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The University News

The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

Re: Katrina

Editor’s note: The following is an e-mail from Erica Rancilio, a 2004 SLU graduate, who attends Tulane Law School. She sent this letter to a friend at SLU last week, and later gave it to the University News to share with our readers. Dear _______,While taking a year off to work post-graduation, promises I had made to myself regarding the “work I most wanted to do” led me to the decision to go to the law school in a city I love: New Orleans, Louisiana.I moved down to New Orleans a month ago, started school last Monday and left New Orleans on Saturday in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We managed to talk 13 Tulane law students into evacuating to Memphis by Saturday afternoon, and we got out of the city before anything began going wrong. I consider myself very lucky that I am safe, that my friends are safe, and that now I am with my family. I guess what I most want to do is “put a SLU face” on what is happening in the South right now. I know it’s difficult to look at all of the news reporting (much of it rumor and contradiction) and understand the magnitude of what is going on. I know, to some extent, it’s difficult to even worry about all of this for more than one news broadcast at a time-but as a “Katrina refugee,” the reality of the despair is all I have. If you have the opportunity to pass a message on to students or faculty members, please ask them to pray to whomever or whatever higher power they so choose. I ask them to pray for all the people who lost loved ones or precious possessions in the hurricane. Please ask them to pray for the tens of thousands of people still trapped in New Orleans. There are tourists, city workers, hospital workers, sick and dying people, people already stricken by poverty, hundreds of people who watched loved ones and friends drown in the rising flood waters surrounding their houses-and right now they’re all still trapped on highway overpasses, in the dark, hot, smelly Superdome (where they have been told recently they may be for weeks still) and in the half-crumbling hotels with no food or clean water. The flood that has taken over the city, due to the breached levees is more serious than the winds and rain of the hurricane itself. Power is out, and will be out for weeks or months. Oil spills slick the flood waters, no one knows if their house is still standing, or if looters have taken away all of their memories. At present time, it is too difficult for rescue workers to get through the debris to deliver food and water to the approximately 50,000 people stranded in New Orleans. Cell phone usage is impossible; therefore, news stories are largely speculative and typically contradictory. There are a lot of people dead, and there will be more dying in the next few days as they wait for rescue, food, water, medicine, emergency health care, or as crime and suicide overtake people in desperate situations. All of this happening to a city I love. If they want to know more, wwltv.com or nola.com are wonderful news sources that have taken to remote locations to continue reporting. They represent the true reality of the situation (including the hopeful aspects) rather than the inaccurate, repetitive doomsday reporting of CNN. I know this may seem over-dramatic, but I am worried, anxious, and in a state of mourning for New Orleans and its people. I think if even one more person prays for New Orleans right now, maybe more lives will be spared in the end. My thoughts are that if I myself cannot make a difference, and if the National Guard cannot make a difference at present time, then at least we can offer faith and prayer, with hopes that now something grater than ourselves can make a difference. In faith and prayer,Erica Rancilio

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