America’s Highway of Death

Stories of survival from the Times-Picayune.

Kidding each other about their unkempt hair and dreams of pedicures, the pair tried to push back the images of the unending journey out of their crumbling city. Just one of the memories could send someone spiraling down, but these women – like the near-hopeless refugees all around them near the Causeway Boulevard underpass at I-10 – carried with them countless troubling visions.

For Harrison and Williams, those included a paraplegic woman they couldn’t drag from a roof, a father with a dead baby under each arm and a 2-week-old infant crushed when her mother lost grip of her during a stampede at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The women held each other up and prayed that they would board one of the buses Saturday.

…

All Wise carried in his single bag was a portrait of his large family.

It showed Wise with a much fuller face and a broad smile. On Saturday morning, he paced with a grimace, telling in reverse the chronology of the past six days: two days along the highway, another at University of New Orleans and four days on the roof of his house.

“I can’t go no more,” he said, holding his palms up and out in a gesture many of the refugees used to express their dwindling hope. “Nobody wants us. Nobody wants to help New Orleans.”