Story of one Katrina survivor from Treme
Sep. 20th, 2005 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infrogmationHe're an article about a friend and bandmate with a home in the Treme neighborhood. It made the front page of the paper in his family home town of Marion, Ohio.
Marion Star article "Katrina brought terror, anarchy to his home"
Article published Sep 18, 2005
Katrina brought terror, anarchy to his home
Former Marion man stayed as long as he could to help victims
By JOHN JARVIS
The Marion Star
MARION - Bound for what's left of his office in Metairie, La., the 39-year-old former Marion resident has survived Hurricane Katrina.
On Friday in Fort Worth, Texas, sure of the support he has felt from family and friends, John Birdsong carried on uncertainly with his life.
"I've got a few places I can be at," he said by cell phone as he ordered dinner at a cafe featuring home-cooked meals. "I need to be in Louisiana part of the time for my work (as a loan originator). I need to be in Houston to do office work, and I need to be in Fort Worth to see my daughter."
A few days earlier in Marion, tears shone in his eyes and emotion weighed down his words as he spoke of Caroline Grace Birdsong, who will turn 11 months old in a week. He shares joint custody with her mother, who evacuated when Katrina hit, took refuge with their toddler in Fort Worth and has found a new job.
While he understands his former mate's decision, "It's kind of a bummer," he said, one consequence of Katrina demanding he choose between returning to Louisiana, moving to Fort Worth or landing somewhere in between.
If his home in New Orleans is where he heads, he'll face military checkpoints, a lack of clean tap water and a dusk-to-dawn curfew. It'll be weeks, if not months, before any sort of normalcy returns to the Gulf Coast area where recovery efforts, President Bush said on Friday, are expected to swell the national debt by $200 billion or more.
Storm brings terror
When the effects of the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, his home of approximately five years, life turned on its head for the man of whom his mother, Janette Birdsong Grace of Marion, said, "John's going to do what he's going to do."
The day before the hurricane hit, he discovered he couldn't start his car. He planned to buy a battery the next day, but in the morning instead found himself scrambling to the attic of the house that he and his friend were renovating 10 minutes from Bourbon Street. While trying to secure the roof, the wind blew so hard it shook him. He said he saw a house across the street flattened in the time it took him to walk down a flight of stairs.
"It was seven hours of terror," he said.
Within a few hours of the hurricane passing, water had filled the street high enough that the car of his friend and his friend's fiancé couldn't be driven out.
Power was gone by 8 a.m. the first day of the storm, water service ended within three more days and gas service to the home was off a day later.
They "hunkered down" with a 55-gallon drum of water for bathing, six cases of bottled water and two refrigerators of food they had purchased before for the storm.
"We prepared very well for it just in case we got stuck there," he said.
Anger soon joined their fear as they saw residents of what Birdsong said was a crack house begin looting a neighboring pharmacy. He said he videotaped some of the activity. He said after a police officer walked through the neighborhood after the storm calmed, he didn't see any law enforcement again until three days later.
Staying behind to help
Weapons became as valuable as food and water with residents arming themselves for protection against looters and other threats, he said.
He said he became disgusted, seeing drug dealers resume deliveries by boat two days after the storm hit, while law-abiding residents waited six days for Alabama state police to bring in two bottles of water and two meals ready to eat for each resident.
"I was helping anybody I could," said Birdsong, a former emergency medical technician in Baltimore, Md., who worked for disaster services and the American Red Cross. "We gave away a lot of our food and water to people that needed it." He said he made trips daily to help people out.
Able to listen to one radio station by sitting on a balcony, he said he listened to reports of local, state and federal governments slow to respond to the disaster.
"The mayor, the governor and the president: Hopefully none of them get re-elected. The mayor and the governor waited too long to get help in there."
Four days after the storm hit, his friends decided to flee the city, begging him, he said, to go with them.
He said he stayed behind out of concern for two elderly neighbor women, who refused to leave their homes. The next day he talked one of the women into leaving for help, and the day after that convinced the other she had to leave or probably risk death from starvation, sickness or criminals.
"You'd hear gunshots constantly," he said. "I don't think I slept more than two hours a night just because of the gunshots. ... Drug dealers ran the city, not the police."
Time to get out
Six days after the storm's onset, he made it to a rescue site three blocks away where he was transported by a deuce-and-a-half vehicle to the interstate. A helicopter then took survivors to the airport, where he eventually was flown to an Air Force base in Atlanta, bused to a 4-H camp serving as a shelter, and hitched a ride with a church group back into Atlanta to a friend's home. He caught a flight into Cleveland where his stepfather, David Grace, picked him up.
"He was just the most wonderful sight," Grace said.
Janette Birdsong Grace was "very much relieved" when she saw her son, "but I think the wear and tear, and I work nights, I'm just tired from the whole thing."
Having been to New Orleans and aware of how flooding could isolate the city, the Graces feared for Birdsong's life.
"We were scared to death," she said. "We had no idea what was going on. What we were seeing on television was just horrible and we were able to maintain contact with him only sporadically. It was a harrowing experience."
The ordeal left Birdsong upset with the powers that be.
"We feel that the government left us there to die," he said, adding that learning that New Orleans neighbors that he thought were nice but who "weren't so nice" in the aftermath of the hurricane saddens him. "Those people, I don't have very much love in my heart for."
But back in Marion, he was excited to be with his parents and visit his sons Alden, Brandon and Johnny in Columbus before driving the used car his mother purchased with the help of a local car dealer to Fort Worth to see his daughter.
"I was ecstatic," he said. "It was great. She stood up for the first time for a few seconds my first night there."
Reporter John Jarvis: 740-375-5154 or jjarvis@nncogannett.com
Marion Star article "Katrina brought terror, anarchy to his home"
Article published Sep 18, 2005
Katrina brought terror, anarchy to his home
Former Marion man stayed as long as he could to help victims
By JOHN JARVIS
The Marion Star
MARION - Bound for what's left of his office in Metairie, La., the 39-year-old former Marion resident has survived Hurricane Katrina.
On Friday in Fort Worth, Texas, sure of the support he has felt from family and friends, John Birdsong carried on uncertainly with his life.
"I've got a few places I can be at," he said by cell phone as he ordered dinner at a cafe featuring home-cooked meals. "I need to be in Louisiana part of the time for my work (as a loan originator). I need to be in Houston to do office work, and I need to be in Fort Worth to see my daughter."
A few days earlier in Marion, tears shone in his eyes and emotion weighed down his words as he spoke of Caroline Grace Birdsong, who will turn 11 months old in a week. He shares joint custody with her mother, who evacuated when Katrina hit, took refuge with their toddler in Fort Worth and has found a new job.
While he understands his former mate's decision, "It's kind of a bummer," he said, one consequence of Katrina demanding he choose between returning to Louisiana, moving to Fort Worth or landing somewhere in between.
If his home in New Orleans is where he heads, he'll face military checkpoints, a lack of clean tap water and a dusk-to-dawn curfew. It'll be weeks, if not months, before any sort of normalcy returns to the Gulf Coast area where recovery efforts, President Bush said on Friday, are expected to swell the national debt by $200 billion or more.
Storm brings terror
When the effects of the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, his home of approximately five years, life turned on its head for the man of whom his mother, Janette Birdsong Grace of Marion, said, "John's going to do what he's going to do."
The day before the hurricane hit, he discovered he couldn't start his car. He planned to buy a battery the next day, but in the morning instead found himself scrambling to the attic of the house that he and his friend were renovating 10 minutes from Bourbon Street. While trying to secure the roof, the wind blew so hard it shook him. He said he saw a house across the street flattened in the time it took him to walk down a flight of stairs.
"It was seven hours of terror," he said.
Within a few hours of the hurricane passing, water had filled the street high enough that the car of his friend and his friend's fiancé couldn't be driven out.
Power was gone by 8 a.m. the first day of the storm, water service ended within three more days and gas service to the home was off a day later.
They "hunkered down" with a 55-gallon drum of water for bathing, six cases of bottled water and two refrigerators of food they had purchased before for the storm.
"We prepared very well for it just in case we got stuck there," he said.
Anger soon joined their fear as they saw residents of what Birdsong said was a crack house begin looting a neighboring pharmacy. He said he videotaped some of the activity. He said after a police officer walked through the neighborhood after the storm calmed, he didn't see any law enforcement again until three days later.
Staying behind to help
Weapons became as valuable as food and water with residents arming themselves for protection against looters and other threats, he said.
He said he became disgusted, seeing drug dealers resume deliveries by boat two days after the storm hit, while law-abiding residents waited six days for Alabama state police to bring in two bottles of water and two meals ready to eat for each resident.
"I was helping anybody I could," said Birdsong, a former emergency medical technician in Baltimore, Md., who worked for disaster services and the American Red Cross. "We gave away a lot of our food and water to people that needed it." He said he made trips daily to help people out.
Able to listen to one radio station by sitting on a balcony, he said he listened to reports of local, state and federal governments slow to respond to the disaster.
"The mayor, the governor and the president: Hopefully none of them get re-elected. The mayor and the governor waited too long to get help in there."
Four days after the storm hit, his friends decided to flee the city, begging him, he said, to go with them.
He said he stayed behind out of concern for two elderly neighbor women, who refused to leave their homes. The next day he talked one of the women into leaving for help, and the day after that convinced the other she had to leave or probably risk death from starvation, sickness or criminals.
"You'd hear gunshots constantly," he said. "I don't think I slept more than two hours a night just because of the gunshots. ... Drug dealers ran the city, not the police."
Time to get out
Six days after the storm's onset, he made it to a rescue site three blocks away where he was transported by a deuce-and-a-half vehicle to the interstate. A helicopter then took survivors to the airport, where he eventually was flown to an Air Force base in Atlanta, bused to a 4-H camp serving as a shelter, and hitched a ride with a church group back into Atlanta to a friend's home. He caught a flight into Cleveland where his stepfather, David Grace, picked him up.
"He was just the most wonderful sight," Grace said.
Janette Birdsong Grace was "very much relieved" when she saw her son, "but I think the wear and tear, and I work nights, I'm just tired from the whole thing."
Having been to New Orleans and aware of how flooding could isolate the city, the Graces feared for Birdsong's life.
"We were scared to death," she said. "We had no idea what was going on. What we were seeing on television was just horrible and we were able to maintain contact with him only sporadically. It was a harrowing experience."
The ordeal left Birdsong upset with the powers that be.
"We feel that the government left us there to die," he said, adding that learning that New Orleans neighbors that he thought were nice but who "weren't so nice" in the aftermath of the hurricane saddens him. "Those people, I don't have very much love in my heart for."
But back in Marion, he was excited to be with his parents and visit his sons Alden, Brandon and Johnny in Columbus before driving the used car his mother purchased with the help of a local car dealer to Fort Worth to see his daughter.
"I was ecstatic," he said. "It was great. She stood up for the first time for a few seconds my first night there."
Reporter John Jarvis: 740-375-5154 or jjarvis@nncogannett.com
