Originally blogged in the Bourbon Street Journal and NOLA View weblogs on Aug. 30 in Baton Rouge after a frantic escape through the rising waters from levee breaches the day after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
My last post, in the now co-opted NOLA View weblog, was interrupted at breakfast-time Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, with a hastily-called meeting in the steaming cafeteria of Chez Picayune on the second floor of the Times-Picayune building.
The 17th Street Canal levee had been breached the previous night, even as Katrina’s winds died down to tropical storm strength, and flooding had been consuming eastern New Orleans all night. That breach was joined by others, and by dawn, water had drowned the Times-Picayune parking log, and water was moving up the steps, inches from the first floor landing.
Publisher Ashton Phelps and Editor Jim Amoss ordered everyone more than 200 staffers and family members – to leave Chez Picayune and head immediately to the pressroom loading docks. One at a time, eight huge delivery trucks, high off the ground, backed to the docks, and staffers began to cram in, with the clothes on their backs and little else.
Newsroom staffers, of course, headed back to the newsroom, fully intending to wait until the last truck out . . . or even to stay. On the theory that the evacuation order was for those not actively working. The publisher dashed in and scotched those plans, however. Everyone in the trucks, now! We discover later that he was especially fearful of our safety because of the dangerous civil unrest, including a reported mass jailbreak at Orleans Parish Prison, an easy stroll across the Broad Street overpass from the Times-Picayune building.
Frantic now . . . scooping cameras and gear into camera bag, jerking out network cables and power supplies and cramming my remaining clean shirt and shorts into the bag (stinking to high heaven like everyone else, but want to save the clothes against the time we find showers). Adrenaline pumping . . . now it’s against time . . .
One last IM to Steven Ibanez, the editor watching from PennLive.com . . .
“Saigon 75″
. . . then slammed the computer into the bag and running down the dark starwells. Heart pumping, near heat exhaustion, already out of meds for an unhealthy amount of time.
Steven correctly interpreted the IM as rapid evacuation under duress. Outside, helicopters buzzing like yellowjackets . . . Blackhawks, Sea Stallions, Chinooks, Hueys and small spotter choppers. Water is coated with rainbow slicks of oil and gas.
Cramming into the back of the big delivery trucks, then pulling out one at a time into the rising water on Howard Street in front of the paper. Incongruous site, as the sides of these trucks are bright and cheerful billboards for various columnists and newspaper features. Howard Street is an access road for I-10/U.S. 90 downtown. I claimed a post at the rear of the truck to shoot photos and video of the evac. The truck behind us is headlight deep in water now. We pass a couple of staffers who tried to get out in their pickups . . . drowned, with water up over the hoods. My poor little Toyota Tercel, with all my fishing gear in the trunk and the windows already shattered by the storm, is completely underwater, like most employee vehicles in the parking lot.
About a mile plowing through the water, to jump a curb at the Howard off-ramp, then a u-turn onto I-10/U.S. 90 south, back toward downtown. The right lane of the interstate is under water, but the inner lanes are clear, except for the groups of stranded flood victims, moving on this high ground toward the Superdome. Midmorning and the heat is brutal.
Huge fire in the lower Garden District area of Uptown . . . big building, thick smoke . . . pillars of smoke rising here and there. Fumes are rising off the water, and the air in this “bowl” is hazy with smoke – sometimes choking. We pass the Times-Picayune building now, where the last truck in our convoy is moving along Howard. Like the captain going down with the ship, publisher Phelps and managing editor Dan Shea are braced in the back of the final truck.
Rolling onto the U.S. 90 exit toward the West Bank, past the Superdome, we now see clearly the extent of the damage to the roof. This dome, which was refurbished just a few years ago for the 2002 Super Bowl with a clean white roof, is more shredded than we could see from the building. Like it had been scrapped with a huge cheese grater. On the broad raised plaza that surrounds the building, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people are gathered. The dome and the nearby Arena are surrounded by water.
As we begin to climb up onto the Crescent City Connection – the huge double span that connects New Orleans’ downtown area with the West Bank – we look at damage to the high-rises in the Central Business District. As we already knew, major hotels – the Hyatt and Marriott – had many windows blown. NOLA’s own building – the Texaco Building at 400 Poydras, took a brutal hit at top . . . the wedge-shaped angled area enclosing the top eight floors or so, had all the windows shredded, opening these floors to the storm’s deluge. Likely flooding through the upper floors to our 24th floor. At mid-span, we get the wide view of the skyline and the big crescent-shaped bend of the river around Algiers Point that gives New Orleans its nickname of the Crescent City. Water shimmering already downtown and across the city toward Bywater and Treme and east into the Ninth Ward.
Onto the West Bank Expressway, continuing to see lines of refugees, until we get to Gretna.
Here we go through a shocking experience. The man driving our evacuation truck stops at an offramp, gets out of the truck, and grabs his family and heads in to his home in Gretna. Abandoning us. He’s definitely off the Christmas card list.
A Times-Picayune manager who can drive a big truck, but with little experience with air brakes, volunteers to continue the drive. With practice, he masters the air brakes. And we learn to hang on for life. I reach eventual shelter with a massive bruise from learning how to hang on correctly. Long, hot trip across the West Bank, then down toward Houma (“a bayou runs through it”). Heavy storm damage the entire trip, but the rural parishes have done a bang-up job of getting the downed trees off the road, the only viable evacuation route out of the city.
At Boutte, near the I-310 on-ramp, a line of idiots trying to drive back into New Orleans, being blocked by a cluster of law officers. Rough language ensues on both sides. The officers are winning.
Looking back along U.S. 90, through the gap in the trees, an eerie sight: a mushroom cloud is rising above New Orleans . . . a “stalk” of six or more huge pillars of smoke rising thousands of feet and joining and spreading into a huge mushroom head.
Near Raceland, a huge mobile home sales lot, dozens of double-wides, not strapped down, not protected in any way. Trees in the marshy woods surrounding the lot are shredded and toppled. The lot’s big sign is torn down. No apparent damage to any of the mobile homes. “As a native of Tornado Alley,” one of the truck’s wags comments, “I’ve gotta respect a mobile home that can take that punishment.”
Houma finally, and then a long detour lost back in bayou country. trees still ripped down, sugar-cane fields crushed. A business department representative has me snap a picture, saying this is bad economic news.
Finally to the Baton Rouge Advocate, where our stinking, filthy group of refugees dismounts for orders. The publisher of the Advocate manages not to hold her nose as she greets us warmly. Lots of well-wishers, but few hugs, lol.
And then to our current makeshift newsroom at the Bon Carre Business Center. A few laptops that made it out – mine has survived the trip and I’m able to connect immediately with my cellular internet card. Part of our crew stayed to put out an electronic edition from the Houma Courier.
The newsroom-in-exile is now publishing online.
- Jon