Calling in the Orders

We again attempted to get to Charity and Memorial, this time by staying on the Expressway and heading towards the CCC. By this time we were able to see that Oakwood shopping center was on fire and most likely the source of both the smoke and explosion that we had heard as we were entering the city a couple hours before. Some cops were present and at least 2 of them were chasing people down the highway. It was both calm and chaotic at the same time and I know that does not make sense, but you had to be there to understand what I mean because it was like everything was happening in slow motion. I watched out the passenger window while a man with a molotov cocktail lofted it towards the liquor store and it exploded through the front window. I remember thinking this seemed pointless since the bars on the window would prevent entry and all the person was doing was breaking glass and causing destruction and then realized this was probably their real goal. We were on the elevated portion of the bridge and chaos was happening down below on the surface road so I wasn't worried someone was going to attack us.

Right before we got to the part of the road where the lanes expand and you come up to the toll booths there were concrete barricades and police cars and trucks. We tried to go around but did not see a path. An armed deputy who did not look particularly stable came out of one of the vehicles and gruffly asked us what we were doing. We told him we were trying to get across the bridge to Charity with some supplies. He told us no one was allowed to cross the bridge, and even if he let us cross, once we got to the other side we would not be able to get off on any exits or get back to Jeff Parish as the interstate was under water at the railroad bridge and all of the exit ramps were still under water. We would be stuck. We asked him if the sheriff's office could help us get the supplies to Charity and he said no one in his dept was going into Orleans due to the criminals that kept shooting at them from over the bridge and the military had probably evacuated the hospitals by now anyway and if they hadn't, they would soon. We realized we were not getting into the city on this day and he helped us turn around and into the correct lanes to go back the way we came.

We didn't want to leave town until we checked on the office so we went there next and were glad to learn that we could drive through the water to get close to the office. We saw a car leaving town with people sitting everywhere including the trunk. They looked exhausted and unconcerned with their safety. This was not the first time we saw people traveling in this manner. When we got to Airline Hwy, water was still covering the road, but the truck was tall enough to get through it without issue. We had lost a small portion of the roof and some of the cars in the back parking lot had flooded, but it didn't look like any water got in the building. We could see a water line near the bottom of the dock doors and the power was on. I think that stemmed from having the airport right behind us - the power was restored quickly around areas the military was using to camp and they were starting to send planes in. We didn't have any working phones or internet and this kept the server from working. Neither of our cell phones worked and we couldn't make a call. One of the dock doors was partially open where the wind had damaged it. We tried to get it back on and couldn't budge it. Another dock door was clearly jammed, but at least it wasn't opened at all. We did manage to move a van behind the opening where no one could gain entry. We spend a few minutes walking around until we made sure everything was secure and we didn't have any other breaches.

We decided to take a van back to Baton Rouge so I got the keys and followed Chris. I knew I had to get the order to Birdie so I kept trying to call the number to their closest office. I couldn't get a signal until Laplace. I got through to their DC manager and explained what was going on. She told me to call another of their CSR's to place the order because she didn't know what to do with the info. I called the number she gave me (still don't know why she couldn't just take the info or transfer me) and tried to give her the order from W Jeff. We had a bad connection and I felt like she wasn't understanding the gravity of the situation because we kept going in circles and the calls kept dropping.

I felt so frustrated trying to give her what that doctor had written on the paper. She kept asking me what the account number was and I told her that she should just pick one on their account as the customer needed the medication or that some people were probably going to die. She did not want to pick an account number and after 15 minutes of arguing with her, I finally just picked one so we could move on.

This was my biggest frustration with people outside the area. People could not evolve beyond their normal protocols and this was not a normal time. This happened with transpirtation, this happened with the National Guard, this happened with FEMA not entering the city until days after the storm hit. So many people suffered or even died because no one made a decision and kept waiting on someone else to fix the problem for them.

I kept losing my cell signal and having to call her back. She needed item numbers also and many of the people that made me lists just put what they wanted and not the item numbers so I did my best to match up what they wanted with what she told me was available. I should not have had to do this, she was the inventory expert and she should have chosen the product. To this day, I hope I picked right. After around an hour of dropped calls and the back and forth of matching the paper list to catalog items, we finally finished and she hung up. I was so agitated and stressed, I probably smoked 10 cigarettes during the calls.

Chris and I got back to the BTR office and reported back on what we had seen on another conference call. I was able to get in touch with the other vendors that West Jeff wanted product from after my call with the frustrating woman and thankfully they did not make me jump through the same hoops that the first lady did. They took my info and said they would do what they could and a couple of them asked if we could get the product there if their vendors could not (We did not make deliveries for the other vendors). I told them if they brought it to our BTR office, we would do everything we could to get the product where it needed to go and they thanked me.

Our boss wanted us to pack up and head back to New Orleans and stay at the office, but I warned against it until we could communicate from that office since we had very limited cell service and no internet and it seemed premature. It was also dark and we didn't want to return to the area without daylight due to some of the issues we encountered. He agreed, but wanted Chris and I to ferry some cars to the Baton Rouge office beginning the next day along with making the deliveries if we didn't have anyone else to do it. I had one final order that West Jeff had given me and and faxed it for them and tried to make sure it transmitted. Everything felt very surreal Didn't people realize the deaths that were occuring at the hospitals? Did people think that everything was ok? The worst part was many of the deaths seemed preventable if the government had done their jobs.