Learning lessons the hard way..........
hillbilly
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050903/WEATHER01/509030504/1002/NEWS01
Woman escapes New Orleans, returns home
By CHARLES RUNNELLS
[email protected]
Published by news-press.com on September 3, 2005
Rhonda Mandel hates guns.
But then Hurricane Katrina sideswiped New Orleans on Monday and the Fort Myers woman was suddenly stuck in a French Quarter hotel.
Two days later, Mandel found herself and about 75 other guests preparing to drive an armed caravan of abandoned cars out of the city.
Mandel's driver — a hotel employee armed to the teeth — stopped to show her how to use a handgun.
"I told him no," Mandel said. "I didn't want to."
The engineer looked her in the eye, deadly serious. Just blocks away, the people of New Orleans had already started to loot and rob and kill each other.
"He said, 'What are you going to do when they shoot me?'" Mandel recalled.
She didn't have a good response. "OK," she finally answered. "Show me."
That was just three days ago, and now Mandel is home in Fort Myers. But she said she'll never forget her nerve-wracking escape from New Orleans.
"It's the most horrific thing I've ever been through," she said. "It was terrible."
Mandel, a 43-year-old freelance photographer, had gone to New Orleans last week to help her 18-year-old son, Travis, move into his Tulane University dorm room.
But as they moved in, Katrina moved closer to the Crescent City. And university officials eventually closed the school.
Travis decided to ride out the storm in Baton Rouge with his new roommate, but Mandel stayed in New Orleans to finish setting up his dorm room. Everything was OK until her Sunday flight got canceled.
Suddenly, she had no way out.
"Delta left thousands of people stranded there," she said. "The bus system had already shut down. There wasn't a single rental car in the entire city of New Orleans.
"I was just stuck."
So Mandel and other guests at the New Orleans Marriott did the only thing they could do.
They waited.
Back in Fort Myers, her parents, Linda and Roland Eisenberg, worried about Mandel and whether she'd make it home safely. They talked to her on the hotel phone several times each day.
"We were on an emotional roller coaster," said Roland Eisenberg, 67. "But the high point of the roller coaster was when we talked to her. Because then we knew she was OK."
Then Katrina arrived.
It was a terrifying experience. The wind howled outside, and Mandel could hear windows breaking in the hotel. The third-floor ballroom — where she and about 100 other guests rode out the storm — suddenly sprouted showers in the ceiling.
After the wind stopped, Mandel looked outside at the devastation. Bricks smothered crushed cars. Broken windows marred nearby buildings.
"It was a mess," she said.
There wasn't much Mandel could do for the next few days. There wasn't an easy way out of New Orleans. And besides, the hotel guests were in a relatively safe part of town — the French Quarter is built on higher land and didn't have the flooding seen elsewhere.
So Mandel waited out the aftermath in relative comfort. The hotel staff even cooked them extensive meals, including a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and — of course — croissants.
Finally, on Tuesday, city officials gave the word: Leave New Orleans if you can.
Things were getting worse. Outside the hotel, police armed with machine guns began driving up and down the street.
"It was becoming very, very scary," Mandel said.
The next morning, the hotel staff organized a getaway.
There were 17 abandoned trucks and cars in the hotel garage, and 17 sets of abandoned keys in the valet station. They had themselves a caravan.
Mandel ended up the last vehicle in the caravan, riding in a Ford Bronco driven by the hotel's chief of engineering.
The chief armed himself with two rifles and a handgun — just in case.
"I called him Rambo," Mandel said. "He had on Army fatigues from the waist down."
After showing Mandel how to use a pistol, the two climbed into the Bronco and tailed the caravan out of town.
It was a sobering, often frightening journey.
"It looked like a bomb had gone off," she said.
Streets were flooded. Buildings had collapsed. And everywhere she looked, looters ran out of stores with clothes, bottled water or whatever else they could carry.
Other people sat on the ground crying.
The caravan broke up outside the city limits, and Mandel and the engineer continued on to Baton Rouge, where her parents had already booked her a flight out at 2 p.m.
It was a relief, she said, to finally land at Southwest Florida International Airport at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The nightmare was over.
Mandel's parents and her teenage daughter met her at the airport. Tears flowed, said father Roland Eisenberg. "It was a great feeling."
Days later, Mandel said she still isn't quite herself. She feels disoriented and edgy. And she's been having nightmares about New Orleans: vague images of trying to get home.
Mandel can't even bring herself to watch news accounts of the Katrina aftermath.
"I just don't want to see it," she said. "I don't want any part of it in my mind."
hillbilly
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050903/WEATHER01/509030504/1002/NEWS01
Woman escapes New Orleans, returns home
By CHARLES RUNNELLS
[email protected]
Published by news-press.com on September 3, 2005
Rhonda Mandel hates guns.
But then Hurricane Katrina sideswiped New Orleans on Monday and the Fort Myers woman was suddenly stuck in a French Quarter hotel.
Two days later, Mandel found herself and about 75 other guests preparing to drive an armed caravan of abandoned cars out of the city.
Mandel's driver — a hotel employee armed to the teeth — stopped to show her how to use a handgun.
"I told him no," Mandel said. "I didn't want to."
The engineer looked her in the eye, deadly serious. Just blocks away, the people of New Orleans had already started to loot and rob and kill each other.
"He said, 'What are you going to do when they shoot me?'" Mandel recalled.
She didn't have a good response. "OK," she finally answered. "Show me."
That was just three days ago, and now Mandel is home in Fort Myers. But she said she'll never forget her nerve-wracking escape from New Orleans.
"It's the most horrific thing I've ever been through," she said. "It was terrible."
Mandel, a 43-year-old freelance photographer, had gone to New Orleans last week to help her 18-year-old son, Travis, move into his Tulane University dorm room.
But as they moved in, Katrina moved closer to the Crescent City. And university officials eventually closed the school.
Travis decided to ride out the storm in Baton Rouge with his new roommate, but Mandel stayed in New Orleans to finish setting up his dorm room. Everything was OK until her Sunday flight got canceled.
Suddenly, she had no way out.
"Delta left thousands of people stranded there," she said. "The bus system had already shut down. There wasn't a single rental car in the entire city of New Orleans.
"I was just stuck."
So Mandel and other guests at the New Orleans Marriott did the only thing they could do.
They waited.
Back in Fort Myers, her parents, Linda and Roland Eisenberg, worried about Mandel and whether she'd make it home safely. They talked to her on the hotel phone several times each day.
"We were on an emotional roller coaster," said Roland Eisenberg, 67. "But the high point of the roller coaster was when we talked to her. Because then we knew she was OK."
Then Katrina arrived.
It was a terrifying experience. The wind howled outside, and Mandel could hear windows breaking in the hotel. The third-floor ballroom — where she and about 100 other guests rode out the storm — suddenly sprouted showers in the ceiling.
After the wind stopped, Mandel looked outside at the devastation. Bricks smothered crushed cars. Broken windows marred nearby buildings.
"It was a mess," she said.
There wasn't much Mandel could do for the next few days. There wasn't an easy way out of New Orleans. And besides, the hotel guests were in a relatively safe part of town — the French Quarter is built on higher land and didn't have the flooding seen elsewhere.
So Mandel waited out the aftermath in relative comfort. The hotel staff even cooked them extensive meals, including a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and — of course — croissants.
Finally, on Tuesday, city officials gave the word: Leave New Orleans if you can.
Things were getting worse. Outside the hotel, police armed with machine guns began driving up and down the street.
"It was becoming very, very scary," Mandel said.
The next morning, the hotel staff organized a getaway.
There were 17 abandoned trucks and cars in the hotel garage, and 17 sets of abandoned keys in the valet station. They had themselves a caravan.
Mandel ended up the last vehicle in the caravan, riding in a Ford Bronco driven by the hotel's chief of engineering.
The chief armed himself with two rifles and a handgun — just in case.
"I called him Rambo," Mandel said. "He had on Army fatigues from the waist down."
After showing Mandel how to use a pistol, the two climbed into the Bronco and tailed the caravan out of town.
It was a sobering, often frightening journey.
"It looked like a bomb had gone off," she said.
Streets were flooded. Buildings had collapsed. And everywhere she looked, looters ran out of stores with clothes, bottled water or whatever else they could carry.
Other people sat on the ground crying.
The caravan broke up outside the city limits, and Mandel and the engineer continued on to Baton Rouge, where her parents had already booked her a flight out at 2 p.m.
It was a relief, she said, to finally land at Southwest Florida International Airport at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The nightmare was over.
Mandel's parents and her teenage daughter met her at the airport. Tears flowed, said father Roland Eisenberg. "It was a great feeling."
Days later, Mandel said she still isn't quite herself. She feels disoriented and edgy. And she's been having nightmares about New Orleans: vague images of trying to get home.
Mandel can't even bring herself to watch news accounts of the Katrina aftermath.
"I just don't want to see it," she said. "I don't want any part of it in my mind."
