What DID happen in NOLA?
Urban legends spread like the water in Big Easy
From Our Press ServicesSeptember 28, 2005
When Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans succumbed to anarchy as marauding hordes of armed thugs hijacked cars, shot at helicopters, and killed police officers, while hundreds of bodies floated in shark-infested waters.
Violent gangs roamed the Superdome, raping little children, while in the Convention Center 30 to 40 bodies piled up in a freezer.
So the stories went, many of them attributed to New Orleans officials.
Great stories. Trouble is, they weren't true, according to a detailed account Monday in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The Times-Picayune described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the Dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."
The New Orleans Police Department has no substantiated reports of rapes. There was a single homicide inside the Convention Center, and no murders inside the Superdome, according to the Louisiana Health and Human Services Department, which is overseeing the recovery of remains.
Officials who were prepared to remove hundreds of the dead from the shelters found 10 bodies in the Dome, four brought in from the streets and six people who died on-site -- four of natural causes, one of a drug overdose, and one of a fall from a balcony listed as an apparent suicide.
Of four deaths at the Convention Center, three were from natural causes and one was a homicide.
No police officers were killed by thugs -- although a National Guardsman shot himself in the leg while chasing one. Reports of people shooting at helicopters taking patients from hospitals were never verified, nor were stories of two babies found with their throats slit in Convention Center bathrooms or of the man who heard a rape victim scream, ran outside for help, and was shot and killed by troops.
Where did the stories come from?
"It was a chaotic time for the city," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo. "Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared."
"If you think about the conditions the victims of Katrina endured ... the stress and fear must have been unimaginable," David Emery, an expert on urban legends and folklore for the Web site About.com, said in an e-mail. "When real news isn't available, rumors percolate to fill the gap. People start conjecturing."
Local officials repeated many of the rumors, giving them credibility. On Sept. 1, with desperate Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass said: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, Compass told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
On the heels of the Times-Picayune report, Compass resigned Tuesday.
The media joined in the rumor game, and stories that defied common sense were treated as news: The French paper Liberation ran a detailed report on 1,200 people drowning inside a school on Read Boulevard. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Channel, "A Current Affair" correspondent Arthel Neville, of the famous musical family, said she had heard that a man was beaten to death by an angry mob in the Dome after he raped and killed a 7-year-old. The Los Angeles Times reported on Sept. 2 that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."
The Commercial Appeal published stories based on wire service reporting from the scene that referred to some of the reports now found to have been exagerrated or false. In most cases, the accounts were attributed to local and state officials, particularly early fears of a body count that would be in the thousands in New Orleans. An Associated Press story the newspaper published on Sept. 3 noted the wild stories circulating.
From Our Press ServicesSeptember 28, 2005
When Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans succumbed to anarchy as marauding hordes of armed thugs hijacked cars, shot at helicopters, and killed police officers, while hundreds of bodies floated in shark-infested waters.
Violent gangs roamed the Superdome, raping little children, while in the Convention Center 30 to 40 bodies piled up in a freezer.
So the stories went, many of them attributed to New Orleans officials.
Great stories. Trouble is, they weren't true, according to a detailed account Monday in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The Times-Picayune described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the Dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."
The New Orleans Police Department has no substantiated reports of rapes. There was a single homicide inside the Convention Center, and no murders inside the Superdome, according to the Louisiana Health and Human Services Department, which is overseeing the recovery of remains.
Officials who were prepared to remove hundreds of the dead from the shelters found 10 bodies in the Dome, four brought in from the streets and six people who died on-site -- four of natural causes, one of a drug overdose, and one of a fall from a balcony listed as an apparent suicide.
Of four deaths at the Convention Center, three were from natural causes and one was a homicide.
No police officers were killed by thugs -- although a National Guardsman shot himself in the leg while chasing one. Reports of people shooting at helicopters taking patients from hospitals were never verified, nor were stories of two babies found with their throats slit in Convention Center bathrooms or of the man who heard a rape victim scream, ran outside for help, and was shot and killed by troops.
Where did the stories come from?
"It was a chaotic time for the city," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo. "Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared."
"If you think about the conditions the victims of Katrina endured ... the stress and fear must have been unimaginable," David Emery, an expert on urban legends and folklore for the Web site About.com, said in an e-mail. "When real news isn't available, rumors percolate to fill the gap. People start conjecturing."
Local officials repeated many of the rumors, giving them credibility. On Sept. 1, with desperate Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass said: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, Compass told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
On the heels of the Times-Picayune report, Compass resigned Tuesday.
The media joined in the rumor game, and stories that defied common sense were treated as news: The French paper Liberation ran a detailed report on 1,200 people drowning inside a school on Read Boulevard. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Channel, "A Current Affair" correspondent Arthel Neville, of the famous musical family, said she had heard that a man was beaten to death by an angry mob in the Dome after he raped and killed a 7-year-old. The Los Angeles Times reported on Sept. 2 that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."
The Commercial Appeal published stories based on wire service reporting from the scene that referred to some of the reports now found to have been exagerrated or false. In most cases, the accounts were attributed to local and state officials, particularly early fears of a body count that would be in the thousands in New Orleans. An Associated Press story the newspaper published on Sept. 3 noted the wild stories circulating.
posted by LawDog84 | 7:40 AM
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