Daniel Finnegan lived in the Upper Ninth Ward. He and his neighbors were some of the first to see dry land after the initial flooding of Katrina receded. Due to its location, their neighborhood served as one of the primary routes of evacuation for residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, and other areas severely impacted by the storm.

DF: There were some people that were coming over from the Lower Nine at that point—and Dauphine was the first dry street, so this was kind of the passageway. They were walking towards Convention Center, Superdome via Dauphine Street. We were just sitting up on our balcony just tryin’ to survey the situation and get a sense of what’s goin’ on. The whole thing is strange. With every day, the chaos grew, the chaos grew. You would think with each day after the storm, things would get more normalized and you would be able to handle it better with each day. But it got worse with each day. The day of the storm wasn’t that big a deal. The next day you started to get a little scared and a little “Okay, we gotta do some surviving,” but still not that big a deal. Help will be here. The Red Cross, water, all this stuff will be here. Then the levee breaks. We still didn’t know what was going on down there. But then we started hearing on the radio reports that everybody’s on their rooftop, people are drowning in their attics, the huge levee break, this sorta thing. But mainly we’re just seeing the people, just seeing broken… Two kinds of people: There were broken people who were just really wandering with no direction—well, some direction, but they didn’t know why they were going in that direction, if that makes sense. And then people who were more kind of bonin’ up and taking more of a survivor, “we gotta get this done” attitude. But at this point, we still didn’t realize that looting was necessary. You’re seeing people coming by with things—tennis shoes, designer shirts, and food and water or whatever. We thought none of that was necessary. Only just now am I realizing that, you know what? Clothes? Fine, man. ’Cause these people were on their roofs… if you stopped to put on a pair of pants, you drowned, so you had people up there with nothing. You need some clothes, take some clothes. You need food, take food, because the help never came. I was back here for eight or nine days after the storm and we didn’t see soldiers or cops until I think Sunday. We saw a couple in the interim, just basically speeding by, not stopping. Three cops in a car speeding by.

VOW: Were you waving at them for help?

DF: No, no. I mean ’cause we had our block under control. When I say under control, it wasn’t a “control,” under control. It was chaotic and kind of panicked, but we had weapons and a few people on this block and we made no bones about it.

VOW: Did you have food and water?

DF: Yeah. We did, well, there was the other corner store up the street, and this is an odd thing to talk about, but there was the other corner store up the street that we chased looters off for three days. People were tryin’ to get into it and we would run them off and scream at them and say, “This is our block! You can’t do that. Get the fuck outta’ here. That store is gonna stay untouched.” But after three or four days go by, and there’s still nothin’. And there’s still no Red Cross…I mean I live three blocks from an Army base, and another two blocks or three blocks from a wharf that’s made for ships to come in with things. And the Army base, it’s made for Army people to be there and come there and do Army things. I was thinking that we would be the first neighborhood to see some kind of relief and ground forces and things like that, but it didn’t happen that way. On the third day of chasing looters off from the store, and we still had no relief, well, we quit defending the store didn’t we. At that point, we are also realizing that these people walking through our neighborhood are desperate and they need help. They need water. They need food. They need these things because they’ve been on their roof or in their attic for three days, and they probably just lost loved ones and they have to walk miles to get to what’s supposed to be a sanctuary. At that point, we didn’t know about the horrors that were goin’ on over there.

VOW: You’re talking about the Superdome and the Convention Center?

DF: The Superdome and the Convention Center—that’s where they were going, but it’s important to understand though, on the first two days, there were rescue boats—Fisheries and Wildlife—like a caravan of like fifty boats came by on the trailers taking them to launch them and go get people off roofs. On the third day, there weren’t even anymore boats. And it’s not like they were replaced with anything. Now there were helicopters. On the first few days, there were some helicopters. And after Bush made his visit, then the sky was filled with helicopters, like insects, they were everywhere. The whole sky was like a blender, it was insane. There were so many helicopters. I used to like helicopters. I don’t mind not seeing helicopters anymore. It’s not that exciting anymore.

VOW: So how did that decision come to be made from protecting the store to actually needing to get stuff out of it?

DF: Well, we were worried… for one, we realized that we weren’t gonna be getting any help. Our own security was gonna be on us, and that’s one issue. The other issue: these things are needed. The Red Cross station is the corner store at that point because these people are thirsty and hungry and broken people. What kind of person would you be to stand in front of this place with a gun and tell people they can’t have the stuff that they need when our own government isn’t bringing them the things that they need?

VOW: So you just kinda pulled out of the way?

DF: So we left it alone. And the other thing of it, it kinda made the block more of a target. There’s a store right there that still had stuff in it, and desperate people will do what they gotta do. I think it was a safer thing to quit defending the store. It’s not like it had TV’s in there, it was a corner store—it had food, it had water. It had things like that. So that store got looted. I took some things from that store myself, ’cause at that point, everybody needed stuff. I had water for a couple days. The main thing I wanted out of there was the pet food. Many people left their animals because they thought they were gonna be gone for a couple of days. So I had about ten to fifteen dogs I was feeding. And I didn’t have any dog food.

VOW: Did you already know which houses the dogs were in, or did you go around listening…

DF: I just went and found ’em. I didn’t go far. I had just this general area. I had about ten on Mazant street from Royal to Burgundy, and then a few more off Dauphine. One over on Lesseps. That’s just something that I do. I like to take care of animals. So, I wanted that dog food so I took all the dog food and fed all the dogs. I also took some things for myself as well. That’s not something I like. Even though at that point they were saying on the radio that “It’s OK. Go ahead and take the stuff from the stores.” That was scary. When they’re telling you, “Go ahead and take it, don’t worry. If you need things, get it, just do it in an orderly and peaceful fashion. But take what you need.” That was a interesting development, that’s when we realized, “Well God, I guess we’re not gettin’ any help.”

VOW: How long after the storm was this do you think?

DF: Probably three days.

VOW: So that sounds like when it all started hittin’ the fan?

DF: Yeah.

VOW: Three or four days after the storm.

DF: Yeah, it got pretty hairy after that. It got pretty hairy after that. And before that. A certain kind of panic was growing up to that, and there was a real kind of manic phase you get into, where things start setting you off. There’s something that’ll set you off several times a day, and several times a night somethin’ would set you off.

VOW: A sound?

DF: A sound or whatever. There was stuff going on. This is a dangerous city, there’s a lot of… ninety-nine percent great people, but all it takes is one percent to make a city a dangerous city, you know? And there is a lot of crime here normally. There’s a lot of guns here normally. So in a situation where you have zero authority and you have a lot of strife and desperation, you don’t have to be real smart to figure out that that’s a dangerous situation, that’s a dangerous scenario.