This is the interesting story of a Reuters photographer:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...OTEBOOK-DC.XML
"I'm going to pray for you" - Katrina victim
Tue Sep 6, 2005 3:28 PM ET
Reuters' Denver-based photographer Rick Wilking arrived in New Orleans two days before Hurricane Katrina hit and stayed in the greater New Orleans area for six days. The following is his personal account of the storm and its violent aftermath.
By Rick Wilking
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - It was dawn when he showed up out of nowhere. "Hey man, there's a ton of media up here and they have a lot of stuff. I don't see any cops. There's no security."
The man in ragged clothes summoned his friends to attempt a "hit" on a convoy of a dozen media cars parked on the highway overpass near the New Orleans Superdome, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit.
Fortunately for us the conversation was overheard. As soon as we saw a mob making its way toward us and just as a network anchor was about to go live for a morning show, the word went down the line.
Before you knew it, the lights were struck, the wires tossed into trucks, the satellite dishes stowed, and photographers and reporters were speeding the wrong way down the interstate to the relative safety of a police checkpoint.
When we got there the police told us there had been nearly 80 carjackings in the last few days, many of them media vehicles surrounded by mobs and stripped clean or stolen outright, sometimes at gunpoint. They also told us a policeman had been shot in the head (he lived) and so they had a new "shoot to kill" policy in place.
I've covered dozens of natural disasters around the globe, from mudslides and floods in Europe to hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States. I always considered the assignments somewhat dangerous but not extremely so, because if you know what you are doing you can easily minimize the danger -- actually control your situation.
Not so in New Orleans, where after one day of covering a storm and its aftermath I found myself covering a human tragedy of enormous proportions, compounded by a blatant criminal element bent on taking advantage of a very bad situation.
Looting is almost always found in the initial hours after a storm -- particularly if the area hit is a poorer neighborhood. But armed gangs riding in pick-up trucks, shots being fired from the ground at military rescue helicopters overhead and media vehicles being hijacked are not things you expect.
Covering flooded New Orleans was hard enough with many major roads under water, no power and no phones, not even cellular, without having to watch your back at every turn.
"SEND HELP TO US"
As I sat in my car with the sun coming up behind me, I tried to decide what to do. I was alone for Reuters in the city, at least temporarily, and I had no working communications. A colleague was to arrive later that day with a satellite telephone.
It was tempting to stay near the police, but that would mean no pictures, so when a convoy of a couple dozen trucks with boats on trailers went speeding by with a police escort, I hopped in my truck and joined them.
We ended up going out to the New Orleans East area where I shot pictures of elderly paralyzed people being evacuated from a flooded hospital after floating my truck through two-foot-deep water.
The patients were taken out of the flooded areas only to find themselves sitting in the 100 degree Fahrenheit heat waiting to be loaded into the back of a U-Haul truck or even a semi-trailer for a grueling ride to New Orleans' Superdome where they met an even grimmer fate -- sitting outdoors with no medical assistance, water, food, sanitation or security.
I made my way to the equally large mass of humanity at the New Orleans Convention Center where conditions were even worse. People were actually dying on the street waiting for help.
After determining the crowd was threatening but not yet violent, I parked my car several blocks away and walked in with only one camera and one wide-angle lens. The more gear you have the more of a target you are for thieves.
The crowd spotted me instantly anyway, and before I knew it I was surrounded by dozens of people shouting things ranging from "It's about time you showed up! - you have to let the world see us!, send help to us!" to others saying, "If you take my picture you'll be the next dead body here."
Several pulled on my arms wanting to show me the dead, and one man carrying a little baby insisted on unveiling a man lying dead in a lawn chair on the median.
SHE OPENED HER EYES AND GROANED
After a full glass milk bottle thrown my way crashed to the street about 10 feet away I decided I should keep moving, and that's when I found her. An 89-year-old woman, still in her hospital gown, still sitting in her wheelchair, but slumped over and barely conscious with a crowd around her pouring water on her head. She briefly opened her eyes, groaned and then stopped moving.
A military truck passed with a lone soldier in the back with an automatic rifle on his lap, hunkered down as if to hide from the crowd that was appealing to him to stop for the woman. The truck kept moving. I doubt whether the woman woke up.
I went back to my car to get another camera with a telephoto lens after deciding the crowd was more positive toward the press than negative, but when I got there I discovered my instincts were wrong.
The car's window had been smashed and my second camera and the laptop I used to transmit the pictures were gone.
I found colleague Jason Reed who had come in the day before, and used his laptop to send in my pictures. I now had just one camera and lens to work with, and Reuters determined that after a week covering the storm I had put in my time. I was sent home to rest and resupply.
When I left I took with me two local residents, one of them a 60-year-old veteran with Parkinson's who could barely walk. When I got him to a hotel in Houston five hours later, he said "I'm going to pray for you every night."
-Rudey