Katrina Horror Stories. Were they true or just afterstorm hype?

[Tmy]

Rapes, murder, roving gangs, firefights.......the days after katrina there were all sorts of crazy stories as if NewOrleans was a civil war torn 3rd world country.

But I really havent seen any follow up. Nothing about charges, investigation, or muder arrests.

Did that crazyness even happen?

[hh-dragon]

A lot of it definitely happened, it's just that the magnitude was exaggerated. For example, initial reports had Charity Hospital crammed full of corpses and unable to evacuate because of sniper fire. In fact once people in Charity Hospital started communicating, it turned out the sniper fire = someone had heard one gunshot outside, and everyone inside the hospital was basically ok. There were supposed to be hundreds of dead bodies in the Superdome, and there turned out to be six... which of course is still too many.

[Rob Lister]

We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.

This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans. So before I get into too much more trouble, I'm just going to tell you in my closing conversation with Dr. King, he said, "I never worried about the good people -- or the bad people I should say -- who were doing all the violence during civil rights time.'' He said, "I worried about the good folks that didn't say anything or didn't do anything when they knew what they had to do.''

[WildCat]

We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.

This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans. So before I get into too much more trouble, I'm just going to tell you in my closing conversation with Dr. King, he said, "I never worried about the good people -- or the bad people I should say -- who were doing all the violence during civil rights time.'' He said, "I worried about the good folks that didn't say anything or didn't do anything when they knew what they had to do.''
I was in NO a few weeks ago for Jazz Fest. Lots of gag t-shirts for sale using Nagin's "chocolate city" remark.

[Meadmaker]

There was definitely looting. There were some carjackings and such. However, after the storm, there were widespread reports of rescue workers being shot at by snipers. I don't believe that ever happened.

Shortly after the hurricane I started a thread to that effect, in which I suggested that the only possible explanation was that the snipers were all Imperial Storm Troopers, because they fired hundreds of shots, and never hit anyone.