A moving and upsetting article in today’s NY Times with an interview with my friend Cheryl, who had to evacuate New Orleans. Please donate money to the Red Cross.
For Survivors: Sorrow, Relief and Questions About Rescues
By MARC SANTORA and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: September 4, 2005
After a week of watching her city descend into chaos and despair – after seeing the unbelievable images of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens struggling to survive – Cheryl Bratt said she could not care less about what she may have left behind and lost.
Like others who have arrived in New York, Ms. Bratt, who left New Orleans hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, is simply struggling to make sense of why she was so fortunate while so many others were not.
“I have been crying for days,” she said yesterday.
Ms. Bratt, 26, arrived in New Orleans four years ago as a Teach for America corps member and decided to stay after falling in love with the city and its people. She also developed strong ties with some of her students, many of them born into poverty.
Since reaching the comfort of her mother’s home in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, Ms. Bratt said, she has spent her waking hours trolling for information about friends and former students.
States across the country have been stepping up to announce their willingness to take in students and others displaced by the storm, and New York has joined them.
Gov. George E. Pataki announced yesterday that New York would welcome students in all grades and would also offer state-resident tuition rates at the state’s colleges for displaced students.
Outside the public overtures, many New Yorkers are privately welcoming friends and family who have escaped from all parts of the Gulf Coast. But interviews with many evacuees from New Orleans suggest that their relief at being alive is tinged with a mix of guilt and confusion about why so many of their fellow citizens did not receive the help they needed to get out.
Jeffrey Presley, 27, who left New York on Aug. 10 to start law school at Tulane University, managed to flee New Orleans early. And while feeling relieved, he, too, struggled with the glaring disparity between those with the means to escape and those trapped in a living Bruegel painting.
He said that as he and a friend drove out of town, even before the storm hit, they thought about those left behind. On the radio they kept hearing the same message: Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. It seemed like a command that few could possibly obey.
“We were sitting there and thinking that New Orleans is a city where most of the residents are reliant on public transportation,” Mr. Presley said. “It was a sickening feeling thinking all these people are going to die unless they get them out.”
Mr. Presley, who flew to New York last week after driving to Houston, said he still cannot make sense of the disaster.
“We all feel haunted by the entire situation,” said Mr. Presley, who has already enrolled for classes at Brooklyn Law School and now lives in Williamsburg. “We were able to leave, and we worried about getting out and going to law school, but we’re so much better off than so many other people.”
At Tulane, Kimberly Cernak, 20, used to tutor low-income public school students. She said that during the flooding, poverty – as well as age and infirmity – became a dividing line in New Orleans.
“I’ve been thinking about those kids and their families and wishing there was some way I could know they’re O.K.,” said Ms. Cernak, who came to live with her grandparents in Staten Island and plans to complete her senior year at Columbia University, which is accepting some students displaced by the hurricane.
“It shows you there’s a lot we still need to do as a country to make sure that in times like these everyone can get out,” she said. “No matter how much money you have, no matter how many cars you have.”
Ms. Cernak, who left New Orleans on Aug. 27, said it was difficult to begin the school year thinking about the chaos she left in her wake. “At this point,” she said, “I can’t wait for the flood waters to recede, but I have to finish my academic career.”
She said she had called the local Red Cross in New York City to volunteer, but that she still felt a sense of helplessness. “It has been really frustrating and really overwhelming,” she said.
Tom Thayer, 39, a partner in a French Quarter bar called d.b.a, said he left New Orleans before the storm only because he did not want to be without air-conditioning for a few days. Since the flooding, he has received cellphone text messages from friends who stayed behind. They described defending their homes with guns against looters, an image that continues to keep him awake at night.
“All I have dreamed about was these people being in boats, getting shot at,” he said.
Mr. Thayer, who used to live in New York City and is staying at a friend’s apartment on the Upper West Side, said that many of his employees were struggling musicians. The recovery effort, he said, would probably have been carried out better if the victims had not been poor.
Ms. Bratt agreed. “As a teacher, the motto is supposed to be ‘Leave no child behind,’ ” she said. “We ended up leaving too many children behind.”
She considers herself fortunate to be safe in New York, but Ms. Bratt says she cannot help but cry when she reads the text message sent to her yesterday morning by a former student from New Orleans, Quiana.
A 16-year-old, Quiana is now stranded in Baton Rouge and faces the prospect of leaving her mother to attend school in California, where her grandmother lives.
“All my uncles on my daddy’s side are still there,” Quiana wrote. “And nobody has heard from them.”