Mike Amor remembers Hurricane Katrina 10 years on
On the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Mike Amore reflects his own experience of entering the ruined city to rescue stranded Aussies.
I was on a driving holiday with Dad when it became clear Katrina was developing into a major story. The boss rang and said you’ll have to come back from holidays. He said it was okay to take my Dad along with me. You can actually see him in the back of some of the stories. In hindsight, this not my best decision.
He agreed to come along for the ride but I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as what it was.
We got word from Sunrise that there were some Australians trapped down at the Convention Centre. We made the decision to drive into New Orleans to see if we could find them and help them.
We approached a local police officer for directions and he said: “Son I have got all the guns I own in my car and wouldn’t go downtown. They were killing people. “ That was the fear there. We thanked him and continued.
As we started to get closer to down town the place was a mess. There were trees down and power lines were all over the place. There were people running around the streets, a lot looked like gangs.
We ran into a police officer waving a pistol. He looked wild and frightened. He had just been involved in an altercation with some people. Shots were fired. He was convinced we should not go any further. But we wanted to cover the story and find these Aussies.
The convention centre was a scene of human despair. These were people abandoned by their countrymen. I will never forget their faces. Sickly elderly people lay ignored; some were dying. Children were just left alone.
We went up an escalator and found the Australians. The group was initially excited to see us but also extremely frightened. They were worried about what might happen if we helped them.
It was getting dark. It was decided they spend one more night there and we would be back for them in the morning.
We stayed in a security compound area. In the middle of the night there was a huge explosion at a chemical plant. Police took off to the scene of the blast and we were left alone. We wanted to get out there but we promised the Aussies we’d come back. We had to stay.
The next morning we went back to the convention centre with an off duty police officer. He had a weapon and he gave me a weapon to put in the back pocket of the seat. The Aussies were pretty relieved to see us again. There were tears. There was excitement. There was some cheering from other people.
The couples were very concerned about leaving. They were concerned about making that short from where they had been staying to our car. The reaction to the Aussies being rescued was unbelievable. They were so happy to be out of there and safe after what they had been through.
A police officer came up and started roughing me up. My Dad thought he was going to shoot me. They were angry we were taking foreigners out of the city but leaving others and they would bare the brunt of their anger.
I am still shocked by what went on there. What happened changed my view of America. Before Katrina, I thought Americans looked after each other, a lot like Australians. What I saw was a country not looking after its people. The government took too long to react. A lot of people died that probably shouldn’t have. It was by far the worst thing I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe the danger and the mess people were in.
I think it’s one of those stories that stays with you. I had seen the best of what people could be in the face of tragedy after September 11 four years earlier. This was the opposite. This was a community falling apart.
We able to drive in out of New Orleans every night and slept outside restaurants. You could see people eating steaks and having cocktails just a few kilometres away from people living in third world squalor and dying. No one was doing anything for them. The situation was unfathomable.
