Matt's Story

Hi Guys,

I received this e-mail and thought I would share it with my curezone family....


Subject: Matt's story


Hi Everyone,


Thank you to everyone who called, sent emails and did anything else to help bring comfort to our family during the horrific hurricane Katrina ordeal. We are so thankful to have Matt back home, safe and sound. He has written about his experience and has asked me to forward it to everyone that I sent my emails to or to anyone that took the time to contact me. His letter and story are below.

Love, Judy



THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I am not sure where to begin. I am sorry I do not have time to personally write everyone back so I figured a group email would be the best. I cannot explain to you how much it meant to me when I got home and read all of the emails that had been sent to my mom expressing concern for me and my friends. It was by far the worst thing I have ever endured but it didn’t really hit me until I read all of the emails from family and friends and even people I don’t know that were worried about my safety and praying for me. I knew we were VERY lucky to get out of there alive and unharmed, but all of your emails are what really made it hit home. I read them all on the plane the next day on my way to Bloomington, IN and it was hard to hold back the tears. Thank you to all who offered help, sympathy, concern, etc. throughout the whole ordeal. I am sure it helped my mom get through it. For those of you who don’t know the story yet, I have attached what I have typed up so far. I am sure I left out some details, but its long enough as it is. For those of you who heard we saw an alligator eating someone, walked around a bunch of dead bodies, ran away from a gang that was chasing us, and who knows what else; sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not in my story.



Sincerely,


Matt Moss

Corporate Operations, Director

Interstate Blood Bank, Inc.

901-525-7462 - office

901-373-7712 - fax

matt.moss@interstatebloodbank.com

HURRICANE KATRINA



As most of you know, Friday, September 26th, some friends and I took the Amtrak train to New Orleans in route to a bachelor party for our friend Jason Weeks. The bachelor party was going great until Katrina came into the picture.



On Friday, I knew of a hurricane but I thought it was small and was going to be hitting Florida. We did not hear anything about it hitting New Orleans until Saturday. When the authorities began to suggest evacuating the city, we thought of a few ways to leave town but at 6:00 pm on Saturday, Amtrak told us that our train the next day would still be leaving at 1:00 pm as scheduled. Since the only flights we could have gotten were also leaving Sunday and we were having trouble finding any rental cars, we figured we would just stick with the train. I found out at 7:00 am Sunday morning that our train had been cancelled. When I called my parents and mentioned that we had no viable transportation options, I mentioned that I was considering hitchhiking. I won’t repeat the exact words out of my dad’s mouth, but he pretty much said that was the dumbest idea he had ever heard of. Then he said, “Wait, let me take that back. That is the second dumbest thing I have ever heard of. The dumbest thing was that y’all didn’t leave yesterday”. At that point, we argued for a second and then realized we had a bigger problem on our hands that we should be focusing on.



When we realized that not a single store within walking distance was open, we went down to the little restaurant in our hotel, ordered a few bottled waters, a turkey sandwich, and then headed halfway down the block to get some food from a nearby hotel gift shop. I got 4 big bottles of water, 2 bags of pretzels, 2 packages of peanut butter crackers, and a $22 candle. At first, I thought to myself that 22 dollars for a candle was a bit ridiculous, but now that I look back on it, it was the best $22 I have EVER spent. The severity of what we were about to go through hadn’t hit me yet, and I was just trying to decide if I would even need a candle.



We all went back to the hotel and made phone calls to family and friends, filled up the bathtub with water, put our luggage in the bathroom, covered the windows, and prepared for what was coming. I had stayed up all night Saturday until 7:00 am Sunday morning and was up by 9:00, so I was pretty tired already. For those who don’t know me, I can fall asleep anywhere anytime, any place!!! That night, I couldn’t sleep. Of course it finally started to catch up with me around the time the hurricane hit, which was about 5:00 am Monday morning. I had been watching the news all night listening to the words catastrophic, category 5, devastating, worst ever, etc., yet I still did not really think about what was about to hit us. I watched objects fly through the air before and during the hurricane. We could hear things hitting the ground and hitting buildings throughout the storm. I can’t even describe what it looked like, but the rain and the wind were so powerful it was breathtaking. I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been had the hurricane not changed directions at the last minute and headed towards Biloxi and Mobile. At one point, as I was standing in our room looking through the window, I was watching the wind come down one street and take a 90 degree turn to join up with the crosswind and go down the other street. Wind going over 100 mph was turning on a dime and heading in a different direction. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it is kind of hard to explain. Out of nowhere, the wind did not make the 90 degree turn and came right at our window. It scared the crap out of me and I jumped away from the window and behind the wall. My first instinct was to jump out of the way and hope that nothing came flying through the window. Luckily, nothing did. I then laughed to myself and sat on the bed and continued to watch the news. Shhhh, don’t tell my mom I wasn’t in the bathroom.



The power went out around 5:30 am Monday morning and I called my parents at that time to let them know I was turning off my phone in order to conserve the battery. Once the power went off, it was a bit easier to fall asleep, so I dozed off on the bed for a few hours.



I woke up around 11:00 am or so and the hurricane was over. Amazingly, our hotel was practically untouched during the hurricane. At this point, there was barely any water on the streets, and we knew we were very lucky and hoped to be leaving soon. The hotel restaurant was serving grits and cheese sandwiches because that was all they had. One guy complained that $4 for a cheese sandwich was ridiculous and that he wanted to see a menu to see what it normally costs. Another girl complained that “it wasn’t breakfast time. Grits? That’s all you got is grits?” I did my best to keep my mouth shut and just wait in line because I couldn’t believe that at a time like that, someone would complain about any food that was available. I ordered one cheese sandwich and went on my way. We then walked the streets to look at the damage. For anyone who is interested, I have some pictures I can forward to you that Michael took with his camera.



We did not try to leave the city that day, Monday, because the levees were still intact and there was no reason to leave until the train came to get us (hopefully in the next day or two). That night, again, I didn’t sleep but a few hours. My phone worked most of Monday, but I rarely used it because of the lack of battery power. I let my parents know after the hurricane hit that I was fine and I called them again around 6:30 pm to let them know I was still ok and that I would talk to them the next morning. We went on the roof that night and that’s when we saw the first looters. We saw three kids break into an office whose window had been shattered by Katrina. At the time, we thought that was pathetic. We had no idea of what was in store. That night, around 10:00, we realized there was a little bit of water on one of the streets, but didn’t think much of it because we didn’t know that the first levee had breeched. We just figured the drainage was backed up a little bit. A few hours later, we noticed a bit more water. Again, we had no idea the levees breeched, so we went back to the hot and dark hotel room and went to sleep.



The next morning we woke up to the flooded streets. This is when things started to get interesting. Our phones were not working so I was unable to call my parents. Also, we weren’t sure if they knew the situation had gotten worse. We saw a few people here and there walking through the streets, but by midday, when everyone realized the cops wouldn’t be patrolling the streets, the looting and chaos began. In our own hotel, we had guys going and getting everything from clothes to shoes to food to diapers to radios to hats to necessities to a vase of flowers. Who the hell needs flowers in a damn flood??? The guys would come back and hand all of their goods off to the women at the bottom of the hotel and go out for more. The women would then take their new prized possessions to their rooms or if their cars were in the garage, they would take them to the car. Others were trying to sell some of the items in the hotel. We heard a few gunshots throughout the day. I don’t know if people were shot at this point, if they were warning shots, rubber bullets, real bullets or what. We just knew that we were definitely hearing gun shots. We saw a bulldozer with 3 cops on it driving in the street that almost ran over one looter. I assume he was looting and that they were just trying to get him to stop. We caught the tail end of it, but one of the cops finally aimed his AK17 or some type of big gun at him and I guess that’s when he got the message to walk away. I could look down towards Canal Street and see countless numbers of people running through the water (about calf to knee high at that point) with as much stuff in their hands as they could hold. I even saw a few cops at one point, but they were powerless to do anything because there were so few cops and so many looters.



At some point in the middle of the day, Michael got a text messages from Alison updating us on what was going on with my dad’s efforts to try to get us out of there. The very first text message he got said that my dad was flying to Lafayette and was trying to get us out. That sent chills down my spine and gave me a sense of relief. At some point that afternoon or night, I was able to call my mom. I had tried my dad’s Cell Phone a few times and then decided that if his phone wasn’t working, I could at least be sure their home phone was working. I don’t even remember what I said when I talked to my mom, but I believe I mentioned wanting to leave and walk to Baton Rouge. She told us not to do that because all of the news and media was saying that we should stay where we were. That night, I was able to make a call to my dad around 8:00 pm. I told him that we felt we needed to try to make our move towards getting out of the city tomorrow morning or not at all. By this time, we had very little water, food, or energy left, and if we waited another day, I knew we wouldn’t be able to hike very far. I am not sure how far we could have hiked the next day, but I knew we were better off doing it sooner than later. My dad told me not to leave yet because he would be finding out from Jim Mayor (VP of Salvation Army of Baton Rouge) at 10:30 am where a canteen would be set up on Highway 90. If we could get to that canteen, they would know our names and who we were and they could take us to safety. From Monday morning until Tuesday night seemed like 36 days, not 36 hours.



That night, the one act of kindness that we witnessed while at the hotel happened. We were walking near some parked cars (many windows all shattered out) and a woman offered Michael her car charger so that he could charge his phone. She just happened to have a Nokia charger which was the one phone that we needed to be charged.



The next morning, we woke up around 8:00 am and heard they would be evacuating the hotel and that we needed to head to the Superdome. I refused to go there, so I went to the roof to try to use my phone. Amazingly, I was able to talk to my dad. Because of the looting and killings that were going on (the rest of the country didn’t know the severity of everything yet) the canteens were not going to be set up. When I heard that, I told my dad I felt we needed to try to walk to the highway as far as we could and try to get out of there. He agreed and wished us luck and told me that he would work on getting as close to New Orleans as possible. I didn’t know if our phones would work, but I told him we would try to keep in touch as best we could.



I don’t know what everyone else took with them, but I packed dry socks, boxers, shorts, and a shirt. I also took the water that I had and the little bit of food I had and left the rest behind. Michael and I both poked holes in our suitcases and used a sheet to make shoulder straps to make the bags similar to a backpack. That way, we could carry the luggage on our backs through the water and once we got out of the water, we could roll it like normal. I took the hanging rod out of the closet to use as a walking stick or if need be, a weapon.



When all 9 of us were packed up and ready to go, we embarked on our journey. We walked downstairs and took our first steps into the water. We already knew the directions and our best route to make it to dry streets. We walked approximately 3 blocks in knee to thigh deep water until we hit our first dry street. We then turned and went towards the Superdome walking through a little bit more water on the way, but nothing too deep. We talked to a few cops who were not very helpful and continued on our way to the Highway. The only thing the cops could tell us is that we were heading the right direction to get to Hwy 90. We walked all the way to the ramp of Hwy 90 without any problems. Before we headed up the ramp, we changed into our dry clothes and tossed the wet ones. Since I only had one pair of shoes, and did not know how far I was about to be walking, I had taken my soles out of my shoes before I got into the water. When I put my dry clothes on, I dried off my feet as best I could, put my socks on, held my soles up to my feet, put a plastic bag around my feet, and then put my shoes on. That was the best I could do. At this point, it hadn’t dawned on me that we were 9 guys carrying a bunch of bags and luggage and that is the reason some of the people apparently had been shot. People were killing others just for their bags whose contents were completely unknown to them.



We walked up the ramp and onto the highway and walked towards the bridge to go over the Mississippi River. One cop at the bottom of the ramp told us that he didn’t think we should walk on the highway and told us to turn around but that he couldn’t stop us if that’s what we really wanted to do. We continued up the bridge until we got stopped by a female cop at the beginning of the bridge. She refused to let us walk across it no matter how much we pleaded with her. At this time, there were 2 other guys on the bridge and the 9 of us. The cop told us that a city or government truck would be coming by in 5 minutes to take us across the bridge and to a town about 15 miles down Hwy 90. There was a refuge area (I guess that’s what you would call it) set up with water, food, and phones there. We were pretty excited to hear that!! Michael sent a text message to see if my dad could get to that town and Alison replied back saying he could get there. We thought we were home free! A few minutes later, we received another text message that said he was wrong and that he couldn’t make it that far, but he was working on finding out how close to us he could get. After we sat on the bridge for approximately one hour, the cop told us that the refuge area was now full and that the truck would only be taking us across the bridge. That perturbed us quite a bit since we were expecting to be walking all day and now had wasted an hour sitting on the bridge. As we were waiting on the bridge, the cop told us about 2 different killings that had just happened right below us on the streets. One was at the Wal-Mart that some of you heard about on the news. At that time, we didn’t know cops were in there looting, but we did know that some guy had stolen all the guns and shot somebody. The other killing was because a guy was packing up his car about to try to leave the city, and someone came up behind him and slit his throat and stole his car. She told us this because she was suggesting that we should not be walking anywhere but instead should wait to be rescued. The lady cop’s sergeant was now on the bridge with us and the lady cop left. The next thing I know, the sergeant left too. They had both told us that since we were the first ones on the bridge, they would make sure we were on the first truck that came across. When they both left, and we were left standing there with around 60 or so other people, we felt that there was no way we would be able to hitchhike standing next to a big group like that. If a person in a car was going to be generous enough to stop and pick someone up, they weren’t going to stop in front of a big group and let them fight it out to catch the ride. As we started to walk across the bridge, the cop came back up and yelled at us to get back. Being a bit frustrated, we walked back to where we were just in time to see the truck pull up. It was a fight to get on, but all of us were able to pile in the back of a big utility truck. I would say there were probably about 30 people in the truck.



The truck took us across the bridge and most people got out at the first exit. However, it was blocked off for vehicles, so he had to continue on Hwy 90 a few exits before he could turn around. He dropped us off at a gas station, turned around and went back towards New Orleans. Just as a side note, the neighborhood we went over while on the truck was not the best of neighborhoods. Just by the looks of it, we were glad we didn’t have to walk through it. As soon as the truck left us, we were about to walk back up the ramp onto the highway and continue walking until 8 or 9 cop cars came pulling up yelling at us over their bullhorns that we need to stop where we were, turn around, and go back towards New Orleans. They yelled at us that we should not be there and wanted to know how we got there. When we told them that a cop just dropped us off here, he stated that he wasn’t supposed to. They were trying to clear out that neighborhood because of killings that had been going on and he said we needed to walk backwards 5 miles to a bus stop and they would figure out how to get us out from there. We refused and said we wanted to walk to the highway and leave as opposed to going back towards New Orleans because of fear. He kept saying to turn around and go to the bus stop and we kept saying “NO”. That was until they all decided to pull out their shotguns and point them at the ground and said “GO BACK!” At that point, we quit saying “No” and hesitantly walked backwards a little bit. I tried to ask him one last question and said “can I just ask you something?” The officer stated “I have already answered all of your questions”. When I said “I haven’t even asked it yet”, he just looked at me and said “Son, I suggest you go back that way NOW!”. While on the bridge and while at that street corner, we had tried to flag down multiple pick up trucks to try to hitchhike with absolutely no luck at all. We started to walk back the direction the officers pointed us in. Finally, one guy tentatively stopped. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take us, but we offered him money and practically begged him to let us hop in the bed of the truck. He agreed and within 2 seconds, all 9 of us were in the back of the truck with all of our bags and we were on our way out.



On the way out, we saw some rough neighborhoods that we would have had to trek through. We saw about 25 cop cars in one parking lot with about 20 people hog-tied face down on the ground. Further down the road, we saw another cop with 2 more guys in the same situation. When we were passing through these neighborhoods, I knew we were very lucky to be driving through them instead of walking. However, the more I look back on it, we would not have survived that walk! Either physically some wouldn’t have made it or we would have been killed for our bags. I feel certain about that. The guy drove us all the way to Baton Rouge since he was going there also. After about 30 minutes of riding in the back of the pickup truck, Michael was able to send out a text message to Alison. She then called my mom, who called my dad to let him know we were on our way to Baton Rouge and to tell him know that we would call him when we got there. We then tried calling my dad and actually got through. We finally got to Baton Rouge and went to the first gas station we saw. I filled the guy’s truck up with gas, we all paid him some money, and he was off to continue his journey. We went inside and got the first cold drink we had had in 3 days.



We left the gas station and went to CiCi’s pizza and had a bite to eat while we waited for my dad to come pick us up. That was the best horrible meal I have ever eaten! After a few minutes, my dad and Uncle Jay arrived with a mini van they had rented when they flew into Lafayette. Luckily, my dad came up and he gave me a big hug instead of punching me in the teeth. J They took us to Jim and Diane Mayer’s house where we were able to shower for the first time. In the van, my dad told me more about what had been portrayed on the news that most of the country didn’t know yet. The rapings and the killings and the thugs taking over the hospital until the cops could get there, etc. It was just nuts!!



After we showered and cleaned up, my uncle, dad, Michael, and I drove back to Lafayette and flew home on my uncle’s plane and the other 7 guys drove home in the van. We were home safe and sound around 8:00 Wednesday night. The guys in the van made it home around 10:00. We have all recovered and are now getting back into the normal swing of things.



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