Live from the Superdome

Editor's Note: The following excerpt is from an on-air discussion between Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and New York Daily News reporter Tamer El-Ghobashy, who is on location in New Orleans.

AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday afternoon, we talked to New York Daily News reporter Tamer El-Ghobashy. He was inside another of the main refugee centers in New Orleans, the Superdome, where as many as 30,000 people sought shelter. He began by describing the situation around him.

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: I'm waiting in waist-deep water outside the Superdome in downtown New Orleans, where it's starting to rain. The streets are much emptier today than they were last night. People have been walking through the water on the highways, and at times sleeping on the highways; two, three day journeys just to walk four miles to the Superdome, just to give you an idea of how difficult it is to get around here.

Right now they're trying to coordinate the evacuation of the Superdome onto buses that, if I understand correctly, are taking people to Houston. It's not going well. The military, police and the national guardsmen are overwhelmed by the number of people. The local New Orleans police are assisting, and it's still not helping.

There are throngs of people, easily in the tens of thousands, maybe forty to fifty thousand people, in my estimation, standing on this plaza trying to get to a very narrow area where they're being escorted to the buses. I haven't seen one bus leave yet.

People are passing out and, you know, you have elderly and children and in some cases kids born two weeks ago. One man was assaulted by a group of people with metal bars for asking for a cigarette. He's semiconscious, very agitated when he is conscious. It's very difficult; they can't do anything for him. Other citizens are just trying to help him out.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what it was like when you got to the Superdome yesterday?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: The Superdome yesterday was — I guess by then it had been in service as a refugee center for about three days. It was — squalor is the only word I can think of to describe it.

The bathrooms were not functioning because of overflowing toilets. There was human waste everywhere in and around the bathrooms. Inside the dome itself, these cavernous, very dark hallways populated with people sleeping on the ground. It's a gigantic stadium. The seats were semi-full from one tier to the next, and people were also camped out on the artificial turf, the artificial grass turf. It was very dimly lit and very stifling. The smell was atrocious. People were terrified.

There were rumors — I call them rumors only because I can't verify them — but people were talking about at least four rapes, including the rape of children. People were talking about murders and assaults, and people were talking about newborn babies being born and dumped into the garbage, and allegations of brutality by the military police and the national guardsmen.

None of that can be substantiated, because there is no one to talk to from the official side of things. They're overwhelmed by the work they're doing.

However, regardless of whether these rumors are true or not, people believe them, and it's contributing to the lack of security and extreme fear and nervousness in addition to the hunger and, you know, people that have just recently lost everything they have.

I was speaking to people waiting to get onto the buses who — and I assume that they were leaving only to come back one day — but nine out of ten people I spoke to said that they were intending to start over elsewhere.

AMY GOODMAN: How do they feel about going from the Superdome in New Orleans to the Astrodome in Houston?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Well, people were talking about...you know, the belief amongst the refugees, as they have come to be known here, is that they were not going to be allowed to be in Houston, that Houston didn't want them, so they didn't know what to think. But asking them, “In the event that you end up in the stadium, in Houston...” they said, "As long as they're prepared for us," and "Anywhere but here" was the kind of sentiment that they had.