Text Box: Reporter's Notebook Lucille’s Lonely Vigil By KEN WELLS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL September 4, 2005 NEW ORLEANS—Where Interstate 10 skids abruptly into the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, a boat ramp of hope has sprung up. And Lucille Esquerre is keeping a lonely vigil for her mother, Rose Shanks. “She’s 81 years old,” Ms. Esquerre says, pointing eastward toward the still, black, sprawling lake that a good deal of New Orleans has become. “She called the night after the storm saying, ‘See, I told you I would survive. There’s water in the house and we’ve moved up to the second floor but we’re OK.’ But then the phones went out and we haven’t been able to get to her or my stepfather. We think they’re fine. They had food and water but--” She shrugs. It’s 4 p.m. on a cloudless, sultry Sunday and Ms. Esquerre, a dark-hair middle-age woman who grew up in the city, has spent a fretful four hours already, moving from a perch on the iron railings of Interstate 10 to folding chairs set out by rescue personnel, trying to follow a scarce amount of shade. She’s given her mother’s address—Hagan at Desoto about a mile below New Orleans City Park and perhaps five miles from here—to rescuers but so far they haven’t been able to locate the large Victorian house where she is trapped. “It’s very scary,” Ms. Esquerre says, “for her and for us.” Here, in the westbound lanes, a search and rescue encampment has sprung up around her, one of scores from which a mostly volunteer flotilla of hundreds of boats is trying to reach the remaining trapped throngs of Hurricane Katrina and recover its dead. “We’re after the living today, not the dead,” says Craig Walker, wiping sweat from the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He gives a quick rundown: about 22 boats dispatched. They’ve brought in seven survivors since morning, including an 88-year-old woman in surprisingly good shape; they’ve located 20 to 40 others, most of whom will be airlifted by helicopter. Boats have seen a few floating bodies but aren’t picking them up now. The afternoon searches, however, seem to be coming up empty, based upon two-way radio traffic so far. Mr. Walker, a large man in a blue uniform, is wearing a badge that says he’s with the Louisiana Office of Public Health, the agency now coordinating rescue efforts. But in reality he’s a fireman from Crowley, La., about 100 miles to the west who, like almost all of the 100 or so people milling around, are volunteers aching to make some dent in the catastrophe that has engulfed the New Orleans region. They’ve set up a white command tent and tables spread with local maps and walkie-talkies. Fifteen ambulances are parked nearby, some from as far away as Kentucky and Arkansas. Motors are running and a few people have sought refuge from the heat inside the air conditioned cabs. The ambulances will cart any survivors found to a makeshift hospital at New Orleans International Airport about ten miles away. Above them, in the eastbound lane, three large refrigerator trucks await the dead. The freeway is now a boat ramp, pickup trucks towing airboats and skiffs rumbling up, launching and setting out for the tricky waters, where hazards include barely submerged fences and freeway ramps, snapped off utility poles and sunken cars, two of which can been seen in the near distance. Boat operators can at least see the roofs of submerged houses, though the water has receded enough so that most are visible above the window lines. Every crew is armed, most with shotguns. One man, in fatigues, sports a bandolier of ammunition that holds perhaps 50 rounds. Mr. Walker explains. “We’re quitting at dark today because part of the area we’re search includes the St. Bernard Projects and it just won’t be safe there after dark. So we’ve asked everyone to start back at 6:30.” An hour and a half passes without a boat appearing and a strange monotony sets in. Helicopters thrum frequently overhead. Ms. Esquerre often leaves her seat to wander by the radio table, hoping that each time she hears chatter it will be news of her mother. But a call finally comes in saying the boat searching for that intersection simply can’t find it yet. Paramedics assigned to the ambulances gather in clusters to talk about what they’ve experienced so far. “You should have seen a couple of our patients who came in this morning,” says Melissa McCrory, part of a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT) squad from Dermott, Ark. “They were so dehydrated they couldn’t even cry.” Among another cluster of paramedics, a woman points south from the freeway ramp and says, “Look, is that a body?” Another paramedic comes over, scans the horizon with his eyes and says, “Well, it could be. I’ve been smelling one all day.” He rummages in a nearby bag for binoculars but his report is inconclusive. “Somebody should go over there in that canoe and check it out.” The EMT’s are ordered not to leave their posts, so this reporter volunteers to paddle over to the spot, perhaps a hundred yards away where a giant water main protrudes above the flood line. It’s happily a false alarm—driftwood and detritus clumped together in smelly black soup. Soon, a boat appears with a survivor—a young pit bull that goes frolicking among the paramedics, searching for affection. Then another boat follows quickly with a another survivor identified as Thomas or Tony Jackson—he’s given rescuers both names. He’s a haggard-looking, painfully thin African-American man in baggy blue sweat pants and a white t-shirt who wobbles when he is helped from the boat. He was plucked from the porch of a housing project. A paramedic has already attached an IV to his right arm and he’s quickly whisked into wheel chair and put into an ambulance. “He didn’t want to come at first—he’s clearly delusional,” says Lisa Aptaker, a Manhattan physician who was on the boat that found him. “But then he told me later he’d had a dream—that Jesus told him he’d be rescued this way. It was moving in a way I hadn’t expected.” The 30-something Dr. Aptaker, an Army veteran in her Army fatigues, had driven down the day before from New York with two other medical volunteers to lend a hand and with two hours sleep had joined this effort. She continues: “We saw a lot of that—people who didn’t want to leave.” Given the deteriorating circumstances out there, “we’re talking about a huge environmental and public health concern,” she adds. Darkness settles in; the heat abates only a little. A few boats straggle in, all of them empty. One downtrodden boat skipper says, “It’s discouraging. We saw a house with a white flag on it. We broke the window but the stench—I just couldn’t go in there.” When the last boat checks in, the camp breaks down as quickly as it was put up and the freeway empties out.

The “boat launch” from the westbound I-10 lane  near the 17th Street Canal levee break.

Photo © 2005 Ken Wells