better hope annother hurricane doesn't blow up soon

[Guest guest]

'I heard people screaming'

August 31, 2005

 

BY FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS -- Sam Marconi drank a Bud Light on a French Quarter

corner Tuesday morning, still dripping wet after trudging out of his

flooded neighborhood.

 

Cradled in his arms were two cartons of cigarettes that looters

dropped outside a liquor store and a can of Chef Boyardee a good

samaritan gave him.

 

Marconi, a clown who goes by Turbo the Copper Mime, was wearing his

trademark shoes spray-painted copper. His wet black jeans clung to

his legs.

 

" I'm a survivor, " he said. " Some of my neighbors weren't. "

 

The day after Hurricane Katrina, helicopters hovered over New

Orleans looking for looters and residents clinging to the roofs of

their homes. Wal-Mart stores were giving free food and water to

people, many of whom rode up on bicycles. Power was out in most of

the city, and communication was next to impossible with most cell

phones and land lines down.

 

But Marconi, who recently performed as a clown at Taste of Chicago,

and dozens of other New Orleans residents forgot their troubles

briefly at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Johnn White's Bar, one of the few

places serving drinks in the French Quarter.

 

Marconi weathered Katrina in his brick home in Bywater, one of the

most heavily flooded neighborhoods in the city. It is just outside

the Quarter along the bend in the Mississippi River.

 

Marconi was cooking a hamburger on his grill Monday afternoon,

standing in four inches of water, when the flood came.

 

" The next minute there was four feet of water covering the top of my

grill, " he said. " I heard people screaming. "

 

As Marconi waded through the water, he saw a man floating face down.

 

" I saw dozens of people breaking out of the attic with their axes, "

he said. " Hundreds of people were on their roofs. They were dropping

ladders from helicopters to rescue them. "

 

Brian Kornsey volunteered Monday night to rescue women and children

from the roofs in Bywater. In his 9th Ward accent -- vaguely

Brooklyn and vaguely Southern -- he described paddling his flat boat

into the neighborhood in the pitch black.

 

" We didn't have no flashlights, " Kornsey said. " I saw three dead

people floating near Claiborne Street. "

 

He started the rescues at 10 p.m. Monday and worked until 5:30 a.m.

Tuesday. He estimated he pulled 80 people to safety. Some could not

swim. " I jumped into the water to push everybody into the flat

boat, " he said.

 

Kornsey's own home near the Industrial Canal collapsed.

 

Keith Price, a cardiac nurse, lost everything in his home in the

Gentilly neighborhood. The water started rising at 10 a.m. Monday

after the hurricane hit. Pumps that drain New Orleans, which is

below sea level, were shut down near him and the water rose to neck

level.

 

" I just bought $6,000 worth of furniture. All gone, " Price said. " My

car is under water. The airbag is deployed. "

 

Price took photos of all his destroyed possessions. He carried his

camera and wallet in a black bag, holding it over his head to keep

it dry. He's waiting to file a claim with the federal disaster

assistance fund.

 

" I have to start all over again, " he said.

 

As Price walked down Canal Street toward the French Quarter, he saw

looters coming out of Walgreens and other stores with baskets of

goods -- everything from electronic equipment to leather jackets.

 

He saw the police make some arrests, but the level of thievery was

overwhelming, he said.

 

In the Uptown section of New Orleans, known for its grand antebellum

mansions and a streetcar that runs up the middle of St. Charles

Avenue, looters filled shopping carts with groceries and other items

at Walgreens and Rite-Aid on Tuesday.

 

Police cruised by, but looters didn't seem to be their No. 1

priority.

 

Cops took a tougher stance in the French Quarter, where they walked

around toting shotguns.

 

Price and Kornsey said they heard gunfire Monday night. But neither

thought it was malicious. Instead, they think it was people firing

their guns for help, hoping to get rescued.

 

'I should have packed up and gone'

 

 

 

The French Quarter, the high ground of New Orleans, was one of the

few parts of the city with minimal flooding. But wind damage was

everywhere.

 

At St. Louis Cathedral, where the large outdoor clock was stopped at

6:25 a.m. Monday, an alabaster statue of Jesus with his arms

upraised -- called Touchdown Jesus by some locals -- survived with

only a broken thumb.

 

Surrounding the statue were giant branches of live oak and magnolia

trees uprooted by the hurricanes.

 

" I am not a religious man. I am a pagan, actually. But seeing Jesus

still standing was awesome, " said Ken Hallober, a Melrose Park

native who works in New Orleans selling statues and making Mardi

Gras beads.

 

Hallober fled the city before the hurricane but came back after the

storm, swimming through floodwaters under the Interstate 10 overpass

to get back to his French Quarter apartment, which only lost its

shutters.

 

The Warehouse District near the French Quarter was another dry zone.

Egberto J. Ramos Jr. and Richard Porter, who moved there from Miami,

were sipping cocktails at Johnn White's Bar on Tuesday morning.

 

" We moved from Miami because there were four hurricanes in five

weeks. We packed up and left four times, " Ramos said.

 

He and his partner brought Ramos' mother with them to New Orleans.

 

" We persuaded her that New Orleans would not get hit by a

hurricane, " he said. " My mother said to me this morning if she hears

another hurricane coming, she's going back to Miami. "

 

Their warehouse apartment, built in 1912, survived the storm with

almost no damage. " The walls are one-foot thick, " Porter said.

 

Evanston native Diane Chaine survived the storm with her 8-month-old

daughter Kendra, and Kendra's father.

 

They holed up in the French Quarter after deciding not to stay at a

shelter the city set up at the Superdome.

 

" I should have packed up and gone to the Greyhound station, " said

Chaine, who moved to New Orleans seven years ago and works as a

secretary for the Court of Two Sisters restaurant in the

Quarter. " The climate, the food, the architecture drew me in, " she

said.

 

But Chaine said one hurricane like Katrina is enough. She plans to

come home to Chicago.

 

" I used to be afraid of snow up there, but this is crazy, " she said.

 

Until she leaves, Chaine said, she will try to help the less

fortunate.

 

" We're not hurt. We don't even have a cut. Now I am worried about

those people on those roofs, " she said.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-hurrside31.html

 

 

a blinding flash

hotter than the sun

dead bodies lie across the path

the radiation colors the air

finishing one by one