interdictor (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} interdictor) wrote,@ 2005-11-10 10:19:00 |
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FLASHBACK: Securing the Building; Part IV
Editors note: After uncountable requests for retelling our story, I am sharing the details of our experiences of what happened before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit in this series of Flashback posts.
Securing the Building
Ordinarily, our building is fairly secure, including the presence of guards on the first floor. When Hurricane Katrina hit, there may have been as many as 100 people in the building. This included three building engineers, and their families, a couple of building security guards, and their families, 30 police officers (60 total were being stationed at the building), and perhaps 40 tenants.
After the hurricane, many of those people left the building. I too left, without a thought to even check on two company properties a few blocks away. With Katrina gone, the calm outside was re-assuring. Though in hindsight, it was more like the calm before another storm – only the next storm would be chaos and civil unrest.
For the time, however, there was no sense of urgency or pandemonium. People casually walked the streets, and some tenants were leaving to go check on their homes.
I had no desire to attempt to check on my residence, which was a 15-minute drive from the office. I was content to stay at the office where I knew there was power.
Soon, the police officers gathered their things and left our building. And then more tenants left. Finally, a couple of people from our crew wanted to leave. One left because he only had one day of needed medication. The other left to check on his property and meet up with friends. From the standpoint of being CEO, I wasn’t alarmed by any of this because the bottom line was that we survived, and we would still have enough people to maintain operations. Besides, it just meant more supplies for the rest of us. And we expected things to be back to normal pretty quickly.
As time went on, conditions around the building deteriorated. Looting was breaking out all around us. We saw a hotel across the street get looted, and we watched as looters traded their plunder in front of our building. There were signs of lawlessness everywhere. It was then that most of those remaining in the building decided it was time to leave.
We quickly realized that we were the only group with the desire to stay.
I knew that it was important to make sure that we would not be required to leave and that we ask for any needed resources from those who were leaving. We wanted to make sure that as people left the building, we would be re-secured each time.
So we started coordinating with people on when they planned to leave. We made a point of talking to anyone else remaining in the building to see when they planned to leave and we discussed obtaining resources from them that we might need.
One exiting tenant had several extra extension cords that we were able to borrow.
Another had a couple of extra flashlights. A third had a case of D batteries.
We met with the one remaining building engineer so that we could better secure the building and learn how to operate the building’s generator (separate from our generator and necessary to operate the freight elevator) and the hand pump (we decided to use our electric pumps after we hand-pumped a few barrels of diesel). The engineer confirmed that there were only five possible entrances to the building from the first floor: the front and back doors, the garage entrances and the two fire stairway exits.
The building engineers had already locked and secured the front and back doors with two-by-fours. Additionally, they brought all the elevators up to the 10th floor so that if the first floor was compromised, as it later would be, individuals would not have access to any other floors. When we inquired about exits, we realized that with the building power off, a couple of exits were now weak points because magnetic locks would no longer work.
When the last engineer was leaving the building, we took control – and we knew this was our last chance to secure the building.
Michael Barnett and myself each had a 45-caliber handgun with hollow points. We decided that we should sweep the building and remove anyone who should not be in the building. We decided not to allow anyone to enter or leave the building either.
We already saw individuals driving cars looted from the nearby Sewell Cadillac and we did not want vehicles left in the Poydras Center to meet the same fate.
On the 9th floor of the garage, we saw a safe that had been busted open and all the valuables long gone. It appeared as if the looters picked up the safe and dropped it to the concrete several times until it busted open. Looking closer at the safe and the debris near the safe, there was a log of what was in the safe including gold and silver chains.
We knew right then that looters were in the building. As we continued the sweep through the garage, we came upon my girlfriend’s vehicle not 30 feet away. Next to it, a young guy in his 20s, was peering into a car intently. We didn’t recognize him.
He hadn’t seen us, so we made a quiet approach, startling him. He looked like a looter to us and seemed quite unnerved.
On questioning, he claimed he was not looting. However, we did not attempt to prove or disprove what he said. We were more interested in clearing the building instead of catching someone red handed.
“We know that there are looters in this building,” Michael Barnett told him slyly. “We are one of the groups of patrols going through this building to ensure that nothing is looted. We do not want you to be surprised by any looters so we will escort you out of the building.”
We then proceeded to escort the person out of the building, and he didn’t protest with any reason why he should stay.
As we were escorting him out, he said, “Earlier today I was at Wal-Mart and the cops were looting.”
We were a little surprised that someone who claimed not to be a looter had been in a Wal-Mart earlier in the day while other people were present looting.
We told him that we were one of the armed patrols securing the building and for him to let his friends know that armed guards were patrolling the building. He seemed to get the point.
After escorting him out of the parking garage, I noticed it was starting to get dark and a bit creepy in the empty building. We quickly secured the gate leading to Camp Street and then drove up and down the garage to make sure it was free of any other looters.
We then barricaded the fire escapes so that no one would be able to enter the building during the night. We determined that adding a roadblock to exiting the building would be less of a risk than allowing people to potentially enter the building.
As we looked around for other threats, we noticed that the building had several windows broken. However, the lowest level with a broken window was on the 6th floor. We were lucky. One Shell Square nearby had windows broken on the first floor and individuals were entering and exiting that building at will.
We determined that if we made sure that our building remained less of a target to the eye than the surrounding buildings, we would be in good shape.
The remainder of the night was safe and uneventful, but our battle to prevent looting was far from over.
Prior Flashbacks:
I: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
II: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
III: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
Editors note: After uncountable requests for retelling our story, I am sharing the details of our experiences of what happened before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit in this series of Flashback posts.
Securing the Building
Ordinarily, our building is fairly secure, including the presence of guards on the first floor. When Hurricane Katrina hit, there may have been as many as 100 people in the building. This included three building engineers, and their families, a couple of building security guards, and their families, 30 police officers (60 total were being stationed at the building), and perhaps 40 tenants.
After the hurricane, many of those people left the building. I too left, without a thought to even check on two company properties a few blocks away. With Katrina gone, the calm outside was re-assuring. Though in hindsight, it was more like the calm before another storm – only the next storm would be chaos and civil unrest.
For the time, however, there was no sense of urgency or pandemonium. People casually walked the streets, and some tenants were leaving to go check on their homes.
I had no desire to attempt to check on my residence, which was a 15-minute drive from the office. I was content to stay at the office where I knew there was power.
Soon, the police officers gathered their things and left our building. And then more tenants left. Finally, a couple of people from our crew wanted to leave. One left because he only had one day of needed medication. The other left to check on his property and meet up with friends. From the standpoint of being CEO, I wasn’t alarmed by any of this because the bottom line was that we survived, and we would still have enough people to maintain operations. Besides, it just meant more supplies for the rest of us. And we expected things to be back to normal pretty quickly.
As time went on, conditions around the building deteriorated. Looting was breaking out all around us. We saw a hotel across the street get looted, and we watched as looters traded their plunder in front of our building. There were signs of lawlessness everywhere. It was then that most of those remaining in the building decided it was time to leave.
We quickly realized that we were the only group with the desire to stay.
I knew that it was important to make sure that we would not be required to leave and that we ask for any needed resources from those who were leaving. We wanted to make sure that as people left the building, we would be re-secured each time.
So we started coordinating with people on when they planned to leave. We made a point of talking to anyone else remaining in the building to see when they planned to leave and we discussed obtaining resources from them that we might need.
One exiting tenant had several extra extension cords that we were able to borrow.
Another had a couple of extra flashlights. A third had a case of D batteries.
We met with the one remaining building engineer so that we could better secure the building and learn how to operate the building’s generator (separate from our generator and necessary to operate the freight elevator) and the hand pump (we decided to use our electric pumps after we hand-pumped a few barrels of diesel). The engineer confirmed that there were only five possible entrances to the building from the first floor: the front and back doors, the garage entrances and the two fire stairway exits.
The building engineers had already locked and secured the front and back doors with two-by-fours. Additionally, they brought all the elevators up to the 10th floor so that if the first floor was compromised, as it later would be, individuals would not have access to any other floors. When we inquired about exits, we realized that with the building power off, a couple of exits were now weak points because magnetic locks would no longer work.
When the last engineer was leaving the building, we took control – and we knew this was our last chance to secure the building.
Michael Barnett and myself each had a 45-caliber handgun with hollow points. We decided that we should sweep the building and remove anyone who should not be in the building. We decided not to allow anyone to enter or leave the building either.
We already saw individuals driving cars looted from the nearby Sewell Cadillac and we did not want vehicles left in the Poydras Center to meet the same fate.
On the 9th floor of the garage, we saw a safe that had been busted open and all the valuables long gone. It appeared as if the looters picked up the safe and dropped it to the concrete several times until it busted open. Looking closer at the safe and the debris near the safe, there was a log of what was in the safe including gold and silver chains.
We knew right then that looters were in the building. As we continued the sweep through the garage, we came upon my girlfriend’s vehicle not 30 feet away. Next to it, a young guy in his 20s, was peering into a car intently. We didn’t recognize him.
He hadn’t seen us, so we made a quiet approach, startling him. He looked like a looter to us and seemed quite unnerved.
On questioning, he claimed he was not looting. However, we did not attempt to prove or disprove what he said. We were more interested in clearing the building instead of catching someone red handed.
“We know that there are looters in this building,” Michael Barnett told him slyly. “We are one of the groups of patrols going through this building to ensure that nothing is looted. We do not want you to be surprised by any looters so we will escort you out of the building.”
We then proceeded to escort the person out of the building, and he didn’t protest with any reason why he should stay.
As we were escorting him out, he said, “Earlier today I was at Wal-Mart and the cops were looting.”
We were a little surprised that someone who claimed not to be a looter had been in a Wal-Mart earlier in the day while other people were present looting.
We told him that we were one of the armed patrols securing the building and for him to let his friends know that armed guards were patrolling the building. He seemed to get the point.
After escorting him out of the parking garage, I noticed it was starting to get dark and a bit creepy in the empty building. We quickly secured the gate leading to Camp Street and then drove up and down the garage to make sure it was free of any other looters.
We then barricaded the fire escapes so that no one would be able to enter the building during the night. We determined that adding a roadblock to exiting the building would be less of a risk than allowing people to potentially enter the building.
As we looked around for other threats, we noticed that the building had several windows broken. However, the lowest level with a broken window was on the 6th floor. We were lucky. One Shell Square nearby had windows broken on the first floor and individuals were entering and exiting that building at will.
We determined that if we made sure that our building remained less of a target to the eye than the surrounding buildings, we would be in good shape.
The remainder of the night was safe and uneventful, but our battle to prevent looting was far from over.
Prior Flashbacks:
I: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
II: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
III: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interd
