On their own

SF paramedics tell a firsthand story of individual action amid official neglect in New Orleans

By Tali Woodward

Lorrie Beth Slonsky and Larry Bradshaw heard shots as they trudged up the incline to the Greater New Orleans Bridge, but the San Francisco paramedics had grown accustomed to the sound of guns during the three days they'd been stuck in the flooded city.

Suddenly the crowd ahead of them began to scatter, shouting that cops up ahead were shooting at them.

Bradshaw, assuming there was some misunderstanding, held up his paramedic badge and made his way to the line of officers at the foot of the bridge. He explained that the hordes of people were just trying to evacuate and they'd heard that buses were waiting across the bridge, in the suburb of Gretna.

The officers, their guns poised, told them that pedestrians weren't allowed across. In Slonsky and Bradshaw's recollection, the police said "This is not New Orleans," and "We're not having any Superdomes down here." As they retreated, the cops fired shots over their heads.

This aspect of Bradshaw and Slonsky's story has gotten some attention. An account of their time in New Orleans, originally posted on a Bay Area socialist listserv, was forwarded far and wide, and several news outlets followed up on their report, confirming that the bridge was closed to evacuees.

But along with disregard and callousness from public officials, Bradshaw and Slonsky saw something that was rarely conveyed in news media reports that tended to focus on looting and violence: ordinary people doing their best to take care of one another under strange and frightening conditions.

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Slonsky and Bradshaw met in an Oakland ambulance almost 20 years ago and have worked as San Francisco paramedics since 1994, although Slonsky recently retired. They went to New Orleans for a conference of emergency workers and were scheduled to leave Louisiana the afternoon of Aug. 28, more than a day before Katrina was supposed to strike land. But the airport closed hours before their flight, and the area's supply of rental cars had long been depleted.

So the pair stocked up on food, water, bandages, and ointment, settled into the French Quarter's Hotel Monteleone, and filled their bathtub to the brim. Those who could were leaving the hotel, Bradshaw told us, "But also people were coming in. Locals, who lived in flood areas, were coming to stay at this hotel because I think it's the biggest structure in the French Quarter, and it's survived numerous hurricanes." The Monteleone's manager told the hotel workers that if they were waiting out the storm, they should bring their families to stay in the hotel too, so everyone would be safe.

Bradshaw and Slonsky were concerned enough that they wrote out their wills, but they said the storm itself was "unimpressive." They woke up Monday morning to a jovial atmosphere, or as Slonsky said, "People were being very 'Kumbaya.' "

But just hours later, they heard on the radio that the levees had broken, and before long they saw the floodwater approaching. "You could look out and it just sort of looked like this shimmering sea," Bradshaw described.

For a few days, Slonsky said, "People were just trying to keep their wits and figure out what to do next." At one point they walked to the convention center where their conference had been held, and it was already packed, stinky, and chaotic.

"We wanted to see if we could volunteer to help," Bradshaw explained. "But there was no official in the center."

At the Monteleone the skeletal staff was assembling meals out of whatever was left in the cupboards; one consisted solely of Fruit Loops and grits. Looters had descended on the Walgreen's next door, clearing out all food and water. They didn't participate in the looting, but Bradshaw says, "In hindsight, I wish I would have gone in and gotten the pharmaceuticals. We were continually meeting people with high blood pressure, with heart conditions, diabetics. And no one had any medicine." They saw looters come out of Foot Locker and Brooks Brothers and they "saw a barter economy develop: People would trade a pair of shoes for some water or food," he said.

On Aug. 31 Slonsky and Bradshaw gathered their belongings and joined 500 other people waiting for a fleet of buses that had been ordered by their hotels. They easily organized themselves into priority groups, so that the least healthy evacuees would get out first. But hours passed, and the buses never arrived.

After one last night indoors, a couple of hundred stragglers decided to band together and find their way to safety. They roamed the streets, approaching police officers and National Guard troops for help. But rather than offering any useful advice, Slonsky and Bradshaw say, most of the officers were snide, muttering that they should have gotten out before the storm.

Finally a police commander told them that all they had to do was follow the freeway to the Greater New Orleans Bridge and cross the river into Gretna, where buses would be waiting. They set off gleefully, gathering some people from the convention center on their way, but every one of them was turned away at the bridge.

(Gretna police chief Arthur Lawson told us, "Yes, we did secure the bridge. It was a joint decision of three law enforcement agencies." He told us that Gretna was facing a possible levee breach of its own and lacked supplies for the evacuees. Lawson also said that "as our business gets back to normal" his department will investigate whether the police fired at the crowd.)

After they were turned away, Slonsky and Bradshaw joined a couple of dozen people to build a small camp on a freeway median shaded by an overpass. It lacked most of the comforts of their colorful, rented bungalow in Bernal Heights, but for several hours, the median felt a lot like home. Some of the youngest evacuees constructed an impromptu bathroom stall around a storm drain. Someone drove up in a water delivery truck and dropped off large jugs of the precious commodity. By another odd stroke of luck, dozens of Meals Ready to Eat had fallen out of a military vehicle as it flew by. They established a system for divvying up the food: coffee for adults, candy for kids, applesauce for babies.

"Once people had food and water, they got creative and got clean," Slonsky said. "We had shelter, food, water, and good community."

Their camp grew to 80 or so people. But at nightfall, they said, a cop drove up and shouted at them to disperse. Frightened by his drawn shotgun, they abandoned the median, and as they did, the cop loaded the food and water they had left behind into his squad car.

Bradshaw, Slonsky, and six others took shelter in an empty school bus for the night. Using precarious cell phone connections, they contacted fellow paramedics in the Bay Area who were able to get them picked up by helicopter the next day. What do they think would have happened if they hadn't had any connections within the emergency-services world? "We'd still be there," Slonsky said. Bradshaw agreed: "I have no doubt."

E-mail Tali Woodward at tali@sfbg.com.