:19Here. You want to see it better? Watch right here, Joe. Look.
10:21And you can see that 6-foot wall. It's gone. You can see the water pouring through.
10:26My heart just sank. So I radioed it in. We have a breach in a levee.
10:31I think I reported it from 4 to 10 feet wide at the time.
10:35I didn't want there to be any confusion on the other end at all.
10:39Everybody knows the implications of a broken levee.
10:43The entire city flooding. Possibly thousands of people dying.
10:48Could be the end of the city.
10:50It was...
10:53It was apocalyptic.
10:55We all knew exactly what we needed to do.
10:58We knew that we needed to get boats.
11:01We needed to get as many people as we could, as fast as we could.
11:05And we knew that there was just, you know, a certain amount of time that people had.
11:22I ran into our fire chief, Charles Parent.
11:26And he said that he had two or three firemen reporting a very large break in the levee.
11:35And I questioned him and I said, are you sure? What do you mean a break?
11:40And he said, that's what I said to them.
11:44I was in the communication room in the Emergency Operations Center.
11:48And I heard a report come in that the levee at the 17th Street Canal had busted.
11:55And that heavy flows of water were flowing into the city.
12:01From that moment on, I knew that Katrina was going to be something different.
12:07The levee busting in New Orleans was a worst case scenario.
12:10So I immediately called back to FEMA headquarters to alert them that there are reports that a levee had broken.
12:18I can't confirm it. That's just what I had heard.
12:21My tone at the time was, I think, real concern.
12:27I know that that information then was passed along to others so that they would know.
12:33Now, whether they believed it or not, I had no control over.
12:35I could only tell them what I had heard, but I hadn't seen any of it yet.
12:50The mood was kind of easy in the beginning. At least we did have some shelter.
12:57But things started deteriorating real fast.
13:00Storm coming through the dome.
13:03Whatever water is trying to get in there for real.
13:06The only light we really had if you went inside the Superdome was from the four holes in the rooftop.
13:11Of course, they have emergency generators, but no air conditioning.
13:14So that's going to be, obviously, an interesting situation as the morning progresses.
13:19It started getting more muggy here and now. It was really, really hot. Steamy.
13:24It's getting hot in there. The toilets are overflowing.
13:28All the bad things got flooding everywhere to the top. Man, it's nasty already.
13:34The smell was getting worse. People was kind of, like, closed in and it just wasn't good.
13:40So we went on the outside where we could congregate and where people had radios.
13:46Hurricane Katrina hitting the Big Easy very hard today.
13:49And as the day was going on, they was having more and more reports.
13:52Police and fire that there was a breach at the 17th Street Canal.
13:56All you see is water, pretty much, and the tops of roofs.
13:59A significant part of the city is underwater. A significant part of the city is damaged.
14:03What you hear are people screaming for help.
14:06They've confirmed reports of bodies floating.
14:08We didn't see water yet, so we're just hearing all of these horror stories.
14:13And caller after caller, caller after caller, caller after caller, they couldn't get to the people.
14:17You just really don't know what's going on.
14:30The water was coming up more. And we had three non-swimmers. And then we had the swimmers.
14:40Myself, who's injured, and my daughter and my niece. They were saying, we'll get help.
14:47I was like, no, we can't separate. And I can't help you if you go off somewhere.
14:53They stayed. I convinced them to stay. And my uncle and I went on the porch.
14:59And the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain looked like everything had merged.
15:07There were trains floating. My neighbors are gone.
15:12I never felt so isolated to where I just thought the world has ended.
15:21And we're the only few people that are left.
15:24So now we got water towel angles on the second floor of an extremely tall house.
15:31So now we have to move to the attic.
15:33Now mind you, I have a broken neck and a broken back and I'm in a cast and I have
15:37a brace on my neck.
15:39So before we went into the attic, my daughter started writing our names and our date of births on the
15:45wall.
15:46Just like I'm writing our names and our date of births.
15:48So when they come inside the house and find us, I say, find us.
15:52She said, yeah, you know, because you know, Mom, we're probably not going to make it through this.
15:57This, you know, too much.
15:59So I erased it off the wall. It's like, girl, we're going to live.
16:03And we're going to make it through this.
16:04I felt hopeless during that time when she was writing that on the wall.
16:09But something inside me told me, this isn't it.
16:12You got to convince them that this isn't it.
16:15Because they're giving up.
16:19We're going to keep our heads together. We're going to live.
16:22We're going to be okay.
16:31It's almost one o'clock p.m. now. Storm's dying down pretty good.
16:36We're going to go out pretty soon and try to get a boat.
16:39One thing about firemen, firemen are going to find a way to do what they need to do.
16:45It's obvious that our job at that moment is to help people who are stuck in the floodwaters and possibly
16:52drowning.
16:54There's not a lot of water in that big boat.
16:57We were looking around for boats and we did spot two on the street.
17:01We swam to that building and we got that boat.
17:06We had some other guys. They could hot wire boats.
17:10There was a parking garage.
17:12So we went and actually siphoned a lot of gas out of those cars.
17:17And as soon as the wind died down at two o'clock, we launched operations.
17:29When we started, we probably had four or five boats that we had commandeered.
17:32I told the guys, I said, go find whatever boat you can find. Let's get to work.
17:37Once comms went down, it was chaotic.
17:40You know, once communications went down, you know, you just went to work.
17:46You know, we had that. You got to have direction. Who's going to do what?
17:50Who's going to be responsible for this? Who's going to be responsible for that?
17:52We never had any of that. Never had access to any of that.
17:58We expected FEMA to come in quickly and that it would be something that would allow the local officials
18:05the reprieve needed for that type of catastrophe.
18:10It was obvious that we were dealing with something bigger than our capabilities.
18:18You're on your own.
18:21But we figured it out.
18:23You know, we made it. We went and did what we had to do to get to the neighborhoods
18:28that we had to get into to try to save people's lives.
18:31We set up quadrants.
18:33You were a sergeant. You had one quadrant.
18:35You took your men, put one officer on every boat.
18:38You assigned that quad. And that's how we broke it down.
18:42I'm worried about saving people's lives.
18:44That's my job. And that's what the hell...
18:46Pardon my French. That's what we did.
18:48That's what we did.
18:52Now, you know, you're hearing things on the radio, but until you see it, you just can't imagine it.
19:02It was kind of like a moment that you, not in shock, but you're almost like, oh, my God, I
19:08did not realize.
19:10Even though you're hearing things on the radio, you don't realize it's that bad.
19:17It was hot as hell. And you could only imagine how awful it would be if you're stuck on a
19:22roof.
19:23If you're not in superior physical condition, you probably wouldn't survive that.
19:27So, yeah, it was really important to get people off of roofs as quickly as possible.
19:36The TAC team started doing their methodical searches, pulling out as many people as we could.
19:42To us, it was, you get there, get the people on the boat.
19:45If they want to go, you take them. If they don't want to go, they're going to stay there
19:48because we're not going to fight with them and flip a boat.
19:52How many people y'all got?
19:54It's just good to help.
19:55You know, you get in a hasty mood, so you're just out there trying to pick up as many people
20:00as you can,
20:00wherever you can, until you're able to get some solid intelligence.
20:05In some areas, water was 15, maybe 16 feet deep.
20:09We would shut off the motor and holler, and someone hollers back.
20:12And obviously, if someone sees you, we would go very slowly so, you know, people would have a chance.
20:17They'd hear our motor.
20:19There was a family on a roof, and we went to go rescue them, and they said,
20:23no, not us, the house right there. We can hear a man screaming.
20:27Turns out that he was standing on his tub, and the water was up to his neck,
20:32and he just, he didn't have much longer.
20:35The water was halfway up the bathroom window, one of those small bathroom windows,
20:40and they got him, they broke out the whole window, and they were able to drag him out the window.
20:44And so, yeah, they got him out of that house just in town.
20:48How long do you think this water's going to stay up here like this?
20:53You know the dire position that these people are in.
20:56You got elderly, you got young kids, you got women with children, pregnant women up there.
21:01The numbers didn't even come to my mind because I knew people were in trouble.
21:05Some people just feel bad because you know they never had the means to get out.
21:10And if they got out of their houses, got in their car, tried to run, the water was going to
21:14take them away.
21:15There was no way in the world they were going to survive that.
21:17It was absolutely horrific.
21:25Well, we were walking around, we went up the street a couple of blocks,
21:29and I would say there's nothing like the flooding that we might have anticipated.
21:32This was clearly a horrific storm. Clearly it is going to be a mess to clean up.
21:38But, Wolf, they were expecting Armageddon here. Armageddon, it wasn't.
21:42The worst case scenario was that we would be floating atop 25 feet of a highly toxic suit here in
21:48downtown New Orleans.
21:49That's not the case.
21:50What they were predicting for New Orleans was 175 mile an hour winds and a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina.
21:56They didn't get that. The folks in New Orleans are certainly lucky.
22:02The city of New Orleans is filling up with water, but all the media was down in the French Quarter.
22:09There's no water in the French Quarter.
22:11That is Bienville down the street.
22:13So they're reporting it's not as bad as it seemed.
22:16Maybe New Orleans dodged a bullet.
22:18New Orleans indeed dodged what they expected would be a very strong direct hit.
22:23But they didn't know.
22:25They didn't know any more than what was in the neighborhood that they were standing in.
22:31There was no water in the French Quarter.
22:34Because anything that is close to the river is at the highest point in the city of New Orleans.
22:40So therefore there's no water.
22:42We're in a bowl.
22:44We've got the Mississippi River Levee over here and the Lake Levee over here.
22:49The city's in the middle.
22:50So we are surrounded by water.
22:54We're six to eight feet below sea level.
22:57And we have some battles with the water staying out.
23:02So during the storm, there are sewage and water board pumping stations throughout the city that propel the water into
23:13the outfall canals.
23:16It's a very good system when it works.
23:44All of us who worked in an emergency operations center became
23:50the lifeline for people who were calling for assistance.
23:54And our resources were stretched beyond measure.
23:59There was no playbook written for a disaster and a catastrophe of that level.
24:10By Monday afternoon, there were several reports that levees had busted.
24:17That straight ahead is the London Outfall Canal, if I'm not mistaken.
24:22Over there is the greatest break of the levee.
24:26Now there's a huge chunk of concrete you can't even see, but you can see that diagonal piece of concrete.
24:30So I called back to FEMA headquarters.
24:35I certainly wasn't informed about any actions that were taking place.
24:39And I knew I was the only one from FEMA in New Orleans.
24:43And that was the moment where I felt that they couldn't grasp the severity.
24:49Nobody ever believes a worst-case scenario.
24:52I knew at the time that lives were being lost left and right.
24:55There were thousands of people on rooftops.
24:58My mindset at the time was, I've got to get on a helicopter.
25:02I got a little pushback when I talked to the Coast Guard saying,
25:05I don't know that we're going to be able to get you on a helicopter.
25:09I informed them that the White House was really counting on me to give them some situational awareness.
25:17Not completely truthful, but I just needed to find a way to get on that helicopter
25:22because I really needed to put eyes on what was happening.
25:28Anybody not believing what I was saying was just going to delay any kind of response.
25:37I got on and the pilot said to me, where do you want to go?
25:42And I said, I need to see how bad this is.
25:47We flew out towards Slidell and could tell that the bridge was all damaged and impassable.
25:57The airport underwater, that there was no access into the city.
26:05We flew all over the city of New Orleans.
26:10It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
26:15And I saw that the actual levees had breached in New Orleans.
26:24So when we flew to the 17th Street Canal and you could see just this humongous gap in the levee.
26:33It wasn't overtopping. It wasn't minor water going over. The levee was gone.
26:40I said at the time, 80% of the city looked like it was underwater.
26:45It was a guess. It was a pretty good guess.
26:50This is it. This is the worst case scenario. We talked about it. It's here.
27:10In the morning, I gathered everybody into the conference room at the Emergency Operations Center.
27:16And I asked them to lay out a map.
27:19And I then proceeded to tell them everything that I had just seen, where all the floodwaters were.
27:29I remember looking at Mayor Nagin and seeing a face of disbelief and almost of, what do we do now?
27:42I told the mayor, you need to make a list of all of the priorities that you think you're going
27:49to need in this environment where everything is damaged.
27:54It was things like shelters, knowing that there were people that needed shelter.
28:01Rescues. How are we going to rescue people from rooftops?
28:05We were going to rescue people from rooftops to what every department needed in order to run the city in
28:11this new, very strange dynamic that was occurring.
28:16We were a different city. The old city was gone.
28:21When that list of our needs was handed over to Marty Bahamandi and FEMA, maybe naively, but we expected immediate
28:30results, that wasn't actually the case.
28:34FEMA's not really a first responder.
28:38Local officials are first responders.
28:41The state with the National Guard are first responders.
28:44And FEMA wasn't designed to be a first responder.
28:48Back then, at that time, we put a lot more emphasis on state and local governments to handle the initial
28:55response and preparation for disasters.
28:58And only when they couldn't handle it were we actually then designed to come in on the back end and
29:04provide that support.
29:06We knew just from putting all the puzzle pieces together that catastrophic failure was beginning to occur around the city
29:15beyond our capacity, way beyond our capacity.
29:34The Coast Guard was able to assist immediately because we're not like the National Guard that needs permission or like
29:43a formal request from the governor.
29:45We didn't need to be asked by anybody.
29:49Roger, you're on hot bike.
29:51Starting at 2 o'clock, check for water.
29:55My crew had a game plan that we were going to fly and just pick a location that had a
30:03lot of people.
30:04And tour is ready.
30:06It didn't take us long.
30:08We found a huge three-story apartment complex with people everywhere.
30:15We trained to get people off of, you know, cruise ships, sailboats.
30:22We had never trained to get people off of rooftops or off of balconies with urban hazards.
30:31Copy it. Someone's going out the door.
30:34Someone's outside the door.
30:35Have target sight.
30:37Forward and right.
30:3775.
30:38We picked this balcony with women and children and elderly people.
30:43And when a mother is so desperate to get her baby out of danger that she hangs him over a
30:51two-story balcony, that's alarming.
30:54She didn't even bat an eyelash.
30:57It was like, I don't know you.
31:00You're connected to a giant loud helicopter with hurricane force winds blowing us around.
31:08But here's my baby. Get him out of here.
31:12I'm ready for pick-up on the edge side.
31:15And, you know, I just snatched him.
31:17And he's so small.
31:19We don't have rescue equipment for babies.
31:22So, to carry a baby in your bare arms with nothing keeping him from falling, except for me, is very
31:31nerve-wracking.
31:32Submarine survivor are in the cabin.
31:35My first day, I rescued 48 people.
31:40We just didn't stop.
31:42We were picking up as many people as we could as fast as we could around the clock for days
31:49and days.
31:50And, honestly, kind of waiting for the cavalry to come, but it was all about life-saving.
31:57That's it.
32:02And, basket is clear of the room stop.
32:05And, you are clear to move back and left.
32:16As we move people out of the Superdome, people begin to move in.
32:21So, people are coming out of either parishes where they've been in their homes and not out on the streets.
32:27They're continuing to come out of homes where maybe they were on the second floor, and now they can get
32:32out and start moving around.
32:33And, there is just simply no way we can estimate the numbers of people that are out there like that.
32:38When the levees broke, everything changed.
32:41Our population doubled.
32:44And, that was really our first indication that, okay, something worse has now happened.
32:49And, there's a stage two.
32:51They just had so, so many people just coming in.
32:55It doubled real fast.
32:57It just kept going non-stop, non-stop.
33:00It also made you more aware that if people getting rescued like this, and they flying this many people in,
33:08now it's starting to grow with numbers.
33:10So, whatever so-called plan they had for food or drinks or whatever the case may be, now they wasn't
33:16going to be ready.
33:17The population coming in pre-landfall is dramatically different than post-landfall.
33:24Pre-landfall, it was by and large people who chose to come to the Superdome.
33:29They were nervous, but optimistic, and we were kind of all in it together.
33:35And then, things rapidly and dramatically changed when we became aware of a second wave of people who are now
33:43presenting at the Superdome.
33:45Those people had, in many cases, had ridden out one of the worst nights of their life.
33:51Every rescue boat that goes out comes back heavy with human cargo, and they will be at it for days
33:57to come.
33:58The police aren't coming, and that is a reality when you have a disaster.
34:02There aren't enough police to respond.
34:04There were too many people, and you can only help so many people.
34:07You can only do what you can do.
34:09A small group of firemen can't help everybody.
34:11It's just not physically possible.
34:14What's your first name?
34:15Shirley.
34:15Shirley.
34:17We were watching the news.
34:18We were seeing people on the roofs, waving towers and flags.
34:23We seen people floating in the water.
34:26Felt hopeless.
34:31When I saw the images of the Lower Ninth Ward, I was just so sad to see it, because I
34:39know how hard the folks worked to get their homes.
34:43And now they were going to have to start all over again.
34:47I'm 62 years old, and I've never been involved in nothing like this in my life.
34:51And I've got to ask you, what did you leave behind?
34:53What?
34:54Now, today?
34:56Everything.
34:56Quite a few of the folks that lived there were seniors.
35:01How were they going to do that?
35:05My family was also caught in Hurricane Betsy back in 1965.
35:18Betsy is here, gusts now topping 100 miles per hour.
35:22Tides three feet above normal, and escape routes will be cut off shortly.
35:30The storm was coming into New Orleans, and suddenly we heard the explosion, but we thought it was from the
35:37storm, and then we saw all this water gripping, coming to us from the levee.
35:49Hurricane Betsy was a storm more powerful than Katrina.
35:53It was on a worse track for New Orleans, and as a consequence, levees flooded.
36:00We'll rebuild.
36:01We will rebuild.
36:02Oh, yeah.
36:02You don't think this has knocked you out, man?
36:04No, indeed.
36:05We're going to build the levees higher, and have a prettier community.
36:09After Hurricane Betsy, we ended up with a significant funding program to build hurricane levees.
36:19There are computer models that were available to the Corps of Engineers since they started building these levees in the
36:26late 1960s that they didn't use.
36:29They didn't get the science right on the height that they needed to build it.
36:34They didn't get the geotechnical engineering right in deciding whether the site was suitable.
36:40And lastly, they did designs that we knew would fail.
36:45They had done their own research on some of these, and had found that the failures would occur.
36:52To add insult to injury, as Hurricane Katrina was approaching, the levees weren't finished.
37:00So the net result was catastrophic structural failure.
37:06It's really been a double disaster.
37:08We had the hurricane, and on top of that, we had a flood.
37:11But both of these things, with all due respect, sir, were predicted.
37:15They knew it was a category three hurricane hitting the area 48 hours before it struck.
37:19People have been writing about the potential disastrous conditions of the levee system for a really long time, years and
37:26years and years.
37:28There is a sense that everyone knew a disaster could happen, and no one was really prepared.
37:35This is a natural disaster, the likes of which our country may have never seen before.
37:39The president, he says, he doesn't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.
37:44Now, I don't know how he can say that, given the fact that everybody anticipated the breach of the levees.
37:49We knew immediately that the levees had breached once it just continued to rise and rise and rise.
37:56And as I said, from past experience, we knew that the levees had breached.
38:01People were passing with boats rescuing people.
38:04When I seen the water and the way that the water was coming, I said, they did it again.
38:11Witnessing these things is what led us to use the terms catastrophic structural failure.
38:19It wasn't the storm. It was shoddy design and construction by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
38:46We had water all the way up to my mama doorstep, and so we started getting kind of worried then.
38:53The only thing we could do is just try to get to some kind of shelter.
38:58We just, you know, we didn't want to stay there, and the water was steady rising and rising and rising.
39:03And, you know, we didn't have no way out.
39:06So we took off walking.
39:09But where we was at, it was like, what are we going to do with the little children?
39:13Because the water is almost four feet.
39:16Well, they had this doe floating in the water.
39:19So we grabbed the doe, put the children on top, and pushed the doe so it could glide through the
39:26water.
39:36In my neighborhood, we were lucky because my property sits three feet nine inches above sea level.
39:44So I would not have left my house except for the fact that the militia, guys that were in flat
39:54boats with AKs, came and knocked on our door and told me I had to leave my house.
40:02I didn't have water in my house.
40:04So it was not a necessity for me to leave.
40:08And since many buildings are built at least three feet off the ground, a lot of the people around here
40:14felt the same way.
40:16These people did everything.
40:18Where are you going?
40:18The way we leave, I'll be free from you.
40:21We got to get out.
40:22So we were forced to leave the house and walk an eighth of a mile from the residence to what
40:31was supposed to be a safe haven.
40:37They sent us in a direction where the water was deeper.
40:41So my sister and I were carrying kids and helping these seniors who were with us.
40:49Man, I don't think I was more frightened about anything than walking in that water.
41:02You couldn't see under that.
41:04So you just really walking on faith.
41:07And my brother, he kicked a stop sign because he didn't see it under the water.
41:11So the pressure that he was applying to, you know, to be able to walk through the water.
41:17And then he kicked a big gash in his leg almost like, almost two inches deep.
41:24There wasn't nothing he can do.
41:26So he walked in the water with an open wound.
41:29The first thing I thought about was we're in this dirty water and then the germs from the water.
41:35That scared me more than anything.
41:41We were just trying to find refuge on higher ground.
41:45The safest thing to do is take that raft to the interstate.
41:48And one of the highest points in this area was up on the interstate 10.
41:54So that's where we headed.
41:58All you could see is all the people just coming towards the bridge, you know,
42:02because the bridge was really like the safest place.
42:05You know, my main focus was to get the kids to safety.
42:08You know, anywhere where they had shelter, where they can rest.
42:15From where we was at on the bridge, you can kind of see the Superdome.
42:19And the Superdome was swamped with people.
42:22They just kept bringing more and more people to the Superdome.
42:26You see high water vehicles with 100 people stacked into it, bringing people to the Superdome and dumping them off.
42:33And people were walking in the water, coming to the Superdome as if that was the savior place.
42:39This was a population who were coming to the Superdome or being brought to the Superdome because there was nowhere
42:45else for them to go.
42:47Many times, I would say unwilling.
42:50They certainly didn't want to come to the Superdome, but there was, it was desperation.
42:56We didn't know where we was going.
42:58The military was running people away from their houses.
43:01Like you had to go.
43:02It didn't matter where you went or whatever, like you had to go.
43:07We seen tens of thousands of people on the bridge.
43:10Eventually, they also got to the Superdome.
43:13Now we're three, four times the number now.
43:16We don't have nowhere to go.
43:18My house is underwater.
43:20I don't even have another house.
43:25I don't even know where my chair is at.
43:29Seeing people coming in rescued, it was like, man, something really bad is going on on the outside.
43:36Because all you're hearing is helicopters, you're seeing people getting dropped off.
43:41At least they was out of one bad situation.
43:48They were coming back for you.
43:51But they didn't know they was coming to another hell.
43:53It's really, we live like dogs and pigs up in here.
43:57We need help.
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