Click on Graphic: Britons' Timeline during Hurricane Katrina [Source: Sunday Times, London]
Our Terrifying Ordeal The Times of London: 5 Sept 2005
During seemingly endless days and sleepless nights, the British survivors’ fear of the hurricane’s destructive force was transformed into terror of the other survivors.
Mr Nelson, 21, and Jane Wheeldon, 20, told The Times how they and some 50 other foreigners — many of them British backpackers — were ordered by the US Army to gather together to protect themselves from resentful locals.
“The army told us to stick in a group and for the women to sit in the middle with the men around the outside and to be ready to defend ourselves,” Mr Nelson, from Epsom, Surrey, said. “Their urgency scared us. I sat on the outside, really scared by this point, sitting waiting for God knows what. We waited and waited, I didn’t sleep. A lot of the girls had been groped.”
Miss Wheeldon, from Carmarthen, South Wales, said that being inside the Superdome was terrifying and that she had been sexually harassed.
The “internationals”, as the army labelled the stranded tourists, were among the few white people in the stadium. Marked out by their skin colour and unfamiliar accents, they were verbally abused, while their luggage made them targets for robbery.
British Tourists tell of their Terror in the Rubble Sunday Times, London: 4 Sept 2005
The girlfriend of one Briton was threatened with rape, and another said people trapped inside were becoming so desperate that one leapt to her death.
Will Nelson, 21, of Epsom, Surrey, sent an e-mail [Editor: Via Cellphone] to his family last Friday pleading for help. “Please can you try and contact the embassy, tell them that we really need their help with getting out of here — it’s turning into a war zone,” he wrote.
Yesterday he said troops in the Superdome had told Britons to use sharp objects such as scissors or tweezers to protect themselves from gangs. “At one point we had to carry a US national guard on a stretcher after he had been shot by looters outside,” he said.
Nelson was among about 40 foreigners escorted from the dome by the army for their safety, amid baying New Orleans residents furious at being left behind. His father, Keith Nelson, said: “I am seriously unimpressed with the American authorities, but not terribly impressed with the help, support and information we have been getting from the British authorities either.”
Nelson and his travelling companion Jennifer Sachs, 21, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, were evacuated to a hotel in Dallas, Texas, last Friday.
He said British consular staff only agreed to foot the hotel bill after complaints from parents.
Sachs’s father, Bruce, called New Orleans police the day before the hurricane struck, asking what his daughter should do. “I asked, ‘What is your plan?’ The police responded, ‘We have no plan.’ I was stunned. Those words are still ringing in my head. They abandoned the poor, the sick, the disabled, the elderly and most of the tourists.”
Ireland counts Dead & Missing in New Orleans Sunday Times, London: 4 Sept 2005
ONE Irishman is feared dead and another 10 Irish people are unaccounted for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Conor Lally, 20, Patrick Clarke, 21, and Tomas McLoughlin, all from Blackrock, Co Louth, had gone to Myrtle Beach on J1 visas for the summer. When Katrina swept into New Orleans they sought refuge in the Superdome stadium, but later sent texts home to say they had witnessed rapes, gang warfare and fighting among looters.
“It is every parent’s worst nightmare,”said Jim Lally, Conor’s father. “My son went away as a 20-year-old boy and will probably return with the life experience of a 50-year-old man. This has been the worst week of our life, it was horrendous, but I just got a text from Dermot Ahern to say that the boys will be in Dublin at 8.30 in the morning.
"The boys are in great form...but it has been a harrowing experience and they may need counselling when they get home.”
Newlyweds Jean Wheatfield and Michael Leyden from Dromahair, Leitrim, who went to New Orleans for their honeymoon, were missing for five days before being airlifted to safety by the American military.
Married three weeks ago, their honeymoon was cut short when their hotel in the Latin Quarter was flooded. The couple say they were caught up in gun battles, threatened by gangs, witnessed a massive explosion and tried unsuccessfully to flee on foot.
Superdome 'Like a Concentration Camp' The Age of Melbourne: 2 Sept 2005
The New Orleans Superdome was meant to be a hurricane refuge, but those who sought shelter there described a lawless "concentration camp" where two children were reportedly raped and other refugees terrorised by rioters.
One 13-year veteran of the New Orleans police force said he and other officers who had been at the Superdome since Sunday were outraged at what they saw as a lack of preparation that allowed the situation in the covered stadium to deteriorate so badly and so quickly.
"This city knew something like this would happen a long time ago. They did nothing to prepare for this. They just rolled the dice and hoped for the best," said the officer who asked not to be identified.
"People were raped in there. People were killed in there. We had multiple riots," he said, adding there was no way to police the mass of up to 20,000 people suddenly thrown together in such a confined space and such horrific conditions.
Audrey Jordan vented her anger at New Orleans officials, saying they had known for years that a hurricane of Katrina's intensity could cause a breach in the low-lying city's water defences.
"They wanted to pay millions of dollars to rebuild a stadium, but they couldn't even fix the levee," Jordan said.
"We were treated like this was a concentration camp," she said of the Superdome.
"One man couldn't take it. He jumped over the railing and died."
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