Stranded Tourist Finds Herself Nursing An Elderly Stranger
Submitted:		N.O.V.A. December 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 12-04-2005

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"It was supposed to be a quick trip, a nice vacation for my co-worker and me
to just get away. We thought, 'Oh, it'll go up the Gulf toward Florida and
we'll be fine.' "

So on the Friday night before Hurricane Katrina struck, Carla Weisshahn, an
emergency trauma nurse from Neenah, Wis., and her friend Mary took the
Southern Comfort cocktail tour in the French Quarter. And on Saturday, they
took a bus tour of the city and scheduled a swamp tour for the afternoon.

In between their touristy trips, the two friends went back to their hotel
room in the Quarter and flipped on the TV news. It didn't look good. They
tried to change their flights and leave town. No luck.

So, what the heck. They took their swamp tour and hit the Quarter on
Saturday night.

Sunday morning, fearing the worst, they went looking for provisions. Mary is
an insulin-dependent diabetic, but the pharmacies had closed. They stocked
up on crackers and snacks at a liquor store, returned to their hotel and
prepared to wait out the storm with the other stranded guests.

"At 6:38 a.m. Monday morning, the power went out. I know because I looked at
my watch," she said. "Then, at 8 a.m., a beam (collapsed in) the room across
from ours, and it was frightening. The whole building shook."

"At 1 p.m. we finally came out of our room. There was glass everywhere,
water leaking in the room across from ours, and people were starting to go
outside."

They expected they would be able to get a flight out on Tuesday. "We thought
it would just be a matter of time," Weisshahn said. "At worst, we'd leave on
Wednesday afternoon."

Early Tuesday morning, Weisshahn got word from the hotel manager that
everyone in the hotel would be moved to a sister hotel nearby. They packed
up their belongings, she said, and followed the hotel manager to the other
hotel. When they arrived at the sister hotel, Weisshahn said, they were told
they wouldn't be allowed inside. The manager told them to go to the
Superdome.

Two Australian women were standing outside the hotel with a hand-drawn map
to the Dome. They said the hotel manager had provided it.

"They tricked us," Weisshahn said. "Here we were, standing in the street
with no place to go and all of these suitcases. We didn't think it could get
any worse."

There were now six women in their group: two from Australia, two from
California who'd also been staying at the hotel, and Weisshahn and Mary.
They were joined by two men, Derek and Chris, who worked for the hotel but
also were forced to evacuate. They decided to head to the Ernest N. Morial
Convention Center instead of the Superdome, figuring FEMA and the American
Red Cross would be waiting to help people there.

When they arrived late Tuesday afternoon, members of the New Orleans Police
Department greeted them and reluctantly let them into the building, which
was being powered by generators, Weisshahn said. There were no
representatives from FEMA or the Red Cross, nor any source of food or water,
she added.

But the number of people there grew by the minute.

"People just kept coming," she said. "I never could understand how someone
knew well enough to tell thousands of people to go there but did not have
any sense to tell someone in authority that we were there with nothing."

By Wednesday, the Convention Center had become an ugly scene, Weisshahn
said. People were dying in the heat. Rumors were spreading that violence and
looting were rampant elsewhere in the city. Derek and Chris feared that the
crowd would turn on the tourists, so the men formed a circle of chairs
around the women and took turns watching over the group.

"There were three stampedes where people were running from one end of the
building to the other because they thought they heard gunshots," Weisshahn
said. "Things were getting rough; sewage was flowing out from the bathrooms.
People hadn't eaten or drunk anything for days. Thursday night, I started to
fear the worst myself."

Weisshahn said she hit a low that night.

Friday morning, her friends asked her to take a look at an elderly woman who
didn't appear to be breathing. That's when Weisshahn met Velma Brosa. She
went into nurse mode, checking Brosa's vital signs and somehow finding an
MRE to feed the woman. As she fed Brosa, Weisshahn said the woman began to
talk about a son. Never, though, did anyone appear to claim Brosa, who wore
her name on a piece of cardboard attached to her wrist.

"She helped me because I stayed with her all day. She kept me busy, and I've
thought about her a lot," Weisshahn said.

She finally made it out of the Convention Center on Saturday, when she was
bused with others to Louis Armstrong International Airport and flown to a
shelter in Austin, Texas.

"I don't know that I'll ever know what happened to Velma," Weisshahn said.
"I do know that what happened in that Convention Center should have never
happened to anyone."

Weisshahn and Mary showered and slept at the Austin shelter and then left
Sunday morning for Wisconsin.

"I am thankful to be alive," Weisshahn said. "Derek and Chris, they didn't
have to protect us or look out for us. They did. I am so grateful to them.
They are true angels, and I'll never forget them or what they did for us."