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These days, he’s better known as Inmate No. While the memories of their misery are vivid, so are their memories of the lanky young man who saved them: Jabbar Gibson. “We all thought we were going to die,” Lavinette said. Hurricane Katrina had turned them into prisoners of a drowning city. The only breaks in the silence were the occasional echoes of gunfire and shattering glass. There was nowhere to refill prescriptions. They will never forget the mounting desperation as their neighborhood ran out of food and water. In this corner of the old Fischer Projects, they will never forget the swollen drainage ditches, the mounds of tree branches and debris, the relentless mosquitoes, and the heat and darkness of cramped old apartments that no longer had electricity. “He pulled up with the bus,” said Roger Robinson, a friend of Gibson’s, “and was like, ‘Let’s go.’” They all headed back to the Fischer for those who’d been stranded. “I was driving all right for the first time.”Ī handful of other friends and neighbors managed to get buses running too.

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“I learned how to right then and there,” Gibson said, a smile creasing his face.

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0232 had been left behind with a full tank of gas. It took about a half hour to find a bus that would start. They checked the numbers on the keys and matched them to the buses. Inside an unlocked office, Gibson and his friends found keys hanging on a door. There they found about a dozen yellow school buses parked in a barn.

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Gibson and his friends flagged down the driver to ask where he got the bus. Landry Avenue, a major street that runs from the Mississippi River Bridge through the Fischer Projects and into Algiers, a neighborhood sometimes called the 15th Ward. Soon they spotted a school bus rumbling down L.B. “It was either that or we were going to drown.” “We were desperate,” said Kerry Lavinette, a longtime resident of Fischer.

Within hours, they had found gas, but the truck they wanted to use wasn’t reliable enough or big enough for an escape. They hit the streets with a piece of hose pipe and a plastic jug to siphon gas. Slowly but surely, across the river, other neighborhoods - the Ninth Ward, Bywater, Mid-City - were being swallowed by floodwater.Īfter two days without power, food, or even a merciful Gulf Coast breeze, and no assurances that anyone would come save them, Gibson and a small group of friends started thinking of ways to escape. Things seemed plenty bad even before he and the rest of his neighbors heard reports about the breach in the levees on the other side of the Mississippi River. The winds had shattered windows, destroyed wooden fences, lifted off tile from the roof, and even taken pieces out of some of the bricks. Fallen trees had gouged out large chunks of some of the homes.

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The rain and wind were so fierce that the windows blew out as they huddled inside.īy morning, Gibson returned home to find the Fischer had damage, too. You might have fewer problems with a family that climbed through a broken window and into the shoe store to put new pairs on each of their children after flooding washed away their belongings.NEW ORLEANS - As Hurricane Katrina barreled toward the coast, small-time drug dealer Jabbar Gibson and a friend decided to hunker down in a motel down the street from his home in the dilapidated Fischer public housing complex. You could hold less animosity for the people in a state of panic who stole groceries and other provisions out of survival fears. Every officer that was reassigned to handle looters and other lawlessness was an officer that couldn’t be out there looking for the elderly, disabled and injured. It speaks loudly to the impact crime can have after a disaster. (Vladimir Korostyshevskiy / ) Looters and Disaster ResponseĪ few days after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, most of the officers in the New Orleans Police Department were pulled off of rescue operations in an effort to pull the city back from the criminal element, especially looters. This storefront shows the man-made disaster in New York City following Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Looting is a common side effect of nearly every major disaster.