From photographic evidence and multiple eyewitness reports, it looks like Gretna officials stopped citizens from walking to buses being used in an evacuation effort. Furthermore, Gretna used their own buses to take people escaping from the city back to New Orleans.
As readers might know, Wizbang posted pictures of what were unused school buses at the Algiers Bus Depot, in a post entitled "Never Flooded New Orleans Buses Not Used for Evacuation". The Jawa Report showed satellite pictures of these buses moving out of the Algiers Bus Depot and also stopped at the Algiers Point ferry station, where it looks like they are picking up evacuees.
But more importantly, these pictures may be related to another story out of New Orleans in the days after Katrina hit. After the hurricane, the only land route out of New Orleans was the Crescent City Connection, a bridge that connects the West Bank and East Bank over the Mississippi River. There were multiple reports of citizens looking to leave the city on foot, only to be blocked by police with shotguns by Gretna, Jefferson Parish, and Crescent City Connection police. Furthermore, the evacuees that were confronted by these police were told that there were buses for evacuation on the other side of the Crescent City Connection. First, I'll review the evidence and then try and address some important questions.
Most of the news reports of the account included interviews with Larry Bradshaw, who first reported his account in the Socialist Worker. He was interviewed in a column in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times (article in archive), the Washington Times, the St. Petersburg Times, and CNN. Here are a few relevant excerpts from the NYT article:
Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, two paramedics who were in the crowd said.
The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.
Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.
''The police kept saying, 'We don't want another Superdome,' and 'This isn't New Orleans,''' said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing....
Cathey Golden, a 51-year-old from Boston, and her 13-year-old son, Ramon Golden, yesterday confirmed the account.
The four met at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. Mr. Bradshaw and Ms. Slonsky had attended a convention for emergency medicine specialists. Ms. Golden and her two children, including 23-year-old Rashida Golden, were there to visit family.
The hotel allowed its guests and nearly 250 residents from the nearby neighborhood to stay until Thursday, Sept 1. With its food exhausted, the hotel's manager finally instructed people to leave. Hotel staff handed out maps to show the way to the city's convention center, to which thousands of other evacuees had fled.
A group of nearly 200 guests gathered to make their way to the center together, the four said. But on the way, they heard that the convention center had become a dangerous, unsanitary pit from which no one was being evacuated. So they stopped in front of a New Orleans police command post near the Harrah's casino on Canal Street.
A New Orleans police commander whom none of the four could identify told the crowd that they could not stay there and later told them that buses were being brought to the Crescent City Connection, a nearby bridge to Jefferson Parish, to carry them to safety.
The crowd cheered and began to move. Suspicious, Mr. Bradshaw said that he asked the commander if he was sure that buses would be there for them. ''We'd had so much misinformation by that point,'' Mr. Bradshaw said.
''He looked all of us in the eye and said, 'I swear to you, there are buses waiting across the bridge,''' Mr. Bradshaw said.
There are also other eyewitness accounts that corroborate this general story of being blocked from crossing the bridge. From STLToday:
Wednesday, the Scheers and three other couples came up with a plan. They would walk across the Mississippi River bridge, out of the city, to be picked up by Scheer's cousin, who lives 135 miles from the French Quarter in New Iberia, La. But before they embarked on their walk, the hotel announced that buses were coming.
"They had arranged for buses with a police escort to come down from Shreveport. Guests at our hotel and another one were given first preference and they sold 500 tickets at $45 each," Scheer said. "We got a call that the buses were 10 minutes away, then we lost contact with the convoy. We found out they had been commandeered as they entered the city and sent to the Superdome."
A group of about 200 Monteleone guests decided to try to walk out of the city to the east, and got to the on-ramp at the Crescent Connection bridge, where they were met by Gretna, La., police with shotguns. "They told us the bridge was closed to foot traffic," Scheer said. "Some locals had joined us and became extremely unruly, threatening to rush the officers. They fired their shotguns into the air."
And then another brief eyewitness account from NBC4 in Southern California:
Jefferson said she thought buses were coming to pick her up, but then was turned away.
"We are just praying for the buses to come," Jefferson said. "We hope they can take us to Houston or Baton Rouge. I have an airplane ticket that's open. So, I'm hoping I can get on board Delta Airlines and just fly home."She said there was confusion concerning the buses that were going to take her and others stranded to another location."They told us to go to the Crescent City connection for buses, ready to pick us up," she said. "We walked over dangerous ground, past the convention center. We got up the ramp and (someone) started shooting."
A few things to note about these accounts. Two out of the three mention that the group was told to go over the Crescent City Connection for buses. The Bradshaw account specifically states that a New Orleans police commander instructed them to go across the bridge, because "there would be buses waiting to take us out". So from these accounts, we know that these people were instructed by a New Orleans police officer to cross the bridge to get to buses, and that they were blocked from exiting.
One thing unclear from the accounts is when this happened. The Bradshaw account has the encounter on the bridge happening on Thursday, whereas the Scheer's account at STLToday said it happened on Wednesday. This may be important with regards to the pictures of the schoolbuses in Algiers and other accounts.
If this happened on Wednesday, then there is little doubt that the Gretna/Jefferson Parish/CCC officials blocked these people from access to buses that were used in some sort of evacuation effort, as we know from the photographic evidence. If this happened on Thursday, it is likely that they were still being used in evacuation and still could have taken people out of Algiers (although we can't be certain of this, since the buses could have ran out of gas, could have been used elsewhere, etc.).
So far, we have photographic evidence that there were buses used in Algiers on Wednesday afternoon. We have multiple accounts of New Orleans police officials instructing people that evacuation buses are on the other side of the Crescent City Connection. And we have multiple eyewitness accounts of people being blocked from crossing the bridge, either on Wednesday or Thursday.
The Gretna police chief has also recounted his side of the story. In it, he verified that the bridge was closed by Gretna officials. He also recalls how buses were used by Gretna officials. From the St. Pete Times:
On the other side, Gretna police Chief Arthur Lawson believed his town was heading toward calamity. A ship had damaged a levee wall, a diesel tanker was spilling fuel into his streets and water was rising from the south.
It was Wednesday and streams of people were flowing over into his town from a city with a perennially high murder rate.
At first, Lawson's officers tried to accommodate the crowds. One officer, who drives a school bus in his spare time, ferried evacuees to a staging area outside the city. Other officers commandeered two buses from a depot and began ferrying evacuees, too.
Within 24 hours, they transported 5,000 or more evacuees, Lawson said. But the crowds kept growing and the buses were running out of fuel. Late Wednesday, a Gretna shopping mall was set ablaze.
On Thursday morning, Lawson closed the bridge.
"We had never planned on evacuating anybody," said Lawson. "We had no more to offer, in fact, we had less. There was civil unrest at the convention center, but there was not anybody drowning."
On the aerial pictures from Wednesday afternoon on the NGS site, I haven't been able to find any people crossing the bridge. This is a little curious, since the police chief says that 5,000 were transported. However, it is sometimes difficult to make out people from this height, and there are LOTS of photos on the NGS site that I haven't seen (unfortunately, the photos on the site aren't very well organized). Curious readers may want to look through the photos either here or on Google Maps or at the NGS and see if there is any evidence to support the police chief's claims.
Note how the police chief's account mentions officers commandeering two buses from a bus depot to ferry evacuees. Could these buses be the buses used in the picture? I doubt it, since he mentioned that the buses were commandeered from Westside Transit, which is in Gretna (here's the Google Maps picture).
And it's good that the buses in Algiers weren't being used by Gretna officials. Why? Because Gretna used the commandeered buses to take people back into New Orleans, based on instructions from FEMA. From a letter by the Gretna police chief, reproduced on Daily Kos:
Late in the day on Wednesday, a flow of people from New Orleans began to cross the Crescent City Connection on foot. They were told that food, water, safety and shelter could be found on the Westbank. Unbelievably, the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, was instructing people to cross the bridge; however he did not tell Gretna officials of his actions. With a crowd massing, Gretna police officers commandeered Westside Transit buses and began the arduous task of transporting busloads of people down the Westbank Expressway to the Huey P. Long Bridge and to safety at I-10 and Causeway, the FEMA approved evacuation point. It is estimated that approximately 6,000 evacuees were transported by the Gretna Police Department over a period of 12 to 14 hours without a death or injury reported. A fact overlooked by the national media.
Here's an NGS photo of I-10 and Causeway taken Wednesday afternoon.
So here's a review of what we know:
1. New Orleans city officials instructed citizens to go to buses in the West Bank across the Crescent City Connection
2. There were Orleans Parish school buses that were being used to evacuate people at Algiers Point.
3. Gretna, Jefferson Parish, and Crescent City Connection police blocked people from access to the West Bank (which is where Algiers Point is), when there were likely buses used in evacuation at that moment.
4. Gretna officials had their own buses, which they reportedly used to take people out of Gretna and back into New Orleans.
Now here's what we don't know.
1. Did New Orleans officials know that the Algiers Point buses were being used for evacuation?
We have no reports from New Orleans officials on this point. However, it does seem very likely that they knew about the buses, since the buses were part of their jurisdiction and they instructed people to walk miles in order to reach these buses.
2. When did New Orleans officials learn about the buses?
We can't know that either. The Algiers Point buses were unmoved as of Wednesday morning, but being used on Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, Google maps shows (link to this) a line of cars at Algiers Point. These cars were possibly used by helpful citizens to assist in evacuating those brought to Algiers Point by ferry or helicopter. Then on Wednesday afternoon, buses were used. Here's my guess as to what may have happened (this is only a guess, if others have potential accounts that also fit the evidence, feel free to submit them):
Local Algiers officials noticed that there were buses unused at the Algiers Bus Depot sometime on Wednesday. After getting a few drivers, gas, etc., they started to use them to evacuate people. City officials on the East Bank got reports that buses were being used (or were planning to be used) in the evacuation effort in Algiers (West Bank). City officials then told people that could walk to cross the bridge to get out. Gretna officials, fearing crime and looting, blocked foot access to Gretna, which also blocked their path into Algiers (which, again, is part of New Orleans).
(Also, for those that are wondering, Gretna police doesn't have jurisdiction to close the bridge. However, the Crescent City Connection is under the jurisdiction of the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection police, and reports note that they, along with Jefferson Parish police, were involved in the blockade.)
3. Is there evidence that the bridge was closed in the NGS pictures (taken on Wednesday afternoon?
This is a difficult question to answer. Looking through the NGS photos that were taken at the same time, there is a large police presence on the on ramp that leads to the Crescent City Connection. If police wanted to stop people from walking across the Crescent City Connection, they certainly had enough of a presence to do so. However, we have no idea whether these police are Orleans Parish police, and there's no evidence as to what they're doing. It's difficult to make out, but I don't see any pedestrians on the overpass nearer to the bridge. (To see what people look like from this height, look around the Superdome.)
I'm sure there are other questions to be asked. But from what we know, it looks like officials in Gretna, Jefferson Parish, and the Crescent City Connection police stopped people from reaching buses used for evacuation.
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