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Louisiana has a Wild West feel in the wake of Hurricane Katrina Date published: 9/14/2005
By RUSTY DENNEN NEW ORLEANS--Interstate 10, the main drag into the city, doesn't go there anymore. For everyone except rescue workers, hordes of soldiers and cops, last stop is Exit 109, about 30 miles outside the city. There, every vehicle containing those who wish to check on their property, or look for loved ones, is turned back. And the soldiers, armed with rifles and sidearms, are not in the mood to argue. For Dawn Sklepovich, driver for LifeCare Medical Transports of Stafford County, getting into the city is no problem. She just whips around the roadblocks and the men in camouflaged fatigues just wave her through. Passing Exit 109 is like driving into a modern-day version of the Old West, where great speed is the norm, and all the normal rules are suspended. "Our mission is to help the people of New Orleans with whatever they need," she says, falling in behind a convoy of ambulances, police cars, Army trucks and FBI sport utility vehicles. Average speed: about 80 mph, sometimes higher depending upon how fast others are traveling. There are probably more flashing blue and red lights along this stretch of highway than any interstate in America. After making stops at a hospital downtown on St. Charles Street, Sklepovich and her partner, Kevin Dillard, look for alternate routes to navigate around the battered city. Though cleanup is well under way two weeks after the storm, limbs, garbage and debris litter the streets that are not still flooded. Often, she has to drive the wrong way on major thoroughfares to get around. "This is even so much better than yesterday," she says, heading on St. Charles toward the Audubon Zoo. At practically every major intersection, it's a challenge to go safely through where no traffic signals are working. Abandoned, wrecked or flooded cars litter practically every street. Over several bridge overpasses, where cars are parked, soldiers check them out. "Do you know why they're doing that?" Dillard asks. "They're checking to see whether the people jumped off the bridge." No one knows how many people have taken their own lives in the wake of the storm, but police officers and distraught residents who had lost practically everything are among the tally, local newspapers have been reporting. Like the Wild West, normal rules don't apply. After a Wal-Mart downtown was looted, a police precinct commandeered the store and set up shop there as a staging point for its officers. A large blue tarp stretches across the entrance, where rotting food and consumer goods litter the floor. New Orleans police also took over an abandoned city bus, with their logo, "NOPD," spray-painted across the front. Elsewhere around the city, officers with no place to go home, sleep in precinct houses with generators humming outside. On one road, a string of U.S. Border Patrol vehicles whooshed alongside, lights flashing, went completely around a traffic circle and headed back in the same direction. Toward dusk, Sklepovich wheeled the ambulance back toward I-10 for the return trip. "You don't want to be here after dark," Dillard said. To reach RUSTY DENNEN:
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
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