The cars were swallowed, the homes shattered and the people left clinging for life. Survivors waited for help, but it seemed like so little, so late.More than a week since Hurricane Katrina cut its swath along the Gulf Coast, word is only now starting to trickle out from this outlying area of some 66,000 people on Louisiana's southeastern edge.
What's said is filled with anger -- residents feeling even more abandoned than hard-hit New Orleans -- and disbelief. (See video of a largely submerged parish -- 2:35 )
"If you dropped a bomb on this place, it couldn't be any worse than this," said Ron Silva, a district fire chief in St. Bernard Parish. "It's Day 8, guys. Everything was diverted first to New Orleans, we understand that. But do you realize we got 18 to 20 feet of water from the storm, and we've still got 7 to 8 feet of water?"In the working-class parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines, the heavy rain and levee break brought a wall of water up to 20 feet high. Local officials expect the number of deaths to be in the hundreds.
In one wrenching case, 30 residents in a nursing home died and 30 others were evacuated, said Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who has been working with search and rescue. (Full story)
Homes were chopped open, a Baptist church's steeple ripped off. Water gurgles and spurts in places from leaking natural gas.
"I can't even imagine trying to rebuild this," said Kevin Cobble, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife officer from Las Cruces, New Mexico, who has been looking for survivors.
As relief efforts sputtered in the days after the storm, Verlyn Davis Jr., an out-of-work electrician, took charge. He transformed his parents' bar and seafood restaurant, Lehrmann's, into a shelter where he dispatches people to clear roads, hook up generators and help in the disaster relief process.
About 20 people have been staying there these days. On a boarded-up window out front is a blue spray-painted sign: "ABOUT TIME BUSH!"
"The governor and the president let thousands of people die and they let them die on their roofs and they let them die in the water," said Davis, 45. "We got left. They didn't care."
Help has begun to pour in -- the sound of the military helicopters overhead interrupts the silence. Search teams in boats pound on rooftops. They shout, "Anybody home?" But they know the answer.
"New Orleans took a beating," said Jason Stage, a 47-year-old maintenance worker staying at Lehrmann's. "But St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines was ground zero."
