/ Katrina Recovery

In one story, chef cooked up meals for masses on barbecue pit

07:53 AM EDT on Saturday, September 3, 2005

By MICHAEL GRABELL / The Dallas Morning News

NEW ORLEANS – They told horrific tales of human suffering in every ballroom and hall of the Morial Convention Center.

Of corpses draped in white sheets being pushed on catering carts and loaded into freezers. Of a 13-year-old girl being raped. Of old women having seizures.

And of puddles in the carpeting by the Starbucks stand; hot, pitch-dark ballrooms and feces in the corner.

"It's nasty," said Karen Smith, who was rescued and brought here Monday in the back of a rental truck. "Water is all over the place. Water is coming through when it rains. People dying. People looking for their children because they're snatching [them]. Stampedes."

After five days with little food and water, thousands of people in the overcrowded waste-reeking Morial Convention Center lined up at the Riverwalk on Friday for meals ready to eat and bottled water provided by the National Guard.

Ms. Smith was one of the first in line winding through a string of National Guardsmen and into the parking lot where more soldiers kept order and surrounded those who tried to rush the supplies.

Friday morning, some of the estimated 15,000 crowded under the front awning of the 1.1 million square foot facility. Some sat on folding chairs, others lay on the trash-strewn driveway, protected only by a scattering of New Orleans police officers outside.

Even the officers were frustrated. With few supplies before Hurricane Katrina hit, they've had to follow looters into the supermarkets, several officers said. There are rumors that some police officers have deserted. Like the evacuees, they are doing all they can to survive.

Then, just after noon, dozens of local police and federal officials drove down Convention Center Boulevard in a convoy. "Ladies and gentlemen," one officer announced through his car's loudspeaker, "food is here. Water is here. They will be handing it out shortly."

The evacuees cheered and waved like sightseers at a parade as the convoy passed. Officers armed with AR-15s got out and stood guard on the median. "Spread it out," a supervisor yelled, "just like in Mardi Gras."

Carla Thomas, an evacuee from the Guste Housing Development in Uptown, leaned against an entrance holding a wet cloth on her baby's forehead.

Cahmyria, just 19 months old, lay on her back in her diaper, her stomach barely expanding to let air in. She was born premature and suffers breathing problems.

Ms. Thomas, 23, had to leave her breathing machines behind. To feed her baby, she's been pouring PediaSure through a plastic feeding tube into her stomach.

"I've been having to move her from every cool spot to another cool spot because there is no air around here," she said. "They're getting all those people out of the Superdome. What are we supposed to do?"

In the massive evacuation from the Superdome, the people at the convention center have been largely forgotten. Rescued from rooftops, they found the convention center sopping wet in the middle of setting up for the National Association of EMTs (emergency medical technicians).

Around the corner from Ms. Thomas, Antoinette Tanner, 86, lay frail on a metal bench – eyes closed and barely able to speak.

Mr. Tanner and some relatives were visiting a sick family member in Baptist Memorial Hospital when Katrina hit. But when the hospital was evacuated, they were left outside Tipitina's jazz club near the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon avenues and eventually taken to the convention center.

A woman they met, Kenita Jenkins, 23, helped her sit up and poured Red Bull into her mouth. "I just seen her sick, and I don't like to see that," she said.

Ms. Jenkins' husband is a manager at the convention center, and she said the staff was serving hot meals at the beginning.

"Until it got out of hand," she added. "The cook left. He couldn't take it anymore."

So the hot meals stopped coming.

That is, until Wilfred Johnson arrived. He's a Jamaican chef at Big Shirley's in the French Quarter.

He and others found frozen food and cooking oil in the convention center's kitchen – and a barbecue pit left behind in the neighborhood. So he decided to feed the masses, especially the children.

He sauteed chicken in oil, red pepper, and garlic. He marinated ribs, sausages and shish kebabs. The spicy aromas hid the stench inside the center.

"I'm no hero, man," said Mr. Johnson, a lean, muscular man with dreadlocks wrapped in a red wool hat and a black coral necklace. "I'm just trying to cook so we can survive. Everybody is a hero here for surviving."

After getting her National Guard rations, Ms. Smith, the woman who was one of the first in line, carried a Cajun rice and beans package and a water bottle. Walking back to her family, she found a box of Cheetos left on the side of the road and grabbed packages by the handful.

"I have two daughters," she said. "It's not enough for all three of us. When are they going to get us out?"

E-mail mgrabell@dallasnews.com