At the same time, families and people strolled in. Mothers were giving birth in the locker rooms. The auxiliary gym “Dungeon” was being used as a morgue. I couldn’t take myself down there to see it.
I worked from 8 p.m., until 2:45 a.m. Before I left, three more buses rolled in and they were almost out of room. People were standing outside. The smells, the sights were hard to take.
A man lying down on a cot asked me to come see him.
He said, “I just need someone to talk to, to tell my story because I have nobody and nothing left.”
He turned out to be a retired military veteran. His story was what everybody was saying. He thought he survived the worst, woke up this morning and the levees broke. Within minutes water rushed into his house.
He climbed to the attic, smashed his way through the roof and sat there for hours. He was completely sunburned and exhausted. Nearly 12 hours later a chopper rescued him and here he was.
We finished the night hauling boxes of body bags and more were on the way. As we left, a man was strolled in on a stretcher and scarily enough he suffered gunshots. The paramedic said he was shot several times because a looter or a convict needed his boat and he wouldn’t give it to him.





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