Myth & Reality IIIInteresting story here about three Duke University students who managed to slip into New Orleans by stealing a press pass and a TV crew shirt. It's self-reported, so take it with a pound of salt, but it's certainly intriguing.
The evacuation was basically complete by the time they arrived, at about 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. What the trio saw there horrified them.
"The only way I can describe this, it was the epicenter," Buder said. "Inside there were National Guard running around, there was feces, people had urinated, soiled the carpet. There were dead bodies. The smell will never leave me."
Buder said the students saw four or five bodies. National Guard troopers seemed to be checking the second and third floors of the building to try to secure the site.
"Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out," Buder said. "They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don't want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere."Except that they got in there on Saturday, which tells us little about the difficulty of getting in there Thursday and the availability of buses and places to handle the refugees. It may be easy to get a small group of people out as they did, but I'd be they also looked them over a little first. Would they have as willingly evacuated five young men? Because the authorities don't have the option of saying no, you can't leave with us.
