CompleteFiction

Fiction is truth
absolute and breathing

a stone colt
dead in the bag

everything after the birth
and birth

the one hand
reaching

the gate,
the pen

Meditations X

a word is elegy to the
constellation of perception.

Neutrinos piercing us from dead stars
evil eye holing the head.


Words in the mouth are tongues
kissing and being kissed.

Memory, a silver fish like sperm
swimming back to seed.

They say bread resembles wheat rising in summer
the warmth of breasts.


The invisible gesture
greeting against the cheek,


Mourning negotiated in timber
The tenderness lost in the one sound.

From Jennifer- another Katrina 1st hand account

To UNO friends--

Many of you know Brenda Quant from our CNF classes. She was recently
in both Suzanne's and Janice's classes and in Amanda's 2004 fiction, I
believe. I was certain you'd be interested in it, so I'm forwarding
it.

Lynda


To all:
Sunday, September 4, 2005

Ted and I are fine.  We thank everyone for their prayers and
kindnesses.  Ted is on his way back from Selma where he transported
some people who were evacuated from the superdome.  We will never be
able to capture all of the stories of hurricane Katrina, but here are a
few.

Jackie's brother Kerwin and his family are safe at a shelter in
Lafayette.  Kerwin had decided to ride out the storm on the third floor
of his friend Bryan's house.  We all begged him to evacuate with his
wife Faith and their 2 little kids, but he insisted on staying. There
were lots of others in the house also, Bryan's wife and children and I
think a grandchild, along with Faith's brother who is disabled and uses
a wheelchair. The hurricane blew over New Orleans and the house
withstood the winds, but then the storm surge came - a 20-foot high
wall of water - and suddenly they were in flood water ON THE THIRD
FLOOR.  Bryan had spent the night putting together a makeshift raft,
just in case there was street flooding.  This ended up being their way
out. Kerwin and Bryan put people on the raft and floated it out of the
house and swam beside it, pushing it along.  At some point they were
able to get to Bryan's boat and some got out that way.  They had to
make several trips to get everyone out.  There were snakes, rats and
alligators in the water.  For blocks, there were people calling out for
help in their flooded homes.  Once Kerwin and Bryan got everyone from
the house onto higher ground out of the flood water, they went back and
got Bryan's boat and started rescuing people from their homes.  They
made 7 more trips back and forth with the raft and boat and saved a lot
of people, most of them elderly.  Faith said that each time they went
back, she was terrified she would never see them again. 

Faith was later interviewed on CNN and this is how we got word that
they were safe.  A friend in another state saw the report, recognized
Faith and called Shawn here in Opelousas.  The raft itself was kept at
CNN headquarters to become part of their archives.

My heart goes out to my cousins.  I wish they had not had to go
through this terrible ordeal.  But then I can't help wondering what
would have happened to all of those people Kerwin and Bryan saved if
they had evacuated on Sunday as we all begged them to. 

Some years ago, a hurricane evacuation plan was proposed for New
Orleans and the surrounding suburban parishes.  The idea was to have
everyone in Orleans parish (that's the city itself) sit still while the
suburban parishes evacuated first.  In other words, get the majority of
the white citizens out before beginning to evacuate the majority of the
black citizens.  This plan was rejected as overtly racist  (I think
this happened under Marc Morial's administration).  To my knowledge, no
official evacuation plan was ever agreed upon by the three parishes
that would be using the same roads to get out.  But what actually
happened when Katrina was bearing down was that this racist plan was
put into effect.  Jefferson parish - the suburb west of New Orleans -- 
announced a mandatory evacuation on Saturday morning at 8:00.  St
Bernard parish - to the east of us -ordered its residents out at 12
noon.  The mayor of New Orleans - and yes he is black - waited until 4
pm on Saturday to order the mandatory evacuation of our city.  He
hemmed and hawed all day, saying he had not made up his little mind
about evacuation - but meanwhile people like us who had the means to
get out had already started making their own decisions about leaving. 
I don't believe for one moment that the mayor was struggling with
weather projections to make up his mind.  He was just following the
racist plan that representatives of the suburban parishes had proposed
years before.

Next, our mayor did something that I would equate with a war crime for
which he ought to be tried in some international court.  He announced
that the superdome would be the only shelter, and that it would be open
only to people with special needs.  Only people with disabilities,
illnesses and other special needs would be allowed in the superdome. 
Others would be turned away.  This left thousands of poor people
without any means of getting to safety.  Something like 40% of our
residents are poor, making for a raw number of around 200,000 people. 
Many had no means of evacuating.

His next crime: Once looting started (the authorities are using that
word, when some people were just trying to get food, water, baby
formula, shoes, etc) - anyway, once order broke down, the mayor ordered
the 1500 police officers conducting search and rescue in the
neighborhoods to suspend life-saving operations and go after looters. 
Property was valued over life.

Later, he began to see what he had wrought and became hysterical -
cursing Bush for FEMA's failings.  For this he has apologized and
kissed up.  He has not apologized to our citizens however.  At one
point, Mayor Nagin ended up at the convention center where there were
20,000 evacuees with no way out, with no water, food, or sanitation. 
People were dying, there was chaos and panic.  This location is near
the Mississippi River, so Nagin told the people who were able to walk
to start marching toward the Miss River bridge and cross over to the
other side.  Most of the sections of the west bank that were closest to
the bridge were high and dry at that point.  And then, I'm not sure who
it was that opposed that plan, one of the mayors of a town on the other
side of the river, I'm told - but from somewhere the word came that the
west bank of the river did not want the New Orleans evacuees on their
side of the river.  It is my understanding that armed National
Guardsmen were posted on the bridge to keep people from crossing.  This
is so inhuman that I pray it is not true - that it is a wild rumor.

Shawn got a cell phone call from one of his friends whose brother was
trapped in New Orleans.  Once the water receded some, he and others
started walking west, and then at some point they came upon an
abandoned US mail truck.  The young man started the truck somehow and
loaded people into it.  He drove to Jefferson parish where rescue
operations were still going on.  The women and children who rode in on
the mail truck were evacuated by airplane.  All of the men were
arrested and jailed as looters.  They were heroes, really, but for our
authorities it's a matter of property over life, black life anyway, and
so to the police they were criminals.

A friend of Jackie's who evacuated to Atlanta called today.  The
friend's brother had also been stranded in New Orleans in the rising
water.  He was driving his father's truck, trying to get out, and was
stopped by the police.  He did not have his drivers license on him and
so the police confiscated the truck and sent him walking.  He walked
when he could and swam when he had to and finally got to high ground. 
Once there he commandeered an abandoned van, got it started, picked up
as many people as the van could hold, and drove all the way to
Tennessee.  His sister says that when he called this morning, he was
dehydrated and delirious.   

Earlier this year, I read an article in Gambit (a New Orleans weekly)
that warned that the reorganization of FEMA was a big problem.  FEMA
officials said that since their agency had been placed under the
jurisdiction of Homeland Security, their response time was greatly
slowed down.  Whereas they previously were able to act independently
and immediately to respond to crises, now they have to go through
channels and get permission for everything they want to do from
bureaucrats who have no experience or expertise in the field of
emergency response. 

Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans 40 years ago -- September 9, 1965. 
The 9th ward was flooded, along with much of St Bernard parish.  Mama,
Joan and I had to get into the attic when the water rushed into the
house.  We had a little transistor radio with us and Mayor Schiro and
various civil defense authorities were broadcasting all night.  I
remember that every time they handed Mayor Schiro the mike, he said “we
gotta get to those people on Tennessee Street… gotta rescue those
people from Tennessee Street…I want the people on Tennessee street to
be brave…we're on the way to get you.”  At that time, everyone living
on Tennessee street was white.  There was not even a pretense that our
government valued lives equally across color lines. 

We spent that night in the attic and thankfully the water stopped
rising before it got to us there.  The next morning, we were rescued by
2 men in a small fishing boat.  These were citizen volunteers who
wanted to help. They were both white and they had come in from
Jefferson parish which had not been flooded. They brought their boat
into the 9th ward just to be of service to strangers.  I'll never
forget this and will always be grateful to these men whose names I
don't even know.  As I watched the coverage of hurricane Katrina, I
thought of those men who came to help and kept wondering why there were
no volunteers this time.  Thousands of people in south Louisiana have
boats, and we should have been seeing some of them among the rescuers. 
Soon I learned that such people were being turned away so that the
official rescuers could handle (mishandle) the whole situation. 

I missed 2 days of hurricane coverage because I got overwhelmed.  But
then I looked at the TV screen two days ago and saw that Jesse Jackson
was getting people out on buses that he brought in.  This is the kind
of response that gives some hope to the people watching. Our friends in
Selma called Friday to say that they had gotten 2 buses and needed some
advice on the best route to take to avoid water and avoid being turned
away by authorities.  I was sorry to have to say I had no idea and no
way of getting that information. 

Last night I heard that Charmaine Nevelle had gotten a bus and was
driving it into the city herself to rescue people.  But then Ted called
from the road and told me the real story.  When the water came into
Charmaine's 9th ward neighborhood, Charmaine and her neighbors got
everyone into the neighborhood school for shelter.  They were there for
days with no food or water.  The experience was horrible.  Charmaine
was attacked by some thug in the shelter.  When helicopters started
flying overhead, they thought they would be rescued, but the
helicopters just flew over them, look down at them and kept going. 
After this happened repeatedly over a period of days, some of the men
who had guns shot at the helicopters as they disappeared in the
distance, leaving the people to die like rats.  I watched the reports
on TV of rescuers being shot at and it made no sense to me.  Now I get
it. Days passed and it became clear that they would not be rescued. 
Charmaine says she stole a bus.  She had never driven a bus, but
figured it out, loaded the people on and drove them to safety.  She is
a heroic person.

People are still being evacuated from New Orleans.  Aaron Broussard,
the mayor of Kenner (in Jefferson parish, where the airport is) has
announced that he is letting the people who live there back in tomorrow
so that they can check on their homes.  The governor has asked him to
wait until everyone is out of New Orleans before letting people in
because Kenner is the evacuation route and she doesn't want the roads
clogged by people trying to get in while rescuers are still getting
people out who've been stranded for A WHOLE WEEK.  Mayor Broussard is
refusing to defer to the governor's wishes and says he intends to go
ahead with his plan.  His people are worried about their property, he
says. I have compassion for those people too, but let's worry about
property later on after everyone is evacuated. We'll have to wait and
see what tomorrow brings.

Brenda

Everyone I know from UNO is safe

http://hurricanepoetscheckin.blogspot.com/

Bill, Nancy, Kay, Lee Ali and her sister Rosa, Dave Brinks, John Gery and family, Andrei Condrescu

Red cross links- http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/katrina

SUsan Schultz sent this email:
I got this message from Laura Mullen, who teaches at LSU. I don't think
she'll mind my sharing it:

The extent of the catastrophe--and the lack of aid,
the slowness & smallness of the response--is
unimaginable. Friends have been bicycling medical
supplies form the local drugstores to the refugee
shelters! New Orleans is a war zone in a disaster
area...and Bush is anxious to save money for Iraq. At
every contact you have w/ people please try to make
them understand the extent of the betrayal--and ask
them to donate to the Red Cross, please. This is bad
beyond belief.... I was on the plane w/ two smug
Californians who were saying things like "People make
their own situations!" And even "Some people WANT to
be poor!" To my credit I didn't kill them--I must be
mellowing. They were headed to Houston, for vacations
(I can hope refugees hurt them). When they knew where
I was going they never even said "I'm sorry," or "be
safe" or...but maybe being in the South has raised my
expectations: no Southerner would act so utterly
heartless. Please write to your representatives, call
the White House, push for recognition and relief. I
hope this brings Bush down--but people are dying every
day here & change is a distant hope. start now making
sure that you & everyone you know expresses their
dismay and disbelief--and say that this will be
remembered for a long, long time!

Susan M. Schultz
Professor
Department of English
University of Hawai`i-Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822




This was posted by Stan West in Vol:



Hello Vol,

It's so obvious, even Stevie Wonder can see FEMA, the president, governor
and mayor were not proactive and since the tragedy have not been
professional. Days before the storm hit, the mayor, to his credit, did say
this was "the real thing" and called for evacuation of most areas and
Saturday/Sunday called for New Orleans to evacuate. Prior to that he said
New Orleans was "recommended", which to me translated is "you better get
your ass outta here but I don't want to create a panic...yet!" Where were
the levee engineers BEFORE the flood? Where were the busses BEFORE the
flood? Where were medical supplies, food and water BEFORE the flood? Why was
the approach and execution in Louisiana and Mississippi different than the
approach and execution in Florida?

Again, I believe even Stevie Wonder can see the racial and political
implications here. Others chime in. You want to look at Black
Commentator.com and see the discussion there. I've been talking with an
Atlanta-based commentator named Bruce Dixon, who questions who will be
allowed back in New Orleans who will not and who will be allowed to rebuild
and who will not? New Orleans is 75 percent Black (DC, too). "How can
officials tell the difference between looters and citizens if both are
Black", is a question he raised. The fact I'm a reporter and I'm Black and I
was there makes it impossible for me not to inquire deeper into this
subject. I'm going to take a couple days to review clips, online stuff, and
newspaper reports and do a couple interviews for commentary on the medium
and the message we're getting about looters, loss and life itself. Another
six hours and me and my family would have been unable to get out. My wife, a
child and adolescent psychiatrist, is so rattled, she couldn't treat her
patients yesterday. She sat in the parking lot of her hospital for two hours
crying and then came back home after driving 90 minutes there and 90 minutes
back. And she's a professional. She's also a "professional paranoiid" like
you. I think you'd like Earlene. Anyway, she said "I could feel the pain of
the families of those whose relatives were floating on the streets of New
Orleans! The pain is overwhelming!" I think a large part of it is "survival
guilt," a post-traumatic condition I've reported a lot on from refugee camps
in Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Colombia, Panama and the Occupied West
Bank.

Last point, officials tell displaced New Orleans citizens to "go across the
bridge" and when they get there, nothing and no one is there to help. No
food. No water. No housing. No loud speaker. No leadership. This gets to
your point. Is it me or is there a racial response to this tragedy? The
answer is so obvious even Stevie Wonder sees it!
- stan the man

Posted by Mitch-
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food


Saturday, September 03, 2005

By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette





As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.

Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."

Calls to the Department of Homeland Security and its subagency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were not returned yesterday.

Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there. Security is so bad that she fears feeding stations might get ransacked.

"It's not about fault and blame right now. The situation is like an hourglass, and we are in the smallest part right now. Everything is trying to get through it," she said. "They're trying to help people get out."

Obstacles in downtown New Orleans have stymied rescuers who got there. The Salvation Army has two of its officers trapped with more than 200 people -- three requiring dialysis -- in its own downtown building. They were alerted by a 30-second plea for food and water before the phone went dead.

On Wednesday, The Salvation Army rented three boats for a rescue operation. They knew the situation was desperate, and that their own people were inside, said Maj. Donna Hood, associate director of development for the Army.

"The boats couldn't get through," she said. Although she doesn't know the details, she believes huge debris and electrical wires made passage impossible.

"We have 51 emergency canteens on the ground in the other affected areas. But where the need is greatest, in downtown New Orleans, there just is no access. That is the problem every relief group is facing," she said.

"America is obviously going to have to rethink disaster relief," said Jim Burton, director of volunteer mobilization for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Southern Baptists, who work under the Red Cross logo, are one of the largest, best-equipped providers of volunteer disaster relief in the United States. Most hot meals for disaster victims are cooked by Southern Baptist mobile kitchen units. Burton is a veteran of many hurricanes.

"Right now everybody is looking at FEMA and pointing fingers. Frankly, I have to tell you, I'm sympathetic. When in your lifetime have we experienced this? Even though we all do disaster scenario planning, we have to accept the reality that this is an extraordinary event. This is America's tsunami, that struck and ravaged America's most disaster-vulnerable city," he said.

Because New Orleans remains under water, it is different from other cities where Katrina struck harder, but where relief efforts are proceeding normally. Agencies place workers and supplies outside disaster areas before storms, to move in quickly. But there are always delays, Burton said, because nothing is deployed until experts survey the damage and decide where to most effectively put relief services.

The Southern Baptists operate more than 30 mobile kitchens that can each produce 5,000 to 25,000 meals daily, as well as mobile showers and communications trucks equipped with ham radios and cell phones. They are supporting refugee centers in Texas and Tennessee, and doing relief in Mississippi and Alabama. They have placed mobile kitchens around New Orleans to feed people as they come out.

Initially they tried to drive a tractor-trailer kitchen into New Orleans from Tennessee. It was stopped by the Mississippi Highway Patrol because the causeway it would have to cross had been destroyed, Burton said.

His agency has planned for missing bridges. The Southern Baptists' worst-case planning is for reaching Memphis after an earthquake on the New Madrid fault, which in 1812 whiplashed at a stone-crushing 8.1 on the Richter scale. Burton envisions the Mississippi without bridges.

So when state and local Southern Baptists raise money to build a mobile kitchen, he tells them to design it to be hoisted in by helicopter.

After Katrina, he thought he would have to airlift a feeding unit to one isolated town, but a road was cleared, he said. He doubts that dropping a kitchen into the New Orleans' poisoned waters, filled with raw sewage, dead bodies and possible industrial contaminants, would do any good. It made sense to prepare meals outside the area and truck them in or bring people out.

"The most important thing is to get the people out of that environment," he said.

He expects unusual problems to continue, because victims of Katrina flooding will need emergency food for far longer than the usual week or so. He's planning on at least two months.

Like the military, relief work requires a supply chain. Because business management favors just-in-time inventory, rather than stockpiling goods in warehouses, there isn't a huge stock of food to draw on, he said.

"When you go into a local area, it doesn't take long to wipe out the local food inventories," he said.

The Red Cross serves pre-packaged food, including self-heating "HeaterMeals" and snacks, that require no preparation. Yesterday the Red Cross was running evacuation shelters in 16 states, and on Thursday, the last day for which totals were available, served 170,000 meals and snacks in 24 hours.

While emergency shelters typically empty out days after a hurricane or other natural disaster, in Katrina's case they are becoming more crowded, Hosler said. People who had evacuated to the homes of relatives or hotels are moving in because they're out of money or want to be closer to what is left of their homes.




(Ann Rodgers can be reached at arodgers@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416.)

 

You know, I've tried to curb my usual tendency to Bush-bash for at least a few days, but I read stuff like this and I just want to scream. The Red Cross has more disaster experience than the patronage-infested morons at FEMA will ever have, but they're the ones being kept out.

 

And don't even get me started on the racial/class implications of this shit.

 

Mitch