WaPo: "It was as if all of us were already pronounced dead"

[babylonsister]

I look forward to seeing more of these personal accounts, as horrific as they are.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402655_pf.html


washingtonpost.com
'It Was as if All of Us Were Already Pronounced Dead'
Convention Center Left a Five-Day Legacy of Chaos and Violence

By Wil Haygood and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 15, 2005; A01



NEW ORLEANS For five eternal-seeming days, as many as 20,000 people, most of them black, waited to be rescued, not just from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina but from the nightmarish place where they had sought refuge.

During that time, the moon that hovered over the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center seemed closer than anyone who could provide those inside the center with any help.

On the fourth day, after TV had been filled with live reports from the center describing sexual assaults, robberies and gunfire, single mothers desperately seeking help for their children and fathers doing their best to protect them, the federal official charged with leading the hurricane response, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, responded to an interviewer's question by saying it was the first he had heard that people "don't have food and water in there."

"It was as if all of us were already pronounced dead," said Tony Cash, 25, who endured three nights of hunger, violence and darkness at the convention center. "As if somebody already had the body bags. Wasn't nobody coming to get us."

more...

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Amazing the WaPo even touches this

------------------------------------------------------
URGENT yet easy! Hold the government accountable for Katrina's aftermath
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4736062

Save the gulf, then save the nation! http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[Child_Of_Isis]

2. "As if somebody already had the body bags"

They did. 25,000 of them.