Downtown Relief Effort For Disaster Down South

Local CERT Team Joins Rescue Effort In New Orleans

By Barry Owems


As flood waters destroyed parts of Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last month, many residents of Lower Manhattan, like those across the country, got busy shipping clothing and supplies, organizing fund-raisers, and manning lemonade stands and yard sales.

		But a few lent helping hands-literally-to the people of New Orleans, wading waist-deep in the muck to search for survivors. They are credited with rescuing 50 people from their homes. "We're a small piece of a big puzzle and whatever we can do, we are happy to do it," said Sid Baumgarten, team chief for the Battery Park City Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT. The team sent eight members to New Orleans, each with special training in boat handling and water rescue. "I must have had a dozen calls from people that wanted to go," Baumgarten said, "but we needed people that were trained in marine rescue." Among those was Hank Wisner. The 58-year-old Battery Park
City resident was on his way to Connecticut for a vacation when he got the call on his cell phone. He immediately turned his car around. "I remember during 9/11 when people from down South came and stayed in our buildings and helped us clean out our apartments," Wisner said. "What comes around, goes around. It was a privilege to be able go down there and help out." Another Lower Manhattan resident who joined the effort was Bing Chen, 56. Chen, a resident of Southbridge Towers, also recalls the outpouring of support from around the country following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and said he felt that it was his duty to join the rescue effort in New Orleans.

"A lot of people said they were amazed that Northerners had come to help," he said. "But the way I look at it, we're all Americans." The mission was organized by Scott Shields, founder of the Bear Search and Rescue Fund (www.bearsearchandrescue.org), a nonprofit group that funds search and rescue operations nationwide. The group is named after Shields' late dog, Bear, who aided in the search effort at the World Trade Center site. "One dead dog has done a lot of good for a lot of people" Shields said. The team stopped in Maryland to pick up rescue rafts donated by Zodiac, their manufacturer, which were loaded into rented moving trucks. The eight-vehicle convoy rolled into New Orleans on

Sept. 4, but it took hours to get the trucks into the city. Seemingly at every turn, the streets were blocked with water, debris or power lines, Wisner said.

"If you can imagine a spider web descending onto the city, that is what the power lines were like."

After a morning spent outfitting the rafts, the team paired up with soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and set out into the surreal landscape of the flooded city.

Team members tagged dead bodies floating in the water with orange markers that could be seen from the air, rescued survivors from sagging front porches, and attempted to coax holdouts from their homes, using bullhorns to plead with them to evacuate.

"The people we saw, white or black, were very poor," Wisner said. "Some stayed because they wanted to protect their homes, or because they didn't have any place to go."

Many stayed because they would not leave their pets behind, Chen said.

Abandoned or trapped animals- team members said they saw hundreds of them-created some of the more heartbreaking scenes for rescue workers, whose orders on the first day were to leave them behind.

Wisner recalls an exhausted Labrador retriever struggling against its leash in the floodwater. Wisner cut the leash, and the dog followed the boat for a while, but it could not be brought aboard.

"There was dead silence on that boat," Wisner said.

Another time, Chen smashed the windshield of a flooded van to free a cat that was trapped on the dashboard.

"We gave it a fighting chance," he said.

On the second day the teams started rescuing the animals, and they estimated that by the end of the week they had saved about 20.

After seven days in New Orleans, Chen returned to New York City with two dogs he adopted from a shelter set up for abandoned animals.

Wisner returned exhausted and humbled by the experience.

"When the World Trade Center was hit, we had the means of starting up again," he said. "These people are really going to have a difficult time starting up their lives."

		"I saw 'em on TV eatin' hamburgers one too many days," Bradley said then. "I said, I'm gonna go up there and cook some gumbo and do some good." These days, many people Downtown are remembering the gumbo and good hearts of Bradley and his New Orleans crew and so many others like him from around the country. Their generosity during those difficult days are recounted time and again by Lower Manhattan residents eager to reach out to others in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. When Manhattan Youth organized a giant fund-raiser on Pier 25 early last month, Bob Townley, the group's director, said he was inspired by the "kindness and uplifting spirit" of those Louisianans. Gumbo, as well as burgers, were among the offerings at the event, which drew an estimated 1,000 people. Young and old danced, the Flying Neutrinos band entertained, and two youth programs in New Orleans will be benefiting from the $25,000 that was raised.
"It was heartwarming," Townley said. "The vibe was just so positive. Just an old fashioned community get-together." In other ways big and small, the Lower Manhattan community has come together to contribute to hurricane relief efforts. Seniors from the Hallmark residence sold baked goods, members of Living Word Church packed 250 "relief kits" with daily necessities, and BPC Cares sold $100 raffle tickets—1,500 of them—for a $65,000 Porsche (purchased at a discount). This month the group will hold a wine tasting at Embassy Suites.

Recalling the animal rescue work of the ASPCA and the Humane Society after Sept.11, Deborah Dilorio, a Battery Park City resident, told her neighbors that there was a "special need" to help with Katrina animal rescue efforts. Within hours of announcing her fundraising mission, she had $1,750 in pledges for the Battery Park City Community Emergency Response Team's animal rescue work in New Orleans. By the end of last month she had doubled that amount. Outside the entrance to Washington Market Park, Oren Shore, 9, sat with his mother, Kate, selling his books, tapes and sundry other items for the benefit of the Red Cross. "Some of this [parting with his things] is painful," said Kate. "But he remembers going to the Red Cross and they had candy for the kids."

		"We just hoped that it wouldn't keep rising" said Franz, 24. Franz and Eric, who have lived all their lives on Duane Street in Tribeca, were visiting their father, Karl, in Bay St. Louis, Miss., a coastal town about 25 miles south of Biloxi, when the hurricane hit. The brothers had planned to evacuate to the town's police station just before the storm came ashore, but their father, a police officer who was on duty at the time, was stalled in his squad car in fast rising waters and unable to pick them up. The storm arrived just after dawn. "I saw a little puddle in the yard, then it was past the rims of the car," recalls Franz. "Then it started creeping over step-by-step, then it started coming in the house."
As the water rushed in, the brothers attempted to save what they could- stowing documents and photographs above doorways and searching for the bottles of water they had set aside in fear that they might float away. "We didn't have time to save everything," said Eric, 22. "We had to let stuff go." The sofa and refrigerator were floating. The family dog, Zephyr, took refuge on a bobbing love seat. A turtle swam in and found a dry perch on a coffee table.

"We basically tried to stay away from everything and maintain our composure," said Franz. The storm surge peeked at about 30 feet, Franz estimates, flooding the house that sits 23 feet above sea level. After about 30 minutes, the waters started to recede. "We could feel it pulling all the stuff out of the house," said Eric. Though the house was waterlogged and caked with mud and debris left behind from the brackish water, it remained standing. Others in the town, the brothers would later learn, had not fared as well. The splintered timber, shingles and roof tops of leveled houses were scattered all around. "Basically, the town was wiped out," said Eric. "City

hall was gone, the train tracks, the main road into town, were all gone."

Franz said that about half the town had evacuated ahead of the storm.

"A lot of the old timers stayed. They figured if they could survive [Hurricane] Camille, they could survive anything," said Franz. "Some weren't so lucky."

The eye of Hurricane Katrina passed directly over Bay St. Louis, and according to press accounts, 12 people died.

When the storm passed, about eight hours after they were first awakened by the howl of wind, the brothers stepped outside to survey the damage and to check in with neighbors.

"Most people were in shock, there weren't too many moving around," said Franz.

Knocks on doors went unanswered, Eric said, but for the elderly neighbor who told the brothers he was concerned that his stepmother inside, who was diabetic, was in need of medical attention. The roads were so choked with debris, however, it would be a week before National Guardsmen could clear them enough for emergency vehicles to pass through.

When Karl Aderer finally made it back to his home and his sons, he found them on the back porch grilling hamburgers removed from a freezer that had been spared from the flooding, on a grill that had floated into the yard.

Franz and Eric returned to Tribeca Sept. 12, where they were joyfully greeted by friends and family, happy to see them safe and eager to hear their stories.

"I took like 300 pictures," said Eric. "But it was impossible to explain what it felt like to be there."

"A Corner of Her Eye," an 18-minute film by Konrad Aderer of edited video footage documenting the brother's experience as well as the aftermath of the storm will screen at 8 p.m., Oct. 13 at White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston St. The screening, with a suggested donation of $10, is a fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina and sponsored by Habitat for Humanity. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.