Voices of help not heard

The voices of those who sought to save New Orleans speak.
I worked to develop a severe weather evacuation plan for New Orleans as ordered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but someone diverted the funds to study the causeway bridge spanning Lake Pontchartrain.
I tried to maintain the levees, but the Army Corps of Engineers designed and installed fragile I-shaped levees rather than the sturdier inverted T-shape; and last year the federal government shaved a few million off maintenance funds.
I pled with the Army Corps of Engineers to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet through St. Bernard Parish, but they left it open and it provided a pathway for storm surges to wipe out 95 percent of the parish.
I debated when to leave, but the mandatory evacuation did not come until the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
I wanted to drive a city bus filled with folks to higher, safer ground, but I was told to take them to the Superdome to wait out the storm.
I looked for hundreds of school buses filled with children and their families escaping the city, but city leaders never commissioned the fleet to leave the school parking lot.
I called and offered a bus for the residents at the nursing home, but the manager insisted she had generators, food, adequate staff and their families’ approval to stay through the storm.
I offered to load the Amtrak train with hundreds of car-less citizens and take them north out of the range of Hurricane Katrina, but city officials insisted they did not need any of the empty train’s seats.
I asked to take my family’s dog and cat, but the evacuation centers and hotels insisted “no pets allowed.”
I prepared to deliver the Red Cross’ supply of water, food, blankets and hygiene items to New Orleans, but Louisiana authorities asked us to not go to New Orleans lest residents be tempted to stay.
I flew in to fight fires and do search and rescue missions in the streets of New Orleans, but FEMA sent me to Atlanta for a week of classes on appropriate sexual behavior.
I loaded my boat and drove with other boat owners to New Orleans, determined to help rescue folks from their rooftops and the patients in the hospital, but the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries rejected our help.
I arrived in a Coast Guard vessel with 1,000 gallons of desperately needed diesel fuel for Jefferson Parish, but FEMA refused to release it.
I set up temporary lines to speed up information in Jefferson Parish, but FEMA came in and cut them.
I energetically attacked cleaning up the fallen trees and building materials in the streets of New Orleans, but the Army Corps of Engineers slowed my progress with a heavy load of rules, regulations and time schedules.
We went to rescue a city devastated by nature only to watch it further crushed under the heel of bureaucracy.
We begged to save lives only to have bureaucrats push us aside and commit murder and mayhem in the name of law and order.
We are the voices of those tried to help, voices that now hope and pray things will be different next time.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)