former co-worker..from the oakland tribune

[Guest guest]

Celebration turned chaotic for friends

Alamedan, Oaklander survived Katrina and found hospitality among the horror

 

 

 

By Susan McDonough, STAFF WRITER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patti Melton of Alameda and Kate Millosovich of Oakland survived Hurricane

Katrina. Kate holds a picture of her sister, Mary, who also returned safely.

(Sean Connelley - STAFF)

 

 

 

 

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans early Aug. 29, Patti Melton and sisters

Mary and Kate Millosovich — three lifelong friends from Alameda — opened up

two champagne bottles to celebrate Kate's upcoming wedding.

 

It was just after 5 a.m., not a minute too early to celebrate their survival.

 

The view from their fourth-floor room at the Hotel St. Marie in New Orleans'

French Quarter seemed to confirm what many people were speculating: New Orleans

had dodged a bullet.

 

" The hotel pool had lots of debris in it, but all in all it was apparent the

storm had spared New Orleans, " said Melton, 43, an office manager for a local

health care organization who lives in Alameda. Kate Millosovich, 36, is a grant

writer who lives in Oakland; her sister, 43, lives in Brooklyn.

 

The women were scheduled to leave New Orleans the night before, but by the time

they learned Saturday a tropical storm was headed their way their flights had

been canceled.

 

" We were blissfully ignorant, shopping and eating. The city was buzzing, " Melton

said Thursday at home in Alameda, her big-screen television tuned to MSNBC's

ongoing coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

 

Kate was with her. The women spent just over 24 hours at the New Orleans

Convention Center last week where people without food, water or medical care

waited for buses that did not come.

 

After the levees around the city broke Aug. 30, a full 24 hours after Katrina

had hit, Melton and her friends were told water might fill the lobby of the

Hotel St. Marie. They were advised to go to the convention center several blocks

away for safety.

 

They were among the first to arrive, Melton said. At around noon Tuesday, before

thousands of evacuees from around the city would be dumped there — wet,

hungry, sick and tired. Melton said at first the building was filled mostly with

police dispatchers and other emergency personnel, including the National Guard.

 

Melton said she watched National Guardsmen carry cases of bottled water to the

second floor of the convention center where evacuees were prohibited, and huge

Army trucks and helicopters came and went from the convention center parking

lot.

 

She watched as tempers flared and crowds swelled to as many as 25,000. But not

one person, no one from the National Guard or Red Cross as promised, offered

them a word of authority, encouragement or a drink of water.

 

Where the guardsmen would answer vaguely Tuesday that help would arrive soon, by

Wednesday, Melton said, they ignored the crowds. " They were just standing their

with their M-16s, " Kate said.

 

The women described the incredible kindness of many of the people they met while

in New Orleans and at the convention center: a hotel worker who offered to drive

them out of the city; a man at the convention center who shared a looted ham

with them; New Orleans natives who apologized to the women when they heard they

were tourists; and strangers who shared crackers, Diet Cokes and water.

 

" The ratio of good people that were there outweighed the troublemakers, " Melton

said.

 

She is disgusted by the way the people of New Orleans have been portrayed as

animals, she added.

 

She and Kate rejected explanations this week by top-ranking health officials who

blamed the slow delivery of services at the convention center on security risks

and chaotic conditions.

 

" It was no excuse, " Kate said. " They could have had so much setup on Tuesday.

 

Still, the women said things had gotten so bad at the convention center that by

Aug. 31, they headed out into the dangerous streets of the city littered with

abandoned police cars, broken windows and stray pets.

 

Outside the W Hotel the women saw four or five idling shuttle buses and people

loading. They were told there was room for them, but they had only 10 minutes to

collect their things.

 

Kate, Melton said, " ran like the wind " to get Mary and their luggage, which they

had left behind at the convention center.

 

Next thing they knew they were sitting on an air-conditioned shuttle bus on

their way out of the city.

 

" We were lucky, " Kate said Wednesday, sitting next to her friend in Alameda.

 

" Lucky isn't the word. It was divine intervention, " Melton said to her friend,

laughing.

 

She kissed her hand and touched it to the ground when they arrived last Thursday

in California.

 

Melton said she would go back in a second to help the city she considers a home

away from home if she had the means, but she doesn't.

 

" For as long as I live, why the people at the convention center had to suffer

and die needlessly will be an unfathomable mystery and an inexcusable injustice

to me, " she said.

 

 

 

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do

something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the

something that I can do.