How Places of Refuge went to Hell

[DoYouEverWonder]

September 15, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- To people who stayed in either of the two battered buildings, it was a "horrible prison." Or "the darkest hole in the world." Or "the place I want to forget." Mostly, though, they just called it hell.

Located roughly a mile apart, the Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center stand like gigantic, derelict castles bracketing the ruined business district of New Orleans. Today, they are eerily lifeless except for the workers cleaning up their fouled grounds--nauseating debris fields of human feces, soiled clothes, shoes and rotting Army rations.

But, for one terrible week starting Aug. 29, the two mega-structures--ostentatious symbols of American popular culture and commercial might--swarmed with at least 22,000 frantic people and perhaps many more, all victims of the massive floods that Katrina unleashed in her wake, and all despairing of hope for government resupply or rescue.

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"I'm really not outraged at the people," said Capt. John Bryson of the New Orleans police, whose 80 to 90 officers were vastly outnumbered by crowds of up to 15,000 at the convention center. "Ninety percent of the folks were just reduced to an animal existence, trying to survive.

"I'm outraged at being abandoned there by the government," Bryson said acidly. "I felt totally helpless."


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