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How the Saints saved New Orleans
After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, help for the people of New Orleans came from a surprising source: the city's football team
Martin Fletcher
Slender young cheerleaders skimpily dressed in black and gold are dancing on the sidelines. A man revs up a Harley-Davidson before leading the New Orleans Saints on to the field through clouds of dry ice to play the San Francisco 49ers. The noise from the huge crowd in the Superdome is deafening. Amid the bedlam, three middle-aged nuns stand serenely in their long white habits singing the praises of their beloved American football team to this British reporter.
“You can't imagine their devotion to this city,” beams Sister Joan Marie. Sister Mary George enthuses: “Each player goes out into the community and does good things.” Sister Mary Andrew declares: “They couldn't be more appropriately named.”
On Sunday the Saints will be running out not at the Superdome, but at Wembley to play the San Diego Chargers to promote the sport on this side of the Atlantic. With their padded shoulders and grill-fronted helmets, they will look just like any other football team, but appearances deceive. The Saints have worked a minor miracle. They have contributed as much to the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as any political leader, government agency or corporate entity. The way they came marching home 13 months after Katrina wreaked such destruction brought hope and inspiration where there was only misery and despair.
“They saved the city, big time,” says Humble Levar, 31, a limousine driver. Keith Joiner, 46, a paramedic, agrees: “That's what brought the city back to life, the Saints coming home. They gave everyone hope.” Mary Beth Romig, of the New Orleans convention and visitors bureau, says: “The Saints saved the city - emotionally, spiritually and, to an extent, economically.”
When Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, the Superdome became the official “Refuge of Last Resort”, sheltering 14,000 desperate people - those too poor or too helpless to flee the city. As the levees broke and 40 billion gallons of water inundated New Orleans that number more than doubled. People waded to the dome through neck-high water. They arrived in boats. They were deposited by helicopters that had plucked them from rooftops. Nursing-home patients were dropped there with just their names pinned to their clothes.
Conditions inside the dome degenerated rapidly. Katrina ripped great gashes in the roof and water poured in. A single generator provided enough power for dim lighting, but nothing more. There was no sanitation, no ventilation. Toilets overflowed. Sewage backed up. People survived on military rations. They defecated and urinated in the corridors. They looted the concession stands, vending machines and corporate suites. At least ten died, including one man who threw himself off an upper tier. Corpses were dumped in catering freezers. It was a “total societal breakdown”, says Doug Thornton, the Superdome's manager.
After five days Thornton was evacuated by helicopter. “I didn't think I'd ever be back in the dome,” he says. “I was in tears. I thought it was not just the dome but my house and the entire city. I wondered how we could ever recover.”
A new football season was just beginning, so the Saints set up camp in San Antonio, Texas, whose mayor began pushing for the team to stay there permanently - and there were compelling reasons for it. The ageing Superdome had been trashed, and had become a worldwide symbol of horror. Even before Katrina, New Orleans was barely big or wealthy enough to support a top-flight football team, and its population was now scattered across the nation. But the idea that the Saints might not return to New Orleans caused such uproar that it was rapidly dropped - if the 33-year-old Superdome could be salvaged.
As the waters receded, Thornton returned with a team of architects, walking through the stinking building in respirators and biohazard suits. A month later the architects reported that the dome was structurally sound. That October Kathleen Blanco, then Louisiana's Governor, decided to rebuild because the rebirth of such an iconic landmark would provide a beacon of hope, and because the dome was the economic cornerstone of a city that depends on tourists and conventions for a third of its revenues.
Thornton reckoned the $185 million rebuilding programme would take two years. The National Football League thought otherwise. It set a seemingly impossible deadline of late September 2006 so the dome could host the Saints' first home game of the next season. Contracts were fast-tracked. Construction work began in March. A thousand workers had to replace nearly ten acres of roof, remove 4,000 tons of trash, extract 3.8 million gallons of water, replaster 750,000sq ft of walls, lay 68,000ft of artificial turf, clean 58,000 seats and much else besides.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5002785.ece
After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, help for the people of New Orleans came from a surprising source: the city's football team
Martin Fletcher
Slender young cheerleaders skimpily dressed in black and gold are dancing on the sidelines. A man revs up a Harley-Davidson before leading the New Orleans Saints on to the field through clouds of dry ice to play the San Francisco 49ers. The noise from the huge crowd in the Superdome is deafening. Amid the bedlam, three middle-aged nuns stand serenely in their long white habits singing the praises of their beloved American football team to this British reporter.
“You can't imagine their devotion to this city,” beams Sister Joan Marie. Sister Mary George enthuses: “Each player goes out into the community and does good things.” Sister Mary Andrew declares: “They couldn't be more appropriately named.”
On Sunday the Saints will be running out not at the Superdome, but at Wembley to play the San Diego Chargers to promote the sport on this side of the Atlantic. With their padded shoulders and grill-fronted helmets, they will look just like any other football team, but appearances deceive. The Saints have worked a minor miracle. They have contributed as much to the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as any political leader, government agency or corporate entity. The way they came marching home 13 months after Katrina wreaked such destruction brought hope and inspiration where there was only misery and despair.
“They saved the city, big time,” says Humble Levar, 31, a limousine driver. Keith Joiner, 46, a paramedic, agrees: “That's what brought the city back to life, the Saints coming home. They gave everyone hope.” Mary Beth Romig, of the New Orleans convention and visitors bureau, says: “The Saints saved the city - emotionally, spiritually and, to an extent, economically.”
When Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, the Superdome became the official “Refuge of Last Resort”, sheltering 14,000 desperate people - those too poor or too helpless to flee the city. As the levees broke and 40 billion gallons of water inundated New Orleans that number more than doubled. People waded to the dome through neck-high water. They arrived in boats. They were deposited by helicopters that had plucked them from rooftops. Nursing-home patients were dropped there with just their names pinned to their clothes.
Conditions inside the dome degenerated rapidly. Katrina ripped great gashes in the roof and water poured in. A single generator provided enough power for dim lighting, but nothing more. There was no sanitation, no ventilation. Toilets overflowed. Sewage backed up. People survived on military rations. They defecated and urinated in the corridors. They looted the concession stands, vending machines and corporate suites. At least ten died, including one man who threw himself off an upper tier. Corpses were dumped in catering freezers. It was a “total societal breakdown”, says Doug Thornton, the Superdome's manager.
After five days Thornton was evacuated by helicopter. “I didn't think I'd ever be back in the dome,” he says. “I was in tears. I thought it was not just the dome but my house and the entire city. I wondered how we could ever recover.”
A new football season was just beginning, so the Saints set up camp in San Antonio, Texas, whose mayor began pushing for the team to stay there permanently - and there were compelling reasons for it. The ageing Superdome had been trashed, and had become a worldwide symbol of horror. Even before Katrina, New Orleans was barely big or wealthy enough to support a top-flight football team, and its population was now scattered across the nation. But the idea that the Saints might not return to New Orleans caused such uproar that it was rapidly dropped - if the 33-year-old Superdome could be salvaged.
As the waters receded, Thornton returned with a team of architects, walking through the stinking building in respirators and biohazard suits. A month later the architects reported that the dome was structurally sound. That October Kathleen Blanco, then Louisiana's Governor, decided to rebuild because the rebirth of such an iconic landmark would provide a beacon of hope, and because the dome was the economic cornerstone of a city that depends on tourists and conventions for a third of its revenues.
Thornton reckoned the $185 million rebuilding programme would take two years. The National Football League thought otherwise. It set a seemingly impossible deadline of late September 2006 so the dome could host the Saints' first home game of the next season. Contracts were fast-tracked. Construction work began in March. A thousand workers had to replace nearly ten acres of roof, remove 4,000 tons of trash, extract 3.8 million gallons of water, replaster 750,000sq ft of walls, lay 68,000ft of artificial turf, clean 58,000 seats and much else besides.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5002785.ece
