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New Orleans after Katrina: Back to Stone Age
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-07 08:59 They learn what darkness means when there are no lights. Suddenly, candles
are a lot more than romantic. They learn what hunger means when there's no
refrigerator, no microwave, no stove. They learn what thirst means when water is
tainted from refuse, sewage and worse.
A dead fish lies on a street outside a
restaurant in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, September 5, 2005. On
Monday, residents were allowed back to their homes for the first time
since Hurricane Katrina struck.[Reuters] | One woman, 76-year-old Carolyn Knack, cleaned her dentures in dishwashing
liquid. An elderly man went to the banks of the Mississippi to scrub his
clothes.
Looting takes on many different names: borrowing, requisitioning,
commandeering. Maybe an older, anthropological term works best -- hunting and
gathering.
"A looter is not someone who takes food or water and what people need," said
a New Orleans police officer whose unit set up in an abandoned downtown hotel
and rode out the post-Katrina chaos.
He and his crew took what they needed to keep doing their jobs. "We
requisitioned a lot of items. Basically we find a store that had been looted and
we go and salvage what we could" -- water, candy bars, gasoline.
He wouldn't give his name because he'd be fired, he said.
Television images of looters raiding Wal-Mart for guns -- or neighbors' tales
of people pillaging houses -- drew disgust and condemnation from virtually
everyone. But it wasn't quite as simple as the pictures seemed. Some stole; some
helped.
Stolen boats were used to rescue people from their homes. Stolen cars moved
them across the city to dry land. Stolen food, water and clothes supplied the
basic essentials.
"They was just stealing stuff to get by," said Ebony
Morgan, 23, a single mom catching a bus of evacuees out with her twin
two-year-olds, Kristin and Eitan. "They was just giving it all away."
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 | | | Rescue continues in New Orleans | | |  | | | Egyptian presidential election campaigns conclude | | |  | | | Bush orders more troops to secure New Orleans | | |
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