Canadians praised for swift response

BATON ROUGE, LA.—

Louisiana officials are both grateful and incensed that a Vancouver searchandrescue team reached a drowned New Orleans parish five days before the American army. A squad from Vancouver’s USAR — Urban Search And Rescue — chartered a plane and arrived in Louisiana on Aug. 31. They reached St. Bernard Parish, 30 kilometres east of downtown New Orleans, early last Friday. In five long days there, they rescued 119 people.

“ Fabulous, fabulous guys,” said Louisiana state Senator Walter Boasso. “They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people. We’ve got Canadian flags flying everywhere.” The 45 Canadians, led by Tim Armstrong and Brian Inglis, beat both the U. S. army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the parish, where floodwaters are still more than two metres deep in places. The district of 68,000 people was ignored by U. S. authorities, who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans proper, Boasso said, forcing residents to mount their own rescue efforts when Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29.

“If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should be here faster than that,” said St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone, who asked the Canadians to hoist a Maple Leaf flag over one of his flooded fire halls.