For [Saints] quarterback Drew Brees and several others it will be their first trip inside the stadium that drew worldwide attention during Katrina.
"I'll be wide-eyed a little bit just looking around and seeing what it's going to feel like for the next 10 years hopefully, the rest of my career," Brees said. "I've only seen it on television.
"If anything, the Superdome was a saving grace for a lot of people; it housed a lot of people and probably saved a lot of people. For that to have happened -- I think several people were killed and there was a suicide, that was horrible. But to think of all the people who were saved, you look at that arena as more than just a football stadium."
While quarterback Drew "Cool" Brees is correct to say that the Superdome is more than just a football stadium, and that it was the refuge of last resort for "a lot" of people (over 25k) during and after Katrina, he did make a factual error which the T-P article failed to correct. YRHT will endeavour to remedy this oversight. However, let me say at the outset that Brees' claim is still probably far more accurate than most people's lingering perceptions of the so-called "atrocities" that supposedly occurred in the Superdome during the Katrina aftermath.
First, let's consult the book Disaster by Chris Cooper and Robert Block, and see if we can't counter some of these false, lingering perceptions about the "killings" at the Superdome (as well as the Convention Center). From page 223, we begin to learn the real story: that FEMA's deputy coordinating officer estimated there were 200 homicide "bodies" between the Convention Center and the Super Dome. That when FEMA's mortician crew arrived at the Super Dome with refrigerated trucks to collect the bodies, they found precisely NONE in the arena. Overall, the Dome's dead numbered six bodies: a heart attack victim, three natural deaths, a suicide and a drug overdose.
Further:
At the Convention Center, the scene was similar. Despite the lurid tales of wanton violence, the scores of dead that officials insisted were waiting inside, the massive building yielded up just four bodies, only one of which, an apparent knifing victim, seemed to have met with a violent end. There were no dead babies, no adolescent girls with their throats cut, no bullet-riddled bodies at all.
In the entire city, during the anarchy and looting and chaos in catastrophic conditions "hardly any of the victims had died a violent death at the hands of others. City coroner Frank Minyard reckoned there were eight gunshot victims during the storm and its immediate aftermath, and two of those were suspected suicides. (223)
So perhaps someone can please tell Drew Brees that, actually, "several people" weren't killed in the Superdome.
And perhaps someone else can inform the rest of the country that NO ONE WAS KILLED IN THE SUPERDOME DURING THE KATRINA AFTERMATH!
NO ONE! No killings! Nada. Zero. Bupkis. Zip. Zilch. Squat.
How many Americans know that fact?
Now, I'm not saying it was a picnic in the Dome. Hell no. Tensions were high. Rumors swirled. Some fights broke out, as well as a small fire. There was no running water, there were no working bathrooms, there wasn't enough food or medicine or generators or security. The roof was leaking, it was hotter than Hades, and FEMA wasn't bringing promised supplies. Many New Orleanians who sought refuge in the Dome had just lost family and friends to the floodwaters, not to mention homes and businesses. These are the harsh conditions that 25,000 strangers were dealing with day after day after day. But it is important to note that people weren't killing one another in the Dome.
Seriously, try this experiment: Take any major metropolitan area, strip it down to its last 50,000 most desperate citizens, and throw them in dark, stench-ridden, insecure arenas and convention centers during a major catastrophe. Keep them there without enough food, water and meds for several days, and see if you can limit the homicides to under one, total.
Now, when we add five more deaths to the one in the Convention center, we get SIX TOTAL HOMICIDES IN THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS DURING THE KATRINA AFTERMATH.
SIX. Put that fact in your sugared coffee and stir it, America.
Sure, I wish there were fewer murders, but six is a remarkably low number given the catastrophic conditions. From the media coverage, however, one would have expected six hundred homicides city-wide, not six. Everyone remembers the reports about the "atrocities": the raped babies, the slit throats, the mass killings, the shooting at helicopters, the wanton violence and destruction, the bodies stacked up "like cordwood" in the evacuation centers.
But who remembers the corrections?
To his credit, Drew Brees tried to describe the other side of the issue. It's true that people's lives were saved in the evacuation centers of last resort. But one can take that point much, much further. The Dome and the Convention Center were places where humanity didn't unravel during unexpectedly desperate circumstances. For the most part, these evacuation areas were centers of admirable endurance-- perhaps even "superhuman forbearance", as Bob Somerby describes it. And yet, people still associate the Superdome and Convention Center with widespread death and killings, because the traumatic news reports that were seared into our brains during "Katrina week" were wrong, wrong, wrong!
New Orleans may never be able to disabuse the rest of the country from the myths and rumors that were reported during the Katrina aftermath. Our tourist-based city's reputation was massively (and unjustly) damaged. Let's revisit one of the main reasons why this happened (the following extended excerpts are again from Disaster):
Rumors [at the Superdome] spread like poison gas. Mayor Nagin and his police chief, Eddie Compass, contributed on this score. For days, the two men had been delivering fanciful descriptions to the press of the Superdome and the city at large. Nagin had spoken of the "animalistic" state of the Superdome's residents, of dead bodies piling up in dark rooms, of killings, rapes and child mortality. Compass let fly with tales of sustained gun battles, assassination attempts, and other accounts of derring-do. At the Superdome on Wednesday night, Compass... [was] in tears. "My guys are getting killed out there," he cried. "A girl, a child died in my arms." (pg 193)
The Convention Center, like the Superdome, would become synonymous with lurid lawbreaking, and again, New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass was stirring the pot. Compass spread unsubstantiated reports that the Convention Center was a hideout for an armed gang that moved among the thousands of evacuees and had commandeered the building's third floor as a vast weapons armory. He said this shadowy force was picking off tourists who ventured too close. He also claimed that he had sent a force of eighty-eight police officers to the building to bring order to the place but that they had been beaten back by a better armed, highly organized thug army. Inside, he (and others) claimed, children were being raped and adults were being executed. Bodies were said to be stacked like cordwood in the building's catering coolers....
These reports prolonged the suffering at the Convention Center. After getting an earful from Compass, the Louisiana National Guard, in consultation with the city government, withdrew its plan to bring supplies to the building in the middle of the night, deeming the mission too dangerous. (pg 205-206)
[One] of the enduring mysteries of the fumbling U.S. response has always been why the Pentagon did not move more quickly to quell the unrest in the city shortly after the disaster began. And one of the reasons... was that the federal government believed-- largely based on rumors-- that it had to plan for a far more complicated military operation, one in which federal soldiers might have to kill American citizens, perhaps in great numbers. Such a prospect added serious political and tactical complications to what otherwise might have been a more straightforward relief effort. [207]
What did the National Guard actually find at the Convention Center, when they finally arrived?
a dispirited crowd that was hungry, thirsty and fully cooperative....
There were no heavily armed thug forces, no third-floor hideaway. Soldiers searching the crowd said they found a scattering of weapons, steak knives mostly, and one rusty pistol that didn't appear to be operable. The place was secured within a half hour. (pg 211)
Again, I'm not saying everything was fine in the evacuation centers during the Katrina aftermath, but I believe 99% of folks were behaving quite admirably under the circumstances. Yet 99% of what was initially reported about the violent crime was totally untrue. Out of the 50,000 people in desperate circumstances at the Superdome and the Convention Center, there was ONE homicide during the Katrina aftermath. (Six, total, throughout the city.) There were ten deaths, and most of them were natural. For perspective, consider that about SIXTY people died in Houston's poorly coordinated evacuation from Hurricane Rita.
I'm reminded of Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke", which includes some tantalizing footage of New Orleanians who attempt to lighten the mood in the Dome by marching through the halls and singing songs. Now that's what you call a great moment! The government had failed these people horribly, their city had flooded, there wasn't enough food, water, and medicine... and yet they decide to sing and dance!
Truthdig provides some more detail about this particular episode:
In one of several remarkable scenes from Spike Lee's new four-hour documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem for New Orleans in Four Acts," a young man who sat out the flood in the hot and stenching Superdome surprises us with a recollection of grace. During a particularly desperate moment in the sewer-- no water, no food, no help in sight-- someone took charge. "There was this brother named Radio," he tells us, "...and he started clapping it up, like in a basketball game.... It was a big, big spirit; people just started singing praises."
Our storyteller continues in voiceover as the camera cuts to archived footage from the Superdome-- a line of men and women dancing and singing, sweat visible through dirty T-shirts. "It was a proud moment for us. We marched around the dome, and that time I felt back to the Movement, the civil rights movement, when it was real powerful."
In my view, THIS should be everyone's dominant memory of the Superdome during Katrina: New Orleanians marching and singing praises in awful conditions. Despite their government having failed them, these men and women not only kept their composure, they rejoiced! They sang and danced and remained faithful amidst tragedy. That should have been the hopeful, inspiring story about the Superdome to come out of Katrina. That should have been our heroic image, our city's symbol of strength.
New Orleanians are not "savages" nor "Somalians". When everything breaks down we do not rape children and go on mass killing sprees like the media reported; we are not "animalistic" like our mayor said, we do not form "thug armies" in desperate circumstances, we are not anarchists.... But, after Katrina, America was ready to believe the worst about us, as if most New Orleanians were depraved criminals at heart.
The country needs to understand that this is NEW ORLEANS, and that neither hurricane nor flood nor FEMA can stop us from dancing.
Monday Night might be the first time since Mr. Radio "took charge" last year that crowds will be singing and clapping in the Superdome. The Saints will take on the hated Falcons in what is being called the "most anticipated game in franchise history" (T-P), and "the most triumphant moment in the history of American sports" (Big Shot). U2, Green Day and Trombone Shorty , among others, will be performing there. This city of unmatched football loyalty needs its football team more than ever right now, and everyone is very excited about the Saints 2-0 start, and about Reggie Bush, our exciting rookie running back. For the first time ever, the team has sold out every single home game in advance. (Remember that New Orleans is only half-populated.) So, it's hard to describe what this team means to us right now. It is a source of unity and pride, as well as a therapeutic distraction from all the other "real life stressors" that abound here. It's possible that the Dome will never be louder or more energized than it will be Monday Night. I expect the team to surprise the rest of the country and upset the Falcons on national TV. In particular, I hope Brees and Bush perform spectacularly.
However, as we cheer on the Saints, let's remember all those who displayed remarkable patience and forbearance under grueling circumstances a year ago (despite being slandered by government officials who spread wild, unconfirmed rumors about them). No matter what good things happen on the field in the months and years to come, for me, the stalwart spirit of "Saints" like Mr. Radio will always be the highlight of the Sacredome.
