VIDEO: To this day, a former New Orleans firefighter says he is inspired by all the positive acts of kindness and cooperation he witnessed during the most difficult days after Hurricane Katrina. Now, he is sharing one of the most inspirational things he saw while working in New Orleans East. A retired New Orleans fire district chief says this heartening Katrina story has never been told publicly. And it’s one he’ll never forget, and when you see it, you won’t either.
District Chief Albert Faciane, Jr., was stationed in New Orleans East for Katrina. The flooding was instant, coming up from the MRGO. After the storm passed, the rescues began. “So, we went from unfortunately tying people to poles because they had already expired, to rescuing people off of rooftops, hanging off of balconies first day,” said Faciane, who was with NOFD for 32 and a half years.
Two days into the rescue, the need was far from over, but the NOFD command feared for the firefighters’ safety and wanted to get them out as soon as possible. “All the officers got together. We decided we had a lot of work to do here. We turned our radios off. The next morning, I swam into Walmart with my friends and we grabbed every two-way radio we could get our hands on, because we had to build our own communications network now.” Now, citizens could listen in, and for days upon days, they got calls for help, dropping rescuees off on the only high ground, at Chef Menteur Highway and Bundy Road. They shared baby formula, medication, and hugs.
“They built a shanty town in a matter of days. They had shelter for the elderly. They had Winn-Dixie down the street. They were cooking all day on barbecue grills and sharing food. It was a community on Chef Highway,” he remembers. Around day five or six, the firefighters arrived at the senior high-rise apartments on Lake Forest Boulevard near Read Boulevard.
“There was a lady in the window, and she would wave at us, and she was on the fifth floor. We counted. And we’d say, ‘We’re coming back for you.’” They began to clear the building floor by floor.
“We found some people alive, and we found some people who didn’t make it, and this is where the story gets complicated,” said Faciane, with some emotion to his voice. When they reached the fifth floor, they found the lady who had waved to them for days while they were rescuing people in the water below. “We open the door, and we see who we now know to be Connie sitting in the window in a wheelchair, a powered wheelchair. She was in that window every day because the batteries died in that wheelchair.”
Connie suffered from brittle bone syndrome, a genetic defect making her extremely fragile. “You can apply very, very little pressure. Bones will break like glass. So, it took a lot of care, a lot of time, and she helped us every step of the way,” recalled Faciane.
Connie told Albert and his team a story. “A man she never met said, ‘I’m bringing my brother away from here and I’m going to come back.’ And he did just that. He came back and he sat sentry outside her door for days. Connie told us, ‘He said he would stay with me. We talked every day, and then he left me.’” Abert says none of the firefighters had the heart to tell her this. “There was a chair sitting outside her apartment and there was a gentleman sitting there who had expired. He passed. We put a sheet over him. We prayed over him for a minute, but we had to keep moving.”
They finally did tell her. “And we had to sit on the bed with her and tell her that the gentleman never left her. Her hope was realized. He was just outside the door,” said Faciane. This was a complete stranger. The firefighters named the unknown humanitarian “Bob.” “Hope never left you. He was here. She had a great, great person outside her door. He just couldn’t make it.”
Albert says to this day, when his team of firefighters gets together, they still remember and talk about Miss Connie. He says for years he tried to find her, but without a last name, he never could, and then about 10 to 12 years after Hurricane Katrina, he’s pretty sure that he found her in the obituary section. For a few years after the storm, Miss Connie sent a postcard to the fire station wishing the firefighters a Merry Christmas.
