5 days of no food, no water
2005-09-03 14:27
New Orleans - United States National Guardsmen reached New Orleans Convention Centre on Friday with the first food and water for a small number of the 20 000 refugees who have been living - some dying - during five days of neglect.
Wary guardsmen, with rifles slung on their backs, handed out food and water to angry survivors living without bathing or electricity.
One refugee, Rozz Smith, smiled as she clutched a military ration pack and two bottles of water.
"I was starving, my stomach was touching my back. I'll feel a lot happier when I'll be out of here," said Smith, who runs a small vending machine company and is a motivational speaker.
Thought they would die
Stranded residents at first cheered the arriving guardsmen, but the mood grew sombre as the promised evacuation buses did not materialise.
"They keep telling us the bus is coming, the bus is coming. It sounds like a bad song," Smith said, keen to leave the convention centre.
"We are living in squalor, we are sleeping in our own faeces," Smith said.
"If I ran my business like this I'd be out of business," she said.
Smith and others at the convention centre spoke of 14 deaths among the refugees, including that of a young girl, whose throat was slit after being raped in the cavernous, unlighted centre.
If aid was slow to arrive to New Orleans, it came even later to the convention centre. Attention was focused on a similar crowd at the Superdome, but disaster officials did not even know the convention centre was teeming with refugees for days after Katrina struck, early on Monday.
People became desperate.
"I've been going to the stores, stealing food," Jess Morgan, 37, said.
"It's called survival."
Morgan said police were well aware of what he was doing, but had no problem with it, and even congratulated him for handing out food to the sick and elderly.
"I tried to steal a car from a rental company to get out of town," he said.
"I smashed a window, got into the car and it was out of gas. Just my luck." said Morgan.
He said he had spent more than 18 hours with his family and people he'd picked up along the way, sitting in a flimsy boat, battling floodwaters and being battered by the storm before he made it to the convention centre.
Among the mass of refugees who sheltered in the squalor and the stench of the convention centre was Karen Marks, 25. The secretary from Melbourne, Australia was on vacation in New Orleans with her aunt when Katrina broke levees separating the city from lake water.
"It's very scary," she said. Her entire body trembled incessantly. "We have been crying a lot for the past few days," she said. Marks said she welcomed the arrival of the National Guard on Friday, but until then, "We thought they would let us die here."
She still had no idea when or how she would be able to leave the devastated city.