Through Hell and High Water

Members of the New Orleans Fire Department (NOFD) were pre-positioned in “places of last refuge” prior to the storm. Some firemen brought their own personal boats to these locations and began rescue efforts immediately after the levees broke. Others creatively commandeered boats. As their communications network broke down, groups of isolated firemen continued independent rescue operations. In New Orleans East, for example, firemen set up a boat rescue operation based in the Bell South building, working for nearly a week with little outside assistance. Fire soon became a huge concern: water pressure was low to nonexistent; debris and floodwaters made some fires inaccessible; broken gas lines caused large, rapid-burning conflagrations. Firefighting assets needed to be accounted for and systematically deployed. Members of the fire department established an emergency command center at the Mary Joseph Residence for the Elderly, a defunct nursing home on the west bank of the Mississippi River. By Wednesday, most of the department had regrouped there, and expanded into two adjacent facilities, Our Lady of Holy Cross College and Our Lady of Wisdom Healthcare Center. The compound, which came to be known as Woodland, quickly became a major multiagency command center for the NOFD, New Orleans Police Department, and Emergency Medical Services.

Agents and biologists with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) arrived in a convoy from Baton Rouge with about 120 boats in tow on the day the storm hit. They immediately launched extensive boat rescue operations, taking over a staging area set up by the New Orleans Fire Department on the Elysian Fields I-10 exit ramp and establishing another base at the St. Claude Avenue Bridge in the Ninth Ward. Their mission was to pull people out of the floodwaters and bring them to dry ground. They were very successful in this; on the first day they saved thousands. But a lack of available transportation to bring rescued flood victims to shelters outside the city proved a major problem, particularly at the St. Claude Avenue Bridge. LDWF agents were involved in boat rescue efforts throughout the area following the storm. They were also instrumental in the evacuation of downtown hospitals.

Immediately following the storm, Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC) staff members from around the state were dispatched to New Orleans. The Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s office determined not to evacuate the prisons prior to the storm. When the levees broke, there were more than 6,500 inmates housed in a downtown New Orleans prison complex. In one building, prisoners broke through interior walls and ran loose within the prison compound. Fights, fires, and small-scale rioting ensued. With the water still rising, LDOC officers’ first priority was to move inmates to dry ground. Inmates were transported from the prison complex by boat to a highway overpass where they waited under the supervision of correctional personnel and probation and parole officers. The prisoners were then transported by bus to correctional facilities throughout the state. Many civilians stranded on the same highway overpass resented that prisoners were being evacuated while they remained stranded, but LDOC’s mission was to first secure and evacuate inmates. Probation and parole officers used their state vehicles to carry “walking wounded” civilians with them in the convoy to Baton Rouge, while correctional officers focused on evacuating the Orleans Parish Prison. LDOC staff went on to assist with the establishment and operation of a temporary city holding facility and with efforts to provide security to the New Orleans Fire Department on call-outs.

DMAT CA-6, a Disaster Medical Assistance Team from the San Francisco Bay area operating under the FEMA umbrella, was pre-positioned to Houston just prior to the storm. From Houston the team traveled to Baton Rouge, where they helped set up a staging area for federal resources. On Wednesday, August 31, they traveled to the New Orleans Arena to provide medical assistance to those at the nearby Superdome. They were successful at first, evacuating hundreds of patients by helicopter and caring for hundreds more as best they could with rapidly diminishing supplies. But the frustration level among the thousands stranded in and around the Superdome was high; tensions flared. According to DMAT team members, numerous victims assaulted in the crowd were brought to the clinic, some severely beaten, along with a National Guardsman with a gunshot wound to his leg. As time passed, the crowds outside the clinic became larger and more desperate. Guardsmen assigned to the clinic security detail were called away, and several people forced their way into the clinic area to grab supplies or to force the medical team to treat ill family members. Several DMAT members were physically assaulted. On September 1, with dwindling supplies, no means to evacuate patients, and rapidly deteriorating safety, the team’s commander ordered an abandonment of their mission. DMAT CA-6 was later assigned to Louis Armstrong International Airport, where team members assisted in the evacuation of thousands of medical patients.

When Katrina struck, the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas Army National Guard (AANG) had recently returned from Iraq, and much of its equipment was still overseas. It was the first unit called to back up the Louisiana National Guard. At the time of AANG’s deployment to New Orleans, the media reported that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco made statements suggesting that the AANG was willing to use deadly force in order to prevent looting in the city. On September 3, 2005, the New York Times reported Blanco as saying, “These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary.” In reality Blanco had approved explicit instructions to incoming troops that limited their authority to the protection of civilians.

Guardsmen were instrumental in facilitating the evacuation of the veterans’ hospital in downtown New Orleans, and in providing security and aid during the evacuation of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The Arkansas guard, which included members of the Arkansas Air National Guard, remained in southeast Louisiana for months following the storm and was instrumental in the initial cleanup and recovery of St. Bernard Parish.

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