The day the music died
Sunday January 15, 2006
The Observer
Brandon McGee is a rapper and survivor. His rap name is Shorty Brown Hustle but most people call him B. He is 30, not much over five foot, has a shaved skull and two gold teeth, wears sagging jeans and a hoodie. He never stops talking. The day before Katrina hit New Orleans, B was leaning towards staying put. Few in his world watch TV news or read papers, so he didn't know how serious the situation was. Hurricanes didn't bother him. Almost every season brought a false alarm. Katrina was almost on the doorstep by the time B's mother, who lived outside the city, called and told him to get the hell out. Still he hesitated. His cousin Terence, who lived in New Orleans East, refused to shift. B stopped by his house and tried to talk sense into him. Terence, trying to impress his girlfriend Vonda, chose bravado over reason. They were still arguing at dawn when the power went out and the wind hit.
<snip>
Boats drifted by, ripped loose from their moorings in Lake Pontchartrain. When Terence grabbed a passing rowboat, B told him to wait. There were people in the building who had no way to save themselves: Miss Beulah, an old woman in a wheelchair, whose husband had gone missing; a woman in her thirties with a baby; a 13-year-old boy; and two small children with no parents in sight. Though all were strangers to B, he hauled them into the boat, along with Terence and Vonda, and they paddled with their hands and bits of driftwood out of the apartment complex, across the vast lake where New Orleans East had been.
From time to time, they passed corpses, floating face down or tangled in felled electric wiring. It was mid-afternoon and the only landmark visible above the waters was the overpass of the freeway, a quarter-mile away. Miss Beulah didn't know where she was. She kept grunting and rocking the boat, but the children were calm. None of them cried, not then or the days that followed. When the boat reached the overpass, hundreds were huddled there. No one knew the levees had burst; some thought this was the end of the world. Military vehicles drove past without stopping and helicopters circled overhead. To B, this meant rescue was at hand. He didn't understand why none of the soldiers dropped food or water, but he told Miss Beulah and the kids that everything was under control. Come morning, their troubles would be over.
The next day was molten. Insufferable heat and humidity are par for New Orleans in late August, but this was like nothing B had experienced. There wasn't a whisper of breeze; the skyline was dotted by fires. Stuck on the overpass without water, he felt his tongue and eyeballs swell. People were screaming and crying. Some jumped; others were hauled back. More dead bodies floated by below. The stench was indescribable. National Guardsmen cruised by in motor boats and waved. None offered help or information. 'Looked like we were supposed to die there. That seemed to be the plan,' B says.
When darkness came, he and some others broke into a grocery store and took what they needed: water, snacks, chocolate. Then he sat awake till dawn, making sure no one bothered Miss Beulah or the kids. They had become his responsibility. Next day, a coastguard boat came by and moved them from the overpass to Chef Menteur Highway, a dilapidated stretch of fast-food joints, strip clubs and hot-sheet motels, where there was less flooding. The hurricane had stripped many buildings bare, leaving only twisted metal. B and his flock sat by the roadside outside Skate Country till a man with a towtruck gave them a lift to Capt Sal's, a seafood restaurant, where other escapees had made an encampment. B helped liberate some of the seafood. Though the fish was spoiled, he was too hungry to care. All inhibitions were falling away. There were no rules now. You got by any way you could.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1686412,00.html
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