EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press reporter Mary Foster spent seven days in the Louisiana Superdome before and after Hurricane Katrina. One year later, she interviewed some of those who shared her experience while awaiting rescue.
NEW ORLEANS — The Superdome is super again — a gleaming white centerpiece to a devastated city, a mecca of roaring crowds, astounding plays and sideline pageantry.
But don't ask Brian Miller to visit.
"I don't think I'll even go in it again for a Saints game," said Miller, a former Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputy. "I don't think I can get what it was like in there out of my mind."
He was there for five days when the howling winds of Hurricane Katrina drove thousands of people to the dome; most of them were the poorest of the poor, people who were unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders, and they expected an oasis from the chaos and devastation wrought by the storm.
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What they got was an enduring symbol of despair and human suffering.
A $185 million renovation, fresh paint and fancy scoreboards cannot eradicate memories of what they experienced there:
The pungent aroma of backed-up toilets, unwashed bodies, decaying food, mold and who knows what else. Sweltering heat. An awful din. Rumors of unspeakable crimes.
Children dashing across the soggy Superdome floor, turning turf reserved for elite athletes into their private field of dreams as parents fretted over what the future would bring.
"I can't stand to even look at pictures of that time," said Terrie Green, 41, who went to the Superdome with her three children and infant granddaughter on Tuesday, Aug. 30, after being rescued from their flooded 9th Ward home.
"By the time we got out of there, we were all sick. Sick from the heat, sick from that stink that was there. Just worn out."
Because of the heat — outside temperatures soared into the high 90s, and it reached an estimated 125 degrees inside the Superdome — the family, including little Alea, only 2 days old when the storm hit, moved to the concourse that runs around the exterior.
The heat took a toll on the baby, who developed a rash and became dehydrated. After they were evacuated to Houston, the infant was hospitalized for a week.
"She's still kind of sickly," said Green, who remains in Houston looking for work.
Much of the roof failed
At the height of the storm, Aug. 29, the wind peeled away the Superdome's rubberized roof, which before Katrina was believed to be able to withstand winds of 200 miles an hour. Doug Thornton, a vice president of the company that manages the building, said 70 percent of roof failed, allowing rain to pour down on most areas inside.
Then the power failed. An emergency generator provided intermittent lighting, but most of the Superdome went dark. Those inside found themselves in a shadowy world of fear and apprehension, cut off from the outside.
On Tuesday night, Aug. 30, officials concerned about the thousands of people sprawled throughout the stadium opened the doors. Weary storm victims streamed onto the concourse in search of whatever simple comfort they could find.
Makeshift camps were set up around the building. The lucky ones draped clothing and other items to block out the unabated August sun. Others crawled under National Guard equipment to find shade or huddled under the building's overhang.
By Wednesday, there was no running water in the Superdome, and an influx of storm victims from elsewhere in the city had swelled the stadium's population to about 30,000.
Trouble was brewing. Bottled water and military "meals ready to eat" were available. But the bathrooms were foul, and many people were afraid to go into them, perhaps concerned as much about personal safety as sanitation. Some people crouched on cardboard sheets outside as nature called. Some elderly women, embarrassed by the lack of privacy but perhaps clinging to the notion that rescue was imminent, stopped eating and drinking, then crumpled in the heat.
"It was better than no shelter, but it was dirty, funky, and the smell was terrible," said Lamar Dumas, 61, who spent three days at the Superdome.
Dumas walked, swam and paddled Monday afternoon and Tuesday from his flooded home in eastern New Orleans, pushing aside snakes, rats and worse along the way.
"Memories of all I saw and went through — seeing bodies floating around — it still bothers me some," said Dumas, now back in his renovated house. "I prayed. You've got to pray and wait until things get right for you again."
Guard unit pulled back
Early on Thursday morning, the National Guard, fearful of possible rioting and with fewer than 700 troops to control 30,000 refugees, pulled back to a command point on the concourse.
The Guard continued to send patrols inside the stadium, but offices, luxury suites and the Superdome restaurant were looted. People who had been sleeping on cardboard or bare bricks appropriated tables, chairs and cushions.
"We were terrified," said Buzz Leininger of New Orleans, who operates souvenir stands in the stadium. For five days, he and a group of others — among them a cancer patient in a wheelchair — took refuge in a storeroom.
Dome workers and Guardsmen were uneasy. "They kept telling us they were worried the situation was going to get ugly; they were worried about a riot," Leininger said.
Leininger now lives in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer outside his flooded house. The friend with cancer was hospitalized when he left the Superdome; he died 11 days later.
Rumors of atrocities spread — murders, rapes, babies thrown from upper levels. The most common canard involved a 14-year-old girl who had been raped, had her throat cut and was dumped in a bathroom.
But National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Chad Landreneau, who oversaw much of the security work in the Dome, said there was little trouble.
"We broke up some fights; we did some police action. But there were no murders, no riots, and no rapes were reported to us. For all the suffering people went through, it was an amazingly well-behaved group," said Landreneau, now back in New Orleans patrolling with local police.
Some died at the scene
But there were deaths at the Superdome.
At the height of the storm, a man jumped from one of the upper levels in an apparent suicide. In all, 11 people died. One was a drug overdose; the rest died from natural causes, mostly elderly people who needed attention for pre-existing conditions. Some doctors and nurses were there, but they were ill-equipped and could not keep up with the growing health crisis.
Glenn Menard may not have foreseen all that would happen in the Superdome, but when he saw refugees lined up on the arena's floor the night before the storm hit, he knew it would be bad.
"We can make 70,000 people happy for 10 hours," Menard said. "But making 10,000 people comfortable for 70 hours is impossible."
Managing the Superdome had been Menard's dream job. But on Thursday, Sept. 1, as he hobbled to a helicopter — feet swollen, a rash running down his legs and around his waist — he thought he'd be finding new work soon.
"I saw the hole in the roof, the heart-wrenching sight of all the people in so much misery, the garbage everywhere," Menard remembered. "I looked down and thought we'd have to tear it down, and even that wouldn't erase that image."
But Menard, who lost his Lakefront house after the 17th Street Canal broke, is back managing the Superdome from a small room in the New Orleans Arena, home to the NBA's Hornets.
He expects an emotional roller coaster when the New Orleans Saints take to the field in the Superdome on Sept. 25 — the first event in the stadium since Katrina.
"I don't know where (in the stadium) I'll be for the kickoff," he said. "I'd like to be with some of the people who went through it all here. I think we'll hug and probably cry."
He does not expect that he or the Superdome will ever have to repeat last year's horrors.
The city's hurricane plan now calls for residents who don't have the means to leave to be bused out of town. No longer, officials say, will the Superdome be an evacuation shelter of last resort.
