Diary: From discomfort to horror

By MARY FOSTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW ORLEANS -- The thing that hit me first was the noise.
People talking, praying, shouting. Babies crying. Children laughing and shrieking as they played amid the crowd. Hurricane Katrina was still hours away, and some people even slept through the din.
With the lights still on and the air conditioning running, this would be the high point in the Louisiana Superdome. Eventually, discomfort would turn to hardship and, finally, horror.
As the hurricane swamped the streets around the stadium, about 8,000 people sat in seats that cost thousands at the last Super Bowl here. Others lay on blankets, inflatable mattresses, cardboard.
Storm's first effects
People remained calm during a brief blackout when the emergency generators kicked in. They were still calm when the storm ripped off the rubber covering over the roof and gashed two large holes in it.
Within minutes, water saturated refugees' belongings.
In the now-dark corridors, soggy ceiling tiles crashed onto waterlogged carpets. Medical crews tried to cope with a growing number of injured and sick. Nurses used flashlights to work with patients; IVs hung from exit signs.
Before the storm ended, the temperature began to rise. The air conditioning wasn't powered by the emergency generator.
As the heat and stink rose, the doors were opened and people were allowed onto the outer concourse. It was only a brief respite. Water pressure dropped, and toilets backed up. An overwhelming stench filled the corridors.
Superdome officials had anticipated it: 175 portable toilets were ordered before the storm, but they never arrived.
Frenzied crowd
Rumors flew -- of women being raped, babies thrown off upper levels, children raped and killed, men stabbed, women strangled.
I saw a fight between two gangs. A couple dozen National Guardsmen tried shouting for order, their ranks too thin to enter the crowd. Order was finally restored when a group of women began singing gospel songs.
More people kept arriving. By Thursday morning the crowd had grown to 20,000.
Buses scheduled to arrive at 6 a.m. didn't come. Fear and anger fueled an ugly mood.
Inside the mall, Louisiana state police wearing Kevlar vests and carrying rifles and shotguns lined up at the doors. "You better get back out of here," one told me. "This is about to get bad."
The crowd surged to the doors, then stopped. Guardsmen were able to move it back.
By Friday morning, the smell was unbearable. The stink and the lack of light kept people out of the dome, while heat and stench made life on the exterior humiliating and harsh.
"We're using cardboard for toilets," said Jane LeBlanc. "We hold up a blanket for each other, but what can you do?"
Others quit eating or drinking, hoping to avoid such humiliation.
Tender care
Later a man ran up to me crying. Bryan Washington's 54-year-old mother, Yvonne, panicked when a fight broke out and jumped to the lower level. She was drifting in and out of consciousness and appeared to have two broken legs.
I used my red plastic credential bracelet to get him through to medics. Washington and a few friends carried his mother out on a camp cot.
Guardsmen worried about the jam of people on the bridge from the dome. Men and women held babies and young children over their heads to keep them from being crushed. As sun seared them and the heat rose, they held their hands aloft for water. People were so tightly packed guardsmen couldn't pass between them to distribute it.
Guardsmen, rifles on their backs, tenderly carried out the elderly, the sick. A guardsman sat rocking a baby and singing to it as the mother was treated for heat exhaustion.
On Saturday, as the evacuation was winding down, the portable toilets arrived. As the last refugees were being led out, a large load of medical supplies was being unloaded for the medics.