BBC News
Sept. 6, 2005 [Day 9]
Britons returning from New Orleans have described the horrifying conditions there. They were among the thousands forced to seek refuge from the floods that engulfed the city following Hurricane Katrina.
Some 96 Britons still remain unaccounted for.
[As originally published by the BBC, this article is comprised of several separate vignettes telling different Brits' stories; we're republishing only these two pertinent vignettes.]
Jenny Sachs, of Sheffield, told how soldiers had to smuggle her out of the Superdome in secret.
She was one of about 30 Britons who, realising they
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Back safe: Jenny Sachs at home, with parents Pat and Bruce after her ordeal in New Orleans
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could not escape the city, had fled to the stadium for shelter.
"It has hit me more now I am at home, when you can have clean water, how bad it was," she said.
She said people had been raped and that others were beaten up.
"A guy was brought in who had seven stab wounds and was covered in blood."
The military told all non-US citizens to stay together for safety, Ms Sachs added.
They later told them they would be secretly smuggled out in groups of 10 under cover of darkness as it had become too dangerous for them to remain in the stadium, she told BBC News.
"When we were leaving, people were going 'Where are you going?' and giving us looks.
"But the military got us out, which we were all thankful for."
* * *
Radio Merseyside presenter Mike Brocken, from Chester, was on holiday in New Orleans with his wife and teenage daughter when the hurricane hit.
The family stayed in the hotel for the first few days and then decided to move to the Superdome, as looting was becoming widespread in the city.
"The situation was becoming more and more dangerous all the time -- it was horrific really and by Wednesday dinnertime our hotel had run out of diesel for its generator so everything was closing down.
"We were going to go inside the Superdome. I approached two members of the National Guard and they said to stay outside because they knew it was hell in there."
Mr Brocken said members of the National Guard took him and his family "under their wing" and saw that they were placed in the baseball stadium [a different facility].
"Everyone talks about the National Guard in rather derogatory ways historically, but I've got to say that but for them, and one man in particular, I may well have lost my family."
As originally published
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Commentary:
Awfully nice of the U.S. authorities to sneak these Brits out of the Superdome, out of the flooded, chaotic city of New Orleans, to safety.
But while these people received special handling and a get-out-of-the-Superdome-free card, 20,000 Americans -- almost all of them black -- were not allowed to leave the dome.
Quite the contrary, guards with guns turned back any Americans -- almost all of them black -- who tried to leave the Superdome.
What does it mean, when American citizens -- almost all of them black -- are held at gunpoint in a confined space of increasing squalor, in deteriorating circumstances, with minimal or no food, water, or first aid, in a filthy, rancid, dangerous place ... while at the same time, the same gun-toting authorities escort white, foreign vacationers to safety?
It means what you and I and any cognizant observer already know:
In the still-unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans, who's rescued and who's held back at gunpoint depends on who's white and who's black.
=H&HH=
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