Concluded: TAL 5: "I didn't know it was a crime to be poor"

_{I'm going to keep bumping this up to the top as I get more segments done. It's taking longer than I thought, I'm not used to transcribing plus there isn't enough hard drive space to save the whole thing down and it keeps timing out on me.}

Ed. 6: Something a little odd: I heard this show rebroadcast today, the very end, and the closing credits music is different than on the website: instead of "Sitting in Limbo" and "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans" it was this song:

Mary, grab the baby, the river's rising
Muddy water taking back the land
The old-frame house, she can't take-a one more beating
Ain't no use to stay and make a stand

Well the morning light shows water in the valley
Daddy's grave just went below the line
Things to say, you just can't take em with ya
This flood will swallow all you've left behind

Won't be back to start all over
Cause what I felt before is gone

Mary, take the child, the river's rising
Muddy water taking back my home
The road is gone, there's just one way to leave here
Turn my back on what I've left below
Shifting land, broken farms around me
Muddy water's changing all I know

It's hard to say just what I'm losing
Ain't never felt so all alone

Mary, take the child, the river's rising
Muddy water taking back my home

Won't be back to start all over
Cause what I felt before is gone

Mary, take the child, the river's rising
Muddy water's changing all I know
Muddy water's changing all I know
Lord, this muddy water is taking back my home

I honestly can't remember which credits version was on last sunday when I originally heard it. But they must have changed it before or after making the RA file. I want to say it was "Muddy Water" but I can't trust my memory. after listening to the audio file so many times. Anyway, I don't know who recorded this but I think it's more appropriate given the way the Feds are treating the gulf Coast and particularly NOLA.

Ed 5: Here's the last of it - the stories of Cheryl Wagner, formerly of Cortez Street, and Jennifer and Kim in Punta Gorda Florida, aren't as dramatic as the other accounts of surviving the siege of New Orleans, but they are just as ominous in their own way: this is the future, of PTSD and dispersed communities and the survivors abandoned to fend for themselves, told to make bricks by a government that provides no straw--

<sub>Ed 4: Anyone got a time machine so we can drop Bill O'Reilly back in his ancestral homeland circa 1843--?

Ed 3: There are a *lot* of things disturbing about the third segment of this story. Parallels to certain events (not just one) from the 20th c. in Europe spring inescapably to mind. Also, there should be some earthly punishment for Gretna for their deed. As far as I can work out from the timelines, this sequence took place the *day after* Denise Moore describes people trying to escape. Gretna was afraid of their fellow Americans, and treated them like monsters. --Gretna, thinking themselves "nice" - the original home of David Duke - is the den of monsters. Hagsgate is accursed for a reason. From now on, I say they should be *shunned,* Amish-style, forever and ever until they publically repent and make reparations, in deed and their precious cash, to help their fellow human beings without regard to color. Let them isolate in their "nice" community, with none to trade with them or exchange a civil word, with those of Gretna, henceforth: let Gretna be known as it is truly, the Sodom of the bible, that hated strangers and feared them out of greed.

Ed 2: I finally finished transcribing the first, and one of the two longest, section of the episode. It's rough but that's the way it goes - it's all there, as accurate as I can. The thing to do is to look at a Map of New Orleans - not having been there, only having heard about it the touristy way, and having read about Old New Orleans in Hambly, I'm not even remotely familiar with it, but I'm mentally turning it into Boston and how the hell would one get out of various bits of Boston if massive 1936 hurricane style flooding hit New England and the bridges were being held against you and the answer is *not* very good. I did some quick looksee with Google maps and found the Bridge, found the Rite-Aid on St. Charles & Napoleon, and maybe found Denise Moore's house, but I don't yet get the terrain. Kathryn Cramer's blog has a lot of map stuff I need to look at. but i have to go to work now.

Ed: if you're not familiar with TAL, it's the epitome of the word "wry" and it tends to be sometimes a little dull, often amusing and whimsical, occasionally skating towards the deep dark hole to the icy depths underlying the American Dream, but always skating around them. Ira Glass, the host, is gently ironic, neither ernst nor hipster, just ruefully amused and bemused by humanity. He usually talks fast, but this breathless, rapid-fire, emphatic and hardly-at-all self-aware Glass of last weekend's show is a transformation.</sub>

"After the Flood", This American Life
Ira Glass, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio
recorded 9/9/05, as heard on NHPR 9/11/05
transcribed from the Real Audio file
(times approximate; apologies for all mistakes and ommissions.)

---

Prologue (0:00-4:59)

GLASS: Okay, in the coming weeks and months, we're all going to be hearing so much about Hurricane Katrina, and why the government's response was so abysmal. And already, the blame shifting is like this prize fight that's already in its third or fourth round, already we've heard officials try to shrug off any attempts at accountability by saying that it's "too soon,"by saying they're not going to play the "blame game."

And before the million details and arguments and counterarguments start to make all of our heads woozy, I would just like to repeat here something that was talked about very briefly this week, one of those things that seems so fundamental, that seems to cut through a lot of the supposed debate that's happening and end it definitively. So much so that when I would see people on TV posturing and trotting out the talking points I kept wanting to go back and say nonononono, don't forget this thing--

It has to do with the biggest argument out there right now - whether in fact the federal government was supposed to be in charge of rescuing people and getting food and water and all that into New Orleans.

It's come up a lot. Like when the head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was asked by Tim Russert on Meet The Press - Since you knew the storm was coming, why didn't you get buses and trains and planes and trucks in there to evacuate?

Chertoff - said it wasn't his job.

CHERTOFF [New Jersey & Harvard] : "Tim, the way that - that, emergency operations act under - under the lawr [sic] is that the responsibility and the power, the authority, rest with state and local officials."

GLASS: This idea, that it was state and local officials who were the ones who blew it, not the feds, is all over the place, from the talking heads on TV to Rush Limbaugh--

LIMBAUGH: "What we had on there was an eminent failure of state and local government. We had incompetence in the mayor's office, incompetence in the Governor's office--"

GLASS: And sure, it is clear even this early that there are plenty of things that state and local level did to screw things up. But here's this thing that I read this week, this thing I kept thinking about all week, it really comes down to a couple of basic facts. The Governor of Louisiana declares a state of emergency the Friday before the storm hits, right, calls on the federal government to step in. Then President Bush officially declares a state of emergency in Louisiana the next day, Saturday before the storm, and authorizes the Federal Emergency Managment Agency to act. You can read the paper where he does this on the White House website. Basically, that should have settled who was in charge.

NICHOLSON: "After that happened there was plenty of authority. There was all the authority in the world."

GLASS: We checked out this idea that from that point the federal government was in fact in charge, we checked that out with severalexperts and consultants on these issues this week, and they all agreed that the law is unambigious. This particular guy is William Nicholson, author of the books Emergency Response and Emergency Management Law and and Homeland Security Law and Policy ... and if you're in Homeland Security Policy, you might want to check those out. He says that once the governor asks for help, and the president declares a state of emergency, the feds basically have the broad powers to do what's necessary. And, he says, even if the president hadn't declared a state of emergency, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff, could have acted, there's this whole newfangled way for him to take emergency powers under something called "the National Response Plan."

NICHOLSON: Well, basically the way it works is, the Secretary of Homeland Security designates this as a catastrophic, ah, incident and federal resources deploy to preset, ah, federal locations or staging areas and - so they don't even have to have a federal or state declaration to move forward with this.

GLASS: In other words, it doesn't matter what the governor says, it doesn't matter what the local people say, once that happens, they can just go ahead and do what needs to be done to fix the problem.

NICHOLSON: That's correct. It's utterly clear that they had the authority to preposition the assets and to significantly accelerate the federal response.

GLASS: And they didn't need to wait for the state.

NICHOLSON: They did not need to wait for the state.

[music: minor key fingerpicking, very sardonic]

GLASS: Remember, you heard it here first. --Remember you heard it at all.

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International, I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program we have stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. One of the things that all of us who work on the radio show thought we could do today, during this hour, is give people who were in the storm, more time than the daily news shows can give, to tell their stories and talk about what happened, talk about what they're thinking now. We have somebody who was at the Convention Center, who tells among other things the story that her mom wants you to hear, plus one thing which she says is being widely misreported and misunderstood in the coverage of the Convention Center and what happened there. We also have somebody who police prevented from leaving the city. And we have a teenager who explains just what it actually feels like to go without water for two days. And more. Stay with us.

I. (5:00 -21:05 ) DENISE MOORE, college-educated carless veteran from New Orleans.
[?may be the same Denise Moore who used to live on N. Robertson St., zip 70117, per Anywho]

GLASS: Act I: Middle of Somewhere. Well, when Denise Moore finally made her way out of New Orleans - she had been at the Convention Center - she was surprised to see the coverage.

MOORE: I kept hearing the word "animals", and I didn't see "animals." We were trapped like animals, but I saw the greatest humanity I've ever seen, from the most unlikely places.

GLASS: Denise Moore eventually ended up at the Convention Center with her mom, her niece, and her niece's two year old daughter, but the day before the storm, because Denise's mom worked at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans, because hospital employees are allowed to stay there during hurricanes, all of them went to the hospital. [sharp breath] They were given a room to stay in, but later they were kicked out of their room - for two white nurses.

MOORE: Yeah, so I got really mad--

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: --so I went home, went to the house, I set up my twin bed in the hallway - the hallway is supposedly structurally the best place to be in if the building's going to be moving around, if there's high winds-- [Ed: this is what we were told to do and did, by the authorities, during Tornado Watch in TX.]

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: --and, ah, -- good thing I did. Somewhere around five o'clock in the morning, I jumped up out of bed, the ceiling started crashing down around me, I was riding that bed like a horse, I was so scared - I had never been that scared for that long - we lived on the second floor so I was scared it was going to fall through there, even in the hallway, the building was swaying so much that I thought I'd fall through there and end up injured down there and nobody would find me. Next thing I know, the water is pouring through the ceiling, - and people were calling on the phone: "You should have stayed at the hospital!" - it was ridiculous. I was so scared, fearing for my life, for eight more hours, my heart was in my throat - when this is over, I'm coming back to the hospital, and so I went back to the hospital-

GLASS: Can I ask you, before you tell what happens next, why not just evacuate?

MOORE: Well, first of all, my mom is Essential Personnel, so she couldn't leave. I don't have a car, so I couldn't leave. Um, my niece was going to go with her mother, but we didn't want them to get trapped on the highway, in the storm, with the baby. So we thought it would be safer to just stay at the hospital, because we rode out the last hurricane at home but we sent my niece to the hospital with her baby.

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: You know, that's -- just the way it goes, the hospital was the safest place to be if you were going to stay in the city.

GLASS: So you walked back to the hospital, and what do you find there?

MOORE: Well, there's a lot of people roaming around with their kids, and we're sharing food and we're having a good old time, and just waiting for - a chance to go back home.

GLASS: Mm-hm.

MOORE: Then the - then the, um, levees broke. And the next morning, I was able to go back to the house 'cause I wanted to pick up my degrees, I earned them, [laughs] I wanted to makesure they weren't wet and, frankly, I was looking for a carton of cigarettes that I knew was in that house somewhere.

GLASS: [humorous] And so did you find the cigarettes?

MOORE: [laughing] I found the cigarettes--

GLASS: --and were they dry?

MOORE: --I found my degrees, and I grabbed my vital papers, because my - none of that was wet, because it was in a little purse. And um, I brought my vital papers back to the hospital, and my mom and Susie were going to go back to the house to go get theirs. But the water had started rising, so within a couple of hours we weren't able to get back to the house. --You know, it just kept rising. We thought, okay, now we're trapped in here, and we don't know how high this water's gonna get.

GLASS: Mm-hm.

MOORE: It finally covered the basement so the generators went out. Covered the first floor--

GLASS: Ah, when you say, "covered the first floor," was it actually coming inside the hospital building?

MOORE: Yeah.

GLASS: --Yeah.

MOORE: [increasingly ragged] So, the heartbreaking thing was watching them turn people away, who had waded through that water to get to the hospital for safe haven. It was amazing. It was heartbreaking.

GLASS: H--how often did you see that happen?

MOORE: You know, that happened over and over again. The--the person who sticks out most in my mind is the man who had his wife and his two children and his baby and - his daughter was so dehydrated, the people were yelling at him "You can't come in here," and so the people - we were on the smoking patio which is on the second floor, so we saw them, and we were yelling at him, "Man, leave the baby! Man, leave the baby!" and he's like "I can't leave my baby, we don't have a house, and how am I going to find my baby if I leave him with you, I don't know where you're going to take him," and "been in this water for two days" and -- and it was devastating, to just see that, and you knew that nobody was going to be able to come up in there and so people on the smoking balcony, we would like throw 'em water and we -- we tried to throw 'em food, and...

GLASS: And where'd they send them to?

MOORE: [faint] Don't know. We don't know where he went. [stronger] --But I did find out later that they were letting in people with gunshot wounds and snakebites, so..it wasn't like they turned everybody away, it was just that -- I guess they were thinking "We've got three thousand people in this hospital we have to evacuate, we cannot take on any more responsibility," you know--

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: So I understood why they - why they had to turn 'em away, it was just - heartbreaking to see.

GLASS: Yeah. So--so you were in the hospital until - and there's no power in the hospital but there's water, and sounds like there's food, too?

MOORE: We didn't have water after that first night.

GLASS: Really?

MOORE: Yeah. We-- ran out of everything, um - because, you know, people were sharing with each other, and we just thought we'd be able to go home in a minute.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: That's the thing, it's like, you survived the hurricane, I was a happy camper, 'cause I had been more scared than I had ever been in my life and I walked out of there, you know, so-- [snorts] --Who knew?

GLASS: So how long were you in the hospital, how many days - when'd you get out?

MOORE: Two days. And then we were transported to that - corner, and what we heard was that we were going to be dropped off, by boat, to a corner, and the buses would pick us up, and we would be heading to Texas.

GLASS: Mm-hm.

MOORE: That's what we were told.

GLASS: And then the buses come and they take you where?

MOORE: It wasn't buses, it was -- the police had to commandeer vehicles. They were asking people in the crowd if they knew how to drive trucks and buses, they were stealing them. The police had to steal vehicles, and so it was totally different than what we had anticipated.

GLASS: Eh, eh -- so wait, wait, they're just taking ...any random, like truck and, and, and, and like hotwiring it--

MOORE: --and buses. Yeah.

GLASS: And so - so what was the vehicle that you got to the next place in, like what were you in?

MOORE: There was a key-and-lock van--

GLASS: A - a, right, locksmith--

MOORE: Yeah.

GLASS: Yeah,

MOORE: --that happened to be driving around and the police made him start taking us.

GLASS: And, and then you go to ah, to where?

MOORE: [flat] We go to the Convention Center.

[long pause]

And when we arrived, um, there were people all over the street, under the bridge, and we were like, "Why are these people on the street, why aren't they in the Convention Center?" and, and when we got there, people were saying, "You don't want to go in there."

GLASS: Did you go inside at all?

MOORE: Not until the next day.

GLASS: What'd you see?

MOORE: Inside?

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: A sewer. A sewer, literally, because I had to use the bathroom and I was like, "Where's the bathroom?" and so, I went in side, [snorts] the whole place was the bathroom. Stepping in feces, stepping in urine, all over the carpets. I mean, I used to work at the Convention Center, it was -- it was hard to see.

GLASS: Hm.

MOORE: It was a beautiful building. And it - it - it was a toilet. And people were sitting close as they could to the doors but the smell was overwhelming.

GLASS: S-so like then what--what's--what d'you do-- what's the best you can do--?

MOORE: I actually stopped eating the minute we got there: I wouldn't eat or drink anything [deep breath] 'cause I figure if you don't put nothing in nothing's coming out -- I was in the army -- [ragged laugh] But even then after that I had to use the bathroom...it was ridiculous... So what I ended up doing was, getting a cup, going behind a partition, and having a guy guard me while I was, um, relieving myself in a cup behind some partition in the Convention Center.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: And I got all kinds of stuff on my feet, and thank god it started raining because I have a really sensitve nose and I was sitting down and I could smell the crap on my feet.

GLASS: And where'd you all sleep?

MOORE: We slept on the sidewalk. This place - there was trash all over the ground outside, and I was thinking, "How are the girls even going to lay down with their babies, there's not a spot that's clean--" -- nothing. There's nowhere to lay down.

GLASS: Mm-hm.

MOORE: You know? And then, what - [steely] my mom wanted me to make sure I tell you what they kept doing, the wholetime, was tell us to line up for the buses that never came. [pause] It was like they were doing drills every four hours, [mimicking authorities' pompous tone] "Oh, you all have to line up for the bus, and if you bum-rush the bus, they're just gonna take off and leave without you and nobody's going to get to go anywhere, you have to line up, you have to be in a straight line" -- and we're talking about old people in wheelchairs and women with babies, in lines, waiting for buses that you know goddamn well aren't coming. --Like they were playing with us. -- I figured it out early in the morning, but what am I supposed to do, make an announcement --"The buses aren't coming" --? And so I walked up to the so-called head guy in charge of our section, and I told him, I said to him, "Why do you have these people sitting out here in the sun? --And you know these buses aren't coming!"

[mimics him] "--The buses are coming."

I said "You're just playing with us. Who gives you the authority to keep lining us up like this, to stand in this heat?" And he was like, "Well, I know the guy who can make the call for the buses." I said, "Well, why hasn't he called them? People are dying." He said, "I wish I could tell you what you wanted to hear." I said, "I want to hear the truth - are the buses coming or not? We need to get these old people and these babies out of this heat!" [pause] And he just walked away. And we were left there. Without help, without food, without water, without sanitary conditions, as if it's perfectly all right for these animals to reside in a frickin' sewer like rats. --Because there was nothing but black people back there.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: F[bleeped out]-ing disposable. And then, the story became: They left us here to die. They're going to kill us.

GLASS: You mean, that's what people were saying to each other.

MOORE: Yeah. [very matter-of-fact]

GLASS: And is that what you believed?

MOORE: I--was almost convinced.

GLASS: That--that basically--

MOORE: [over him] 'Cause I kept having visions of them opening that floodgate on us. Of my niece and her baby floating away from me screaming.

GLASS: Hm.

MOORE: And I just knew it, and then the next morning I heard from somebody that they actually were going to open that floodgate, so, by the time the rumors started that the National Guard was going to kill us, I -- I almost halfway believed it.

GLASS: A-and so people were saying they just brought us here, they're going to leave us here to die?

MOORE: Yeah. That's what we thought. [pause] The police kept passing us by-- [bitter laugh] and the National Guardkept passing us by with their guns pointed at us. And - because they - they wouldn't - when you see a truck full of water and people have been crying for water for a day and a night and the water truck passes you by--? Just keeps going??? How are we supposed to believe that these people were here to help us?

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: [over him] It was almost like they were taunting us. And then don't forget they kept lining us -- us up, for buses that never showed up.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: We thought they were playing with us, in the best-case scenario, and in the worst-case scenario, wanted us to either kill each other [sharp breath] or, -- die. [bitter laugh] --Or they were gonna kill us.

[silence]

GLASS: So--so we keep hearing in the news about, ah, about, ah, violence inside the Convention Center and people getting killed and women being raped, -- did you know about any of that when you were there?

MOORE: The Convention Center is section A through J, I believe. We were about at H. And...we could hear... kind of craziness going on, on the further ends, in either direction. But where we are was mostly old people and women with children, and I didn't see anybody get raped, I did see people die - I saw one man die, and I saw a girl and her baby die... [swallowing tears] But I didn't -- I didn't see -- anybody getting hurt.

GLASS: And, and, and talk about - now, there were men, ah, just ah, kind of roaming with guns, ah, packs of men ah, and--

MOORE: [cold] They were securing the area. [offhand] --Criminals, these guys were criminals -- they were. [short laugh] You know.

GLASS: Yeah...

MOORE: But somehow these guys got together, figured out who had guns and decided they were gonna make sure that no women were getting raped, because we did hear about the women getting raped at the Superdome, and--

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: --that nobody was hurting babies, and nobody was hurting these old people. They were the ones getting juice for the babies, they were the ones getting clothes for people that walked through that water -- they were the ones fanning the old people, because that's what moved the guys, the gangster guys, the most -- was the plight of the old people. [choked] That's what haunted me the most, seeing those old people sitting in the chairs and not being able to get up and walk around or nothing--

GLASS: Mm-hm. And so these were just guys from the neighborhood?

MOORE: Mm-hm.

GLASS: What else were they doing?

MOORE: They started looting on St. Charles and, um, St. Charles and Napoleon, there was a Rite-Aid there, and they -- you know, you would think they would be stealing stuff that, that -- you know, fun stuff or whatever because, it's a free city, according to them, right? But they were taking juice for the babies, water, beer for the older people--

[Ed: anyone with a smattering of history should never have been criticizing people for taking alcohol in this flood. Our ancient and medieval ancestors did not dream of drinking city water, until the modern era, when we had reliable sanitation: unreliable water killed thousands of American children in the slums of the Gilded Age. Canned beer would be the safest and most nutritious drink possible under the circumstances, and after it, wine.]

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: --food...um, raincoats so that they could all be seen, you know, by each other, and stuff, and you know, I thought it was pretty cool and very well organized. [laughs again, this time amazement]

GLASS: And wh -- and did you see this yourself, these guys--

MOORE: [over him] Yeah, I was right there.

GLASS: A-and so basically, they went off to this Rite-Aid, they got the stuff, they brought it back and started distributing it?

MOORE: Mm-hm.

GLASS: Like Robin Hood.

MOORE: Yeah. Exactly like Robin Hood, and that's why I got so mad because they're calling these guys "animals." --These guys. --That's what got to me. [pause] Because I know what they did.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: --You're calling these people animals?? You know - come on. And I saw what they did and I was really touched by it and I liked the way that they were organized about it, and that they were thoughtful about it, because they had families they couldn't find, too.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: You know? And that they would put themselves out on other people's behalf.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: You know, I never had a real high opinion of thugs, myself, but I tell you one thing - I'll never look at them the same way again.

GLASS: [stammering] Eh, ah, --Why didn't people just walk away? That's what I don't understand - couldn't you just--

MOORE: [over him, flatly] We weren't allowed. The - the police - if you - people kept trying to go up the bridge so they can go to Algiers--

GLASS: Mm-hm--

MOORE: --and they'd be turned away, and they'd be - they'd be - sent back down.

GLASS: [stammering] You -and- uh - wh - literally they'd just like go a couple streets away and somebody would send them back--?!

MOORE: [patient] They'd go up the bridge--

GLASS: Right--

MOORE: --to go across to the west bank where it was dry--

GLASS: Right--

MOORE: --and lights were on [laughs] you know, and, um, the National Guard was up there with guns. They turned them back with guns, and the governor gave orders to shoot to kill, you couldn't get through 'em.

GLASS: [v. quiet] Yeah.

MOORE: So - people were going up the bridge, and every time, they lined us up for the buses, and the buses wouldn't come, people in groups would go up the bridge trying to get across the river - people who had family across the river, couldn't get across the river, they were not letting us out of there. --They wasn't letting nobody in. So - we were trapped. I - I can't even express it.

GLASS: Yeah.

MOORE: The tears get close to my eyes and I have this feeling in the pit of my stomache like if I start crying the sobs will kill me. [long pause] I guess some day it'll calm down and I'll be able to just - cry a normal person but I feel like if I started crying now I'll never stop.

GLASS: Denise Moore - she's now in Baton Rouge, she's okay, she just found a new job there.

[music - "When the Levee Breaks," Memphis Minnie]

If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break
If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break
And the water's gonna come, and I have no place to stay

II. Lorrie Beth Slonsky, EMT from San Francisco, and Debbie Zelinsky of Boston (21:05 -38:45)

GLASS: Act II - "Forgotten but not lost". Let's return to that bridge, you know that bridge that Denise talked about in Act I, that people got to the bridge and they were turned back by armed police officers - what, exactly, happened on that bridge? We wondered about that, and so, in this act we return to that bridge. The people in this story were in New Orleans for a paramedics' convention. They're out-of-towners, they were staying at a hotel in the French Quarter, and as the storm approached there were no flights out of the city, there were no rental cars available, and so they stayed in their hotel - luckily their hotel let them stay - no electricity, eating box cereal, canned soup, whatever they - had there, in the hotel, and then three days after Katrina hit, one of the hotel managers actually decided to take matters into his own hands and took up a collection, from his guests, to raise $25,000 dollars to charter a bunch of private buses to get these people out. And so all that day guests were getting reports the buses were coming, they were told to line up and wait for the buses, and then like five or six hours after they were told to line up and wait, around midnight, they heard word that no, the buses had been commandeered by the military, as they entered the city. Okay. So the next morning the hotel's out of food, they're out of water, they basically say to everybody, "You gotta go now."

Lorrie Beth Slonsky, and her husband, Larry Bradshaw, they're both paramedics from San Francisco, they set off with about 200 other hotel guests that morning, for the command center that the police had set up down the street, at Harrah's Casino. They go there and they ask the police, what should they do now? Lori Beth talked to producer Alex Blumberg

SLONSKY: You know, they said, "You can't go to the Superdome, you cannot go to the Convention Center," we said, "Where can we go?" They said, "We don't know, you are on your own"--

BLUMBERG: Mm-hm.

SLONSKY: And that's where we decided, "Let's camp in front of the police command center, in front of Harrah's." There'd be protection, we'd have each other, until the next day. Then, um, the police command center realized they had an issue on their hands, they had 200 tourists in front of their command center.

BLUMBERG: Mm-hm.

SLONSKY: So, he said, "Wait - I just heard word: if you cross the bridge, there are buses," and a big cheer went up, but Larry, being um, the realist he is, said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we have been lied to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, today is Thursday, we really would like some guarantee that this is true," and he looked, looked us in the eye and said, "I swear to you, there are buses on the bridge, I just got word."

BLUMBERG: Now where is the bridge at this point from where you're standing?

SLONSKY: It's two miles through town, it's called the Ponchartrain Expressway.

BLUMBERG: Okay.

SLONSKY: So the 200 of us little tourist types with our pull-along baggage made our way through the rainy weather--

BLUMBERG: Uh, and you're all carrying your pull-along baggage?

SLONSKY: [whimsically] I'm carrying my pull-along baggage--

BLUMBERG: [chuckles]

SLONSKY: --with our laptop and our little Palm Pilot and our little extra food and -- everything.

BLUMBERG: Uh-huh--

SLONSKY: So we are going through town and people saw us and thought, "Hm, you know, here come some folks, they must know something," so our numbers doubled, from probably about 200 and then doubled again, so we were probably about 800 to a thousand people, marching up to the bridge. When we got to the bridge, there was the armed Gretna sherriffs, and they had formed a line at the foot of the bridge--

BLUMBERG: Uh-huh--

SLONSKY: --so even before we could explain what we wanted or what we had heard, that's when they began firing the weapons. Gretna police shot at us and said, "Get away, get away, you cannot come on the bridge."

BLUMBERG: This bridge goes across the Mississippi River, to a town called Gretna, in neighboring Jefferson Parish. The entire region across the river is called the West Bank. Debbie Zelinsky, a 24-year-old sales agent from Boston, was another guest at the Monteleone [sp]. She'd been on vacation in New Orleans with a group of five: her friends Shirann and Rashida, Rashida's mother and thirteen-year-old brother, and Rashida's brother's fifteen-year-old friend.

ZELINSKY: The cops were just firing into the air to get people back, they had guns pointed in people's faces, telling them to get back down or they will shoot you.

BLUMBERG: [incredulous] And - what was your thinking at that moment, what were - what were you -- wh--what did, what did you make of that, why -- you know, like, what were you thinking?

ZELINSKY: At that point it was pouring rain, we were soaked through - I thought, "I'm never getting out of here - if I am getting out of here, it's not going to be alive." Ah, tears started rolling down my face at that point,

BLUMBERG: And - how did - it just sounds so crazy to me that there's like, there's like a bunch of tired people trying to walk out of a city and, and, people are shooting at - Did it just seem insane to you? or wha-what, you know what I mean?

ZELINSKY: It did. I mean, here you have a six-lane highway bridge, and there's barely any traffic going now, and you won't let pedestrians cross it? Ah, why--??

SLONSKY: What did I really think? or do you--

BLUMBERG: Yeah, what did you really think?

SLONSKY: What I thought was, "Are they SERIOUS? They must be mistaken, they could not be shooting at a group of desperate-ass people." But, apparently, they were serious. But we were so desperate, you know, we gotta get out of here, this is our only way out, we can't go to the Superdome, we can't go to the Convention Center, we're scared to death of all the - for our lives, and for the people around us' lives, that we had to approach them, so my partner, Larry, had his badge with him, his fire department badge, so he would raise it up, lay it on the ground, put our hands up, and walk backwards and say, "May we approach?"

BLUMBERG: Mm-hm.

SLONSKY: And when we approached and had them in conversation, the sherriff informed us that there were no buses, that the police commander had lied to us, and when -- Larry questioned, it's like "Can we just ask you why we can't cross the bridge?" because there was no traffic, very little traffic on this six-lane highway, and they said that -- [sighs] "You are not crossing this bridge. We are not turning the West Bank into another Superdome." [fierce] And to us, when they said that, that was absolutely these were code words for, "If you're poor, and you're black, you are not getting out of New Orleans, you are not coming to our territory."

[long pause]

BLUMBERG: It--it does seem - hard to avoid - sort of talking about - race here--

SLONSKY: Yes. We're white, and, uh, everybody else that - not everybody, most every other person was African-American. And, that is what they saw, and that is what they were responding to, that this group of people of color were not going to come into their neighborhood.

ZELINSKY: Lorie Beth is kind of a take-charge person, [shaky laugh]

BLUMBERG: Uh-huh--

ZELINSKY: --from what we saw, and we were like, "Well, we need to stick with someone, we don't know our way, what we're going to do," so we decided, "Hey, we're sticking with you, we're not leaving you,"

BLUMBERG: [chuckles]

ZELINSKY: And - glad we didn't.

SLONSKY: Our small group of eight, and ah, then other folks as well, we retreated back down in Highway 90 and we were trying to find some shelter, in the overpass, and then we had these discussions about "what are we going to do?" and what we decided to do was, there was this concrete embankment there - if you go on to, um, the middle of Ponchartrain Expressway there's a center divide, but with the center divide there's two hunks of concrete, that sort of make a nice enclave, and we thought, "This will be perfect, it's safe, we'll be visible to everyone, and certainly someone's going to come and - rescue us, and that we'll have security by being out on this elevated freeway"and then we could wait for these buses that were certainly going to come get us. This group turned into I'd say about sixty or seventy people--

BLUMBERG: Mm-hm--

SLONSKY: --and we cleaned up the area so it would be safe for the children, and someone had a bag, and we cleaned that up, and um, I said I had water and someone else had water and we, you know, kind of made like this community, and this is when somebody - blessed are the people who loot - got a huge water truck, they had stolen, and it had a man and his wife, and chil-child, and they were African-American, and they unloaded all the water that they had--

BLUMBERG: So wait - so a guy came up - a guy just came up to you--

SLONSKY: A guy was escaping New Orleans - and that's what it felt like, people were escaping New Orleans - and he drove up to the middle road, in the middle of this Ponchartrain Expressway, drove right up to our encampment, 'cause he saw like the seventy-eighty-ninety people, and he just - took all the water out and gave it to us, and filled the truck up back with human beings. As many older and -- children that we could get on, with their parents, onto this, and they drove away. And that is how we got water.

BLUMBERG: And what did he say to you? What did he - that's incredible--

SLONSKY: "Good luck, good luck, brothers and sisters, good luck, we wish you the best, we can only take what we can take,"and we, you know, thanked him and, off they go with the families, then, and then up the street quite a way there is an Arm- ah, National Guard truck that apparently took too sharp of a turn and you can just see the food fall out, of the - C-rations, fall out of this truck. So I mean we just felt like it was phenomenal. We commandeered a couple of the strong young guys and gals to run up there with the shopping carts that people had, and gather up the boxes of food and bring it back, so...

BLUMBERG: [laughing] So you're set, you have --

SLONSKY: [over him, laughing] We were set--

BLUMBERG: --food, you have water,

SLONSKY: We were set, we had food, we had water, we had some sort of shelter, we had a safe place for the kids, and then the kids, um, took the plastic that the water was in, those big plastic containers that hold five gallons, drums of water, and brought it over to like a storm drain, and set it up to make a bathroom with pri- privacy, and we took one of the five gallon containers of water and the kids made a sign because we still had luggage at this point, crayons and things, and made a sign "Please keep the bathroom clean" and we had toilet paper and handi-wipes.

BLUMBERG: So, you'd like started with a group of eight, and then you - it grew to seventy, and these were -- who were some of the stories of the people who were in this little encampment with you?

SLONSKY: Well, there was this older woman who was diabetic and had soiled herself, but people came forward with you know, like a makeshift Depends diaper-type thing, and then there was just the cutest ding-dang kids that would call me "Auntie," ah, they would say, "Auntie, Auntie wants the coffee" and they were very strict about the garbage there, 'cause we hung garbage bags on the rebar, so...we were set up brilliantly. Until, just as it started to turn dark, um, a Gretna sherriff came up and just had that crazy look that as a paramedic when I see that crazy look, I just find a way to - to not come in front of that energy, 'cause he had a gun, and he was pointing and screaming at us, "Get the f[bleep] off this freeway! Get the f[bleep] off this freeway!" like the most insane, crazed, frightened person ever. And, um, we had to leave this place of safety, and, ah, went into the dark. And it was martial law by this point, and we had heard it was a shoot-to-kill policy--

ZELINSKY: So, everyone grabbed what they could, and we didn't know where we were going. As we were going, we turned back and looked, and then we saw a helicopter come very close, and everything that we had had in there actually went flying, as the helicopter's winds took off.

BLUMBERG: [stammering] So the - like a mil - like a police helicopter literally - came down to where your camp had been and - blew everything away??

ZELINSKY: Right.

BLUMBERG: And you - and you think - that was - on purpose??

ZELINSKY: Oh, yeah. Ah, so we walked, down the bridge off the highway and we actually found a bus, an abandoned bus, ah, we had to actually - we had to boost someone into a window 'cause the door was locked, and he unlocked the door from the inside, we all got in, it was right at - dark. It was becoming dark outside, ah, we all were told to lay down on the seats and do not lift your head for anything.

BLUMBERG: Who told you that?

ZELINSKY: Ah - my friend's mom.

BLUMBERG: Okay.

ZELINSKY: She's like, "Don't sit up, don't lift your head, I don't care what you hear."

BLUMBERG: What was the -- what was the fear?

ZELINSKY: Ah, the fear was you could hear gunshots getting closer, you could hear people walking, ah - it was a fear of the gunshots, [matter-of-fact] it was also a fear of the police. Um, we were afraid they'd come, they'd - they would probably kick us out, and we didn't want to be out, when it was dark out. You could hear the, I don't know if they were rats, what they were, but they were outside, you could hear them. I think I maybe slept five or ten minutes, ah, the minute the sun came up we were out of there. We left the bus - we left a note in the bus saying, "Thank you, we're sorry," - and we left, we went up to the bridge to see if they'd let us cross.

SLONSKY: Larry had contacted the president of our union, and said, okay we are - at the fire department, um, John Meade, and said, "Okay, John, honest to god, it is now dire, we need to get out," and somehow John through the other union, through a guy who works at Menlo Park who was working for FEMA - somehow one of those connections happened, that the FEMA person got to tell the Gretna police, or sherriff, to yes let us eight people go through, and um, it was so early in the morning, but we could the people starting to come up because people were still trying to get out and as people were starting to come up one of the sherriffs walked down the ramp a bit and shot up past some people and said, "Do not approach!" Um - I - I - we got past that, we got the permission, we walked across the bridge.

BLUMBERG: That must have been a ve-- That must have been a very um - I mean, on the one hand you must have been ex- thrilled to be getting out, but - was it, was it -

SLONSKY: [over him] Very demoralizing --

BLUMBERG: --hard?

SLONSKY: -- very demoralizing, very sad, very unfair, it's really wrong, this makes no sense, all of us should be walking across that bridge, and it's only by this connection, that connection, and, um, that we were able to get across. How did I feel? UI felt really incensed and angered that other people weren't allowed to pass, and at the same time I felt so fortunate, and absolutely like I won the lottery, that us eight were able to cross.

BLUMBERG: There was one more hurdle, actually. In their group of eight, three were white, four were black - Shirann, Rashida, and her mother and brother - and her brother's friend was Puerto Rican. But the authorities had told Larry that only his immediate family was allowed to cross the bridge. So Larry said: "This is my immediate family."

ZELINSKY: Um, I was his daughter, um, my friend's mom was his sister-in-law, with her three kids, and my friend's brother's friend, was his foster-child. [laughs] And that's how we had to play it off, in order for us to cross the bridge all together.

GLASS: Debbie Zelinsky and Lorie Beth are now back home in San Francisco and Boston respectively; they talked to Alex Blumberg.

[music - "Walking to New Orleans," Fats Domino]

This time I'm walking to New Orleans,
I'm walking to New Orleans
I'm gonna need to parachute
When I get through walking these blues
When I get back to New Orleans.
I've got my suitcase in my hand

GLASS: Coming up: FOX TV versus a New Orleans eighteen-year-old, that's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

III. Ashley Nelson, 18, (39:45-45:59)
author of "The Combination," published by the Neighborhood Stories Project.

GLASS: This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "After the Flood: New Orleans stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." We've arrived at Act III of our show. Act III - Social Studies Lesson. TV talk show host Bill O'Reilly stated rather directly this week the lessons that he thought conservatives, and everybody else, should take from the devastation. First, he said, you can't rely on government, and second, he said, the problems that we saw in New Orleans weren't about race, they were about class.

O'REILLY: "If you're poor, you're powerless, not only in America but everywhere on earth. --You don't have enough money to protect yourself from danger, danger's gonna find you. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school, if you don't get educated, if you don't develop a skill, and force yourself to work hard, you'll most likely be poor. And sooner or later you'll be standing on a symbolic roof top, waiting for help. Chances are that help will not be quick in coming."

GLASS: Our producer Alex Blumberg decided to run this by somebody who was actually in an American high school, eighteen-year-old Ashley Nelson, who is our next act, and who lives in the Lafitte Housing Projects in New Orleans, in one of the neighborhoods that got flooded.

NELSON: [incredulous] That's what he said?

BLUMBERG: Yeah.

NELSON: He said that?

BLUMBERG: On TV, yeah.

NELSON: [disbelieving laugh]

BLUMBERG: To you, what's the thing that stands out the most about that?

NELSON: [soft] Basically, he's saying "If you're rich you live, you poor, you die." [pause] And - and - I had no idea, that it was a crime to be poor ... and the punishment was death.

BLUMBERG: What was the first that you heard about the hurricane and what - what preparations did you make?

NELSON: When I heard about the hurricane, it was Saturday, and you know it was supposed to come next Sunday night, so when I heard about it, I went over to my grandmother's house, and ah - my whole family was over there, and I'm like, "Um, y'all come on--" I'm so - I'm just so amped up, I'm like, "You all come on, let's go rent a car, we gotta evacuate, we have a hurricane coming!" and everybody looked at me stupidly like, "All right, you gonna go rent a car, because we have that kind of money, to go and -- out of town, and you got that kind of money to do that kind of stuff?" like, being sarcastic about it, and I'm like, "--Man, I forgot we poor." --I promise you, that's what I thought in my head. I forgot we were poor.

BLUMBERG: Were there people who were able to get out, who had a car or could--

NELSON: Yeah.

BLUMBERG: Yeah?

NELSON: 'Cause I remember - I remember that day, I was standing outside and a lot of people just - it was a lot of people running from their house to their car, from their house to their car, just throwing stuff in there, throwing stuff in there, trying to hurry up and get out before the traffic gets too hectic. That was a handful of people and everybody else was just sitting out watching, watching how... people leaving and they gotta stay. 'Cause I know that's what I'm thinking, when I see people leaving, and I'm like, they're leaving and I gotta stay. And there's not even the option - I have to stay.

GLASS: Ashley rode out the storm at her father's house, in Jefferson Parish, across the river from New Orleans, where the rest of her family was. There wasn't too much flooding there, so the next morning they went out and found all the scrap wood they could, blown-down branches, old fences, and started a fire to cook the little bit of meat they'd been able to buy at the store before the storm came. They figured that would hold them until rescuers got there. But one day passed and no one came, and then two days. They had no TV, they didn't know what was going on.

NELSON: I thought like - just like my daddy - I thought like my dad, somebody was coming to help us. Nobody came to help us. No Red Cross trucks, no nothing. I mean, at least they could have dropped us some water. [pause] --You know what it's like to not have water? You get a taste in your mouth that's just - oh, it's horrible. And your mouth all dry, and you can't even think right...You start getting delusional and hallucinating about things--

BLUMBERG: Did - did you actually have hallucinations?

NELSON: [shaky laugh] Yeah.

BLUMBERG: What did you hallucinate?

NELSON: Water bottles, four water bottles, big Kentwood gallon jugs. I'm serious, I just - I went crazy. I mean, I would just sit down and rock, and think about this - is the world going to turn to hell and we all going to burn-- or, I - I mean I just started going crazy, I - really crazy.

BLUMBERG: Did it make you realize like "Oh, so this is what it feels like, this is what it feels like to be starving"--?

NELSON: [disbelieving laugh] I thought that there I was in Jefferson Parish and, man, I'm starving- that's what I said to myself, like, "Man, I'm starving" - like, you know how your stomach growls--?

BLUMBERG: Uh-huh?

NELSON: When you're starving, you get cramps in your stomach, and it feels like your stomach just bit into your back, and - I mean, the best bet is for you to lean forward.

BLUMBERG: [sounds a bit taken aback at this pragmatic advice] Uh-- How s-- How scared were you?

NELSON: [blunt] I thought I was gonna die. --I mean, I look at it like this now: 9/11 was bad 'cause it was terrorists. You know, there's no surprise people hate the United States, it's no big surprise--

BLUMBERG: Mm-hm.

NELSON: But New Orleans was worse, 'cause it was our own government who betrayed us. They betrayed us. [impassioned] They betrayed us, like they left us there - to die. And then, you hear George Bush telling the FEMA man, "You're doing a good job" --What d'you mean by that? What do you mean by that, because I mean, people are dying there, so're you telling him he's doing a good job, what you're saying, that's good that people're dying? I never understood that and I really wish - I could meet him to ax [sic] him, "What do you mean by that - 'You're doing a good job'--?"

GLASS: Eighteen-year-old Ashley Nelson talking with Alex Blumberg. Two days after that interview the head of FEMA, the FEMA man, Michael Brown, who President Bush said was doing such a good job, was removed from all duties relating to Hurricane Katrina.

[music: "Them that got," Ray Charles]

That old saying, them that's got, are them that gets,
is something I can't see,
If you gotta have something, before you can get something,
How do you get your first is still a mystery to me--
I see folk with long cars and fine clothes
That's why they're called the smarter set--
Because they managed to get
What them that's got supposed to get,
and I aint got nothing yet.

IV. Cheryl Wagner of New Orleans, DP now residing in Gainesville, FL (46:00 - 50:40)

GLASS: Act IV - Diaspora. While hundreds of thousands of Gulf residents evacuated after the storm and followed the whole thing from afar, Cheryl Wagner left for Gainesville, Florida. From satellite photos she can tell her house is flooded, she hears it's seven feet of water. Over this past week we've gotten dozens of emails at our radio program from people in this situation and they all pretty much say the same thing - How bizarre it is to be indefinitely exiled from their homes and normal lives, and now to be an evacuee in the larger world.

WAGNER: We've been advised that when we go back to New Orleans, my boyfriend and I need to get guns, mean dogs, or both. Which seems ludicrous to me. But people where we evacuated to, over in north central Florida, have offered us a shotgun. We got offered a shotgun before we got offered a generator. One of the people calling to tell us to get a shotgun, is a normally-laid-back musician friend who used to have a weekly gig in the Quarter singing Cuban love songs in falsetto. A few days ago he bought a shotgun in Baton Rouge, where he evacuated to, and is now calling my boyfriend and advising us to do the same. "I have five dogs, and I'm bringing the meanest looking one back," he says. "I just bought a shotgun with a sweet pistol grip."

Last week he also called to report rumors that people from New Orleans were raping and looting the mall in Baton Rouge. "You're a person from New Orleans," I thought, but didn't say.

Right after it became clear we were not getting home, I predicted the totally predictable: that people in Baton Rouge would immediately start cringing in the face of what they considered to be the black mongrel hordes and loose people of New Orleans. I say this knowing the people of Baton Rouge and the rest of Louisiana have been breaking their backs with generosity, and hospitality, and kindness. I know many white and Cajun people and fishermen with airboats helped rescue their black and white New Orleans neighbors from attics. People from Baton Rouge are showing up at hotels and sweetly paying strangers from New Orleans' bills. My mother in Hammond was asked to open up her washing machine to state troopers' underwear.

Still, some folks are giving with one hand, and holding a gun with the other. Seems nobody wants a bunch of poor people, black, white, Cajun, whatever, moving to their neck of the woods. Seems that it's fear of the have-nots and poor, as much as racism - which of course it also is.

So now we're here in Gainesville, listening to New Orleans expat webcasts through tinny computer speakers, squinting to see my watery house on satellite photos, getting crappy emails from friends crying because they killed their cats, and watching TV. Someone desperate called us and said, "Can you please text-message Dan and make him get off his roof? He's up there with Luna and another dog and won't come down unless they'll take the dogs too." It's strange to think of all my New Orleans people spit out by the storm, all over the South and country, in diaspora, getting terrible phone calls and cable TV migraine too.

Before the flood, New Orleans was a place where Southerners sent their laid-back people who can't or won't get with the program - artists, gay relatives, eternal optimists, funny- hat-wearers, and intellectuals. --I'm one of the above, and we're in New Orleans for a reason: to get away from the Baptists, but still get to live in the South where we're from. But where are Southern outsiders supposed to go, who are exiled from their place of exile? I don't wanna arm myself with a gun, or a leafblower, to face the future.

People ask what it's like to lose your house, and your friends, and your life, and your town, and begin to look scared when you answer. They want to care, but they can't. They look at you, and worry for themselves.

Drenched in the compulsory cheer of the college town of Gainesville, I feel like a leper from Carville, or the bereaved at a Southern funeral. Family friends slide you wide envelopes with money in them; then everyone around you puts on an ugly orange-and-blue outfit, straps on their foam fingers, and heads out to a Florida Gators football game.

GLASS: Cheryl Wagner normally lives in New Orleans in Mid-City on South Cortez Street; she asks if someone there has a canoe, please go and check out her house.

V. FEMA Trailers in Punta Gorda, FL ( 50:40 - 57:00)

GLASS: Act V - Displaced Persons Camp. Last August, a Category 4 storm, Hurricane Charlie, devastated parts of Florida, and FEMA built a big trailer park for people whose homes were destroyed, it was near an airport, outside Punta Gorda. At one point, over 550 trailers were there. And when staff looked into it this week, we were surprised to find out still there, with more than a thousand people, so, just this week, we read in the New York Times that a FEMA official was saying that these kinds of mobile homes like in Punta Gorda, outside Punta Gorda, may be the standard for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Our producer Lisa Pollak called down there to see what it's like.

POLLAK: Like almost everybody I asked to describe the FEMA mobile home park, Bob Hebert starts with a disclaimer--

HEBERT: It is better than no housing, but...for some folks, it's very unsettling, it's depressing, and it's deplorable.

POLLAK: Hebert is the Director of Hurricane Recovery for Charlotte County, Florida. Like everyone else I talked to, he described a dreary mini-city, nothing but endless rows of identical white trailers in a vacant lot by the county airport.

HEBERT: But it very much is just like a trailer park, uh, storage place, it's like a manufacturer, where they're just all lined up waitin' to go, except these are actually occupied and, and hooked up and it's a village by itself...

JENNIFER: It looks kind of like, uh, some military camp in the desert.

POLLAK: This is Jennifer - she didn't want to give her last name. She, along with her husband, three kids, and a dog, have lived in the FEMA park since just before last Thanksgiving.

JENNIFER: There's no grass, there's no trees, it's all white, gritty sand - and, uh, the wind will whip through the trailers and you'll just get pelted with sand.

POLLAK: The FEMA park wasn't supposed to be homey. It was supposed to be functional. After Hurricane Charlie destroyed 11,000 residences in the county, lots of people needed places to live. And fast. For that, the trailers were perfect, says Hebert.

HEBERT: Because they got a lot of people in there in, in like thirty days, people that were just kinda livin' in cars 'cause there were no other places for them to go, they were on the streets or they were just living with other people, or whatever - so I mean it was a - it was a lifesaver when it happened.

KIM: Someone called me from FEMA and said, "Are you still interested in one of the mobile homes?" and I say, "Yes, I am," and he said, "Well, okay, you need to go down there to the site tomorrow to sign your paperwork, they have a house for you."

POLLAK: That's Kim. Last December, when she got that phone call, she was desperate and out of options. She, her husband, and four kids, rode out the hurricane huddled in the shower stall at their rental house, the ceilings crumbling above them. After the house was condemned, the family spent two weeks in a crowded homeless shelter. Then came three months in an RV, the kind people tow on vacation, 30' long, all six of them living there. So by the time they got the FEMA mobile home, 70' long, with three bedrooms, it seemed like a mansion. They could live rent-free, paying only utilities, while they looked for a place of their own. --The problem is, nine months later, Kim's family is still there. Every month a FEMA agent comes by to ask her what she's done to get out. To keep her lease, she has to prove sh