Who stayed behind and why?
- The poor without means. No cars. No money. No friends with
means. Many of these were picked up in city RTA buses and taken to the
Superdome which was designated as the "shelter of last resort."
- The
old and infirm. Set in their ways. Survivors of many past storms.
Unwilling to endure the discomfort of evacuation. Stuck in a hospital
or nursing home.
- Those with pets or other obligations.
- The basest criminals. To protect their inventory and their lives.
- The emergency responders (and a lot of their families)
- The stubborn and cynical.
- The uninformed.
An estimated 150,000 people refused to leave. There may have been
twice this many throughout the metro area. Of these 1,000 died, many
old
and infirm. Some just unlucky to be caught close to the levee breaches.
Half of the survivors were rescued and evacuated.
Once rescued, people were not immediately evacuated. Many were deposited
on freeway overpasses to await evacuation. Others rescued themselves by
walking, or floating in a boat or other conveyance and made their way
to the Superdome. These folks were redirected to the Convention Center
to await evacuation.
The rest just stayed. Lots of them were in Algiers, Metairie and
Uptown. They had to survive the breakdown of civil order for a few days
but the flooding stayed away. If they had supplies they guarded them.
If not they went out and collected some. People banded together and
helped each other for a few days until order was restored.
The polimom blog (click below to read) offers one account of what it
was like to stay in Algiers. "The long road out of Mordor" is another
account of the storm and the effort to get across the CCC bridge and
out of town. Brian Williams (NBC) talks about what it was like to stay
in the Superdome that first night and day.