An Eye-Witness Account
... 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."
... 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."
