Live from the Superdome

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted September 3, 2005.

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.

AMY GOODMAN: What sense do you have of who is in charge at the Superdome?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: From what I can see and what I can tell, it appears as though the Army is in charge. I'm not sure if the efforts are being coordinated by the State Office of Emergency Management here, or the National Guard or what.

It's very difficult to know who is in charge, and very difficult to get anyone from the officials to speak with you. Somewhat understandably, their priority, as it should be, is to help these people and get them out of there. They're having a hard enough time doing that.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there food and water?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Scarce food and water, although I can see that it's being brought in by military flatbeds and dump trucks. There are cases of water being brought in.

Food is another issue. Yesterday at the Superdome, people were being provided with at least two meals a day consisting of these ready-to-eat meals that the army gives out, however, they said that they would be standing in line for well over two hours to get the meals and complained that children cannot really handle these ready-to-eat meals, not appetizing for the children, it seems, and the children - adults are having a hard time feeding the children hot water, although it is clean water, but it's not cold, and it seems as though it's taking its toll on the kids and the elderly the most.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe how you got into New Orleans yesterday?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Yesterday we got into New Orleans by trying our best to circumvent the various police checkpoints along the main interstate and the surrounding larger arteries. With the help of some local folks, we were able to use back roads that were at that point unmanned by police.

Having no Internet and phone in New Orleans, we are forced to go back to Baton Rouge in order to transmit our reports and our pictures. I'm with a photographer by the name of Michael Appleton, but today we got in. They had -- the back roads were manned. They were only letting in emergency vehicles, according to them. We found a way by doing something rather unadvisable, but we got here.

AMY GOODMAN: What was that?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Well, we drove on the levee for a portion of our trip...

AMY GOODMAN: What is it like to drive on the levee?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: It's nerve wracking simply because you don't want to get caught, but otherwise there's plenty of room on it to actually fit a car across of it. It's designed to have vehicles drive on it, whether it be emergency vehicles or official vehicles or what.

AMY GOODMAN: Surrounded by water?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: No. No. The portions that - at that area are completely dry. The only evidence of the hurricane you would see are sporadic downed wires, downed trees, and maybe some signs ripped out of the ground. Things like that.

AMY GOODMAN: How desperate were people as you drove into New Orleans?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: People are extremely desperate here. They're tired, physically exhausted. They have lost everything, in most cases.

Let's keep in mind that the people who were unable to evacuate New Orleans were unable to evacuate because they don't have the means to evacuate. And so they have lost all of their possessions, and they have very little direction, and are really doing anything they can to survive.

The lootings were, in some cases, opportunists who were taking that time to take things that they can't plug into any electricity. There's no electricity. They were taking TV's and curling irons, things like that, but from what I have seen personally, what I have witnessed, is that most of looters are people taking Pampers, clean water, juice, other food -- anything they can grab to feed themselves and whoever else are dependent on them.

AMY GOODMAN: You describe two armed men, self-appointed sheriffs in a white pickup truck in the Carrollton neighborhood. What happened there?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Wedrove up to a Rite-Aid that was being, you know, for lack of a better term, being looted.

They were taking things out of the Rite-Aid by driving — they had driven a forklift into it and raised the gates. Two men in a white pickup truck came out armed with pistols, and shot, first pointed their weapons at the people.

They pointed their weapons at the looters, telling them to stop. Some scattered, some didn't. The ones that didn't, they shot into the air and began shooting in their direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Tamer, what's happening right now?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: I'm walking into what seems to be a point where the buses are picking up the people that were in the superdome, and there's various military and police officials just inquiring who I am at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: You talked about being in waist-deep water. What is the water like here and in other parts of New Orleans?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: It's quite filthy. There's a slimy film on top of the water, and inside the water there's debris that you have to be careful not to trip over or have cut you. People have said, and it's been confirmed by officials, although I have not seen it myself, that there's been dead bodies and decomposing bodies floating through the water. It seems to have gone down a little bit from yesterday into today, however.

AMY GOODMAN: Tamer, you also were at ground zero on September 11th. Can you describe that and this?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Well, I mean...I would have to say that this is much worse in terms of the scope of the destruction.

Ground zero was confined to a portion of the city that, compared to the portion of the city that's affected here, is a very small area in lower Manhattan, although...I was not here for the hurricane, I did not see the destruction occur, although I did, on some level, see it occur downtown in New York. This aftermath and the human toll in this case is — in my opinion — much worse.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Landrieu is saying, perhaps thousands of people have died. Is that your sense? What are people saying? Are people talking about having lost loved ones?

TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: It's remarkable that I have not yet run into someone who has declared that they have lost a loved one. However I am running into a lot of people who can't find loved ones, who were separated at some point during the storm or separated in the aftermath of the storm or had gone separate ways prior to the storm and now can't find each other.

In my estimation, I think people are being optimistic, thinking that their loved ones may be elsewhere, but alive and well. Although, I do not think it's outrageous to say that thousands may have died here.

The city did not seem to be equipped to deal with the aftermath of this storm. There are still people stranded. You have to assume they have been without food and water for at least three or four days now, and if they didn't die from drowning or being hit by debris or something directly related to the storm, I imagine people are now dying from malnutrition and starvation, although that is my estimation based on seeing people still stranded, and people still walking into the Superdome as of five minutes ago after walking six miles from somewhere else or being brought in by boats or helicopters.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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