"The Right to be Rescued" produced by Rooted in Rights [rising music, slow guitar strumming] [audio description]: Ocean waves crash towards camera, and recede, partially covering the lens. ADRIEN: No disasters are natural. When you know in advance who is likely to be the most harmed by a disaster and you don't do anything about it, then that is a choice. It's about whose lives are more valuable and which ones aren't as valuable. [NARRATOR]:Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans 2005. [audio description]: Aerial view of flooded neighborhoods, with water nearly up to the roofs. JEANNE: People with disabilities did definitely get stuck here, many people died...which was horrendous and should never happen. RICKII: No one knew what to do for the city in general, let alone a population of people who are normally overlooked. [audio description]: A woman on the street after the storm speaks to a news camera. KATRINA SURVIVOR: They’re not doing nothing. They're not telling us nothing, they’re not doing nothing. We've been out here...look at all these old people...they out here without their medication...they're in wheelchairs. We need help, sir, we really need help! [audio description]: A bridge full of people escaping the storm, including a man using a wheelchair. ADRIEN: It is foreseeable that people with disabilities are going to have a harder time evacuating, they're going to have a harder time receiving information about the disaster. [audio description]: A man sleeps in a wheelchair, alone at the side of a river. An older woman is helped by a stranger, while a man in a wheelchair slumps over. ADRIEN: That's essentially a choice, saying that we as a society are okay with people with disabilities not surviving, or suffering much more so than people without disabilities in the event of a disaster. [audio description]: View from underwater, sunlight shines through the surface. RICKII: I don't to be overlooked in that way. We're already overlooked in so many other things but for emergencies, everybody should be included in the plan properly. JEANNE: People have a right to be rescued, so that they don't perish just because they have a disability. [audio description]: Water rushes towards camera. [NARRATOR]: The Right to be Rescued. [slow piano music] [NARRATOR]: Nearly half a million people with disabilities lived in the counties and parishes affected by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Source: Centers for Disease Control 2006. JEANNE: My name is Jeanne Abadie and I work for The Advocacy Center, which is the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) organization in Louisiana. In 2005, New Orleans had nothing special for anybody to be rescued, it was just: Get out of town! So, of course, many people could not get out of town either because of disability, they had a family member with a disability or they had no money. [audio description]: Houses destroyed by the storm. JEANNE: More affordable, medium income, to low income areas of the city were hit the hardest. People in poverty have a harder time getting out, and it just so happens that there's a large percentage of people with disabilities that live in poverty. [NARRATOR]: Rickii Ainey, Disability Rights Advocate. RICKII: You have to think about every single aspect of life. I think a little bit more than most people who can jump in their car and pack their kids up and just drive off. You can't do that. You have to see who's going to take you, where you're gonna go, how you're gonna get there. Someone may just have a physical disability like myself, but then you may have someone who is ill with cancer, and you may have someone with asthma, like you have to think of all those types of things. [audio description]: Spanish moss blows in the wind. Earl Robicheaux, Hurricane Katrina survivor. EARL: My name is Earl Robicheaux, I live in Berwick, Lousiana. [audio description]: Earl sits along at his kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Earl sits in his living room. EARL: I was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma in July of 2005, and eventually placed in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and then Katrina hit August 29th. I was placed in a special isolation room and that was to prevent infection. The air condition is very low, usually they keep it around 50, 55, to reduce bacteria counts. Hopefully the antibiotics will work. If they don't work, you'll just die. [audio description]: Aerial shot of flooded New Orleans. EARL: It was when the levees broke and the water came that the problems really started occurring. The generators were in the basement, so they got flooded and of course we had no power as a result. So I went from a room that was like 55 degrees, to a room that was like 115 [degrees]. within say, three hours. The only way I could think of surviving the whole thing was to strip down to my underwear and just lay in the bed very still. I was on a gravity drip IV, and I just laid there for five days and watched helicopters fly around the building. So, we were the last, probably the last hospital to be evacuated on day five. First responders were great...it's just that they came there five days later. I feel lucky, I knew it was kinda bad...but I didn't know it was really, really that desperate, you know, for so many people. [audio description]: Aerial footage of houses flooded to their rooftops. RICKII: When we left and we saw the devastation that was going on... there's no way, I know I wouldn't have been able to survive that. I lived in New Orleans East, I stayed on the second floor of my apartment. No one would have been able to come to rescue me because the water had hit so fast that, it was, people who were back there were just stuck. JEANNE: I have a good friend who died, who was on a, who uses a wheelchair and, and was on an overpass for days. [audio description]: Hundreds of people waiting for rescue on an overpass. An old photo of Alene Bonds sitting in her wheelchair, smiling. JEANNE: She didn't die there, but she ended up with complications. She probably died about six months later. It was horrible for many. For people with disabilities, the impact is greater. PAM: My name is Pam Minning, and I used to live in New Orleans. [audio description]: Old photos of Benilda "Benny" Caixeta. PAM: I met Benny when I was about nineteen, 20 years old, the first day that we met was actually in an Italian class and a very sweet voice, she said: “Hi, my name's Benilda, but my friends call me Benny.” and after that she was always Benny, and she was always my friend. She enjoyed life, you know...she loved chocolates and coffee and smoking her cigarettes. [laughs] Benny had a rare form of muscular dystrophy, she used an electric wheelchair. She had no use of her two lower legs, there was no strength in them. One of her arms, she had partial use out of and the other arm she had pretty good strength in. But then as the years progressed, she was losing some of the strength. She could cook. She always lived, of course, on the first floor apartment, she had a shower that she could go into. So joy of life and independence were the two most important things for her personally. She wanted other people with disabilities to have comfortable lives, to make sure that they were protected, that people didn't take advantage of them. She volunteered with a bunch of disability rights organizations. Anything that she could do to get involved, and give back. [audio description]: Powerful wind and rain blow against trees. PAM: She had decided that she was going to evacuate. She had called a company that was supposed to come and get her, and she said that they were going to take her to the Hyatt. I did not get a phone call from her that day, and at first I thought maybe she got busy, who knows why, but I thought well I'm gonna try and call her. [audio description]: Powerful wind and rain continues. PAM: I said, “Benny, What are you doing still there?!” She said, “Pam, they've abandoned me” she said, “Yes, I spoke to the driver,” and I said, “what, why didn't he come and pick you up?” She said, “he told me ‘I can't come and get you, I've got my own family to worry about.’ ” and he hung up on her. The police told Benny that they would take her to the Superdome. They did not want to take her wheelchair or her physical assistant. She physically could not have gotten by without the help of someone and without her wheelchair, she couldn't, she couldn’t have made it. [audio description]: A deserted street on a clear day. PAM: Storm passed, everything seemed okay...I called, and she let out a huge sigh of relief, and we started talking and just kind of relaxing...then all of the sudden, she said that she heard something, she goes, “Wait, I hear something.” and she goes, “Oh my God, water's coming in.” and I could just hear this panic in her voice, and then all of the sudden the phone line cut out. [audio description]: Underwater view looking up at the sunlight. [tense piano music] PAM: I tried calling on her cell phone, I tried all during the day and I could not get through. Her physical assistant called here and said when she last left her, she was in water up to her neck. And that Benny handed her her cell phone and her address book and said, “Call Pam, call the others and tell them I'm dead. There's no reason for two of us to drown.” [audio description]: An aerial view of ruined houses with the water level reaching the rooftop. PAM: Now it's sadness, but for about three years it was anger. It shouldn't happen. [audio description]: Pamphlet with text that reads, "Benilda Caixeta 1954-2005." Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier.
ADRIEN: My name is Adrien Weibgen, I'm a staff attorney of the Urban Justice Center Community Development Project in New York, and I'm also the author of the article "The Right To Be Rescued: Disability Justice in an Age of Disaster.” "The Right To Be Rescued” refers to the idea that people with disabilities have a right, equal to that of people without disabilities to receive emergency services. In California, disability rights advocates brought a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles alleging that the City's plans violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act (RA), and the parties negotiated a settlement to improve emergency plans in those areas and make them more responsive to the needs of people with disabilities. In New York, disability rights advocates brought another lawsuit which again alleged that the city's emergency plans violated the ADA and RA, and the court enumerated very specific ways in which the city would have to revise its plans in order to be compliant with the ADA and RA. Unfortunately, I do expect more cities and states to be sued, and I say it in that manner because they could avoid being sued if they revise their plans sooner. And I think that is going to happen in some places, and it’s already started to happen in some places. I think that that's a positive sign, I don't, I don't think people should wait to be sued. RICKII: Emergency planners have to think about space, like, where they're going to put people, how they're actually going to organize people according to their needs. JEANNE: Assistive devices, communication devices are of course, extremely important to people who depend on those day to day. RICKII: You have to think about food, what if someone needs help administering their own medication, you know, how, how do you do that? How do you know the proper dosages of that stuff? JEANNE: To make sure that the shelters are accessible if somebody has to go to a shelter, to make sure that to get to the shelter that the transportation is accessible. RICKII: It's a lot. [laughs] It's really a lot that you have to think of. You need to reach out to the disability community. Nobody can tell you what they need better than getting it straight from the horse's mouth, you know, there needs to be communication. PAM: You look back, and you wish, you wish, you wish...We can't do anything about the past other than learn from it, and shame on us if we don't move forward. [audio description]: New Orleans City Hall. CHARLOTTE: My name is Charlotte Parent. I am Director of Health for the City of New Orleans. What's been developed for us now is a coalition of people who work with people with disabilities, our seniors which is a large portion of our population, to discuss year-long: What are the plans? What are you doing? How can we help you? So when the emergency does happen, we're already at that point of being prepared for it. The original Special Needs Registry began right after Katrina. They call in with the information, we do a one-page sheet to get some basic demographic information: Where do they live? Beyond the wheelchair, is there anything else that you have? When the evacuation would happen at that point, we would then look to say “okay, we got this person, they live in this particular neighborhood, they're in a wheelchair, so they're gonna need a lift bus to pick them up,” and then we dispatch from there and get the right persons into the right places, once the evacuation is started. We feel really good about what we're doing, and we're doing the right thing to prepare our community. [audio description]: Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier. [rising music, slow guitar strumming] RICKII: Everybody definitely has a right to be rescued. Everybody on this Earth deserves to be taken care of, and to be thought of as a human being. You know, people with disabilities, elderly people, whomever, you know, we all need help in some way, shape or form. People with disabilities have a couple extra things but I mean we still need to be rescued, we need to be thought of. ADRIEN: Every city is going to have some kind of evacuation plan and it's going to need to think about how to make that a plan that works for everyone. JEANNE: The worst case scenario if we don't prepare, is people die unnecessarily. [audio description]: Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier. [NARRATOR]: This film is dedicated to Benilda "Benny" Caixeta, Alene Bonds and all those who were left behind during Hurricane Katrina. Help us make sure everyone has the right to be rescued. RightToBeRescued.com. Special thanks, The Advocacy Center of Louisiana, City of New Orleans Mayor's Office and Department of Health, Adrien Weibgen, Jeanne Abadie, Rickii Ainey, Earl Robicheaux, Pam Minning, Charlotte Parent, Sarah Babcock, Catrina Melograna and Brittany Washington. Archival Footage provided by NBC Universal Archives, Shutterstock. Rooted in Rights logo, Disability Rights are Human Rights, Copyright 2015, Rooted in Rights. End of transcript
"The Right to be Rescued" produced by Rooted in Rights
[rising music, slow guitar strumming]
[audio description]: Ocean waves crash towards camera, and recede, partially covering the lens.
ADRIEN: No disasters are natural. When you know in advance who is likely to be the most harmed by a disaster and you don't do anything about it, then that is a choice. It's about whose lives are more valuable and which ones aren't as valuable.
[NARRATOR]:Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans 2005.
[audio description]: Aerial view of flooded neighborhoods, with water nearly up to the roofs.
JEANNE: People with disabilities did definitely get stuck here, many people died...which was horrendous and should never happen.
RICKII: No one knew what to do for the city in general, let alone a population of people who are normally overlooked.
[audio description]: A woman on the street after the storm speaks to a news camera.
KATRINA SURVIVOR: They’re not doing nothing. They're not telling us nothing, they’re not doing nothing. We've been out here...look at all these old people...they out here without their medication...they're in wheelchairs. We need help, sir, we really need help!
[audio description]: A bridge full of people escaping the storm, including a man using a wheelchair.
ADRIEN: It is foreseeable that people with disabilities are going to have a harder time evacuating, they're going to have a harder time receiving information about the disaster.
[audio description]: A man sleeps in a wheelchair, alone at the side of a river. An older woman is helped by a stranger, while a man in a wheelchair slumps over.
ADRIEN: That's essentially a choice, saying that we as a society are okay with people with disabilities not surviving, or suffering much more so than people without disabilities in the event of a disaster.
[audio description]: View from underwater, sunlight shines through the surface.
RICKII: I don't to be overlooked in that way. We're already overlooked in so many other things but for emergencies, everybody should be included in the plan properly.
JEANNE: People have a right to be rescued, so that they don't perish just because they have a disability.
[audio description]: Water rushes towards camera.
[NARRATOR]: The Right to be Rescued.
[slow piano music]
[NARRATOR]: Nearly half a million people with disabilities lived in the counties and parishes affected by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Source: Centers for Disease Control 2006.
JEANNE: My name is Jeanne Abadie and I work for The Advocacy Center, which is the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) organization in Louisiana.
In 2005, New Orleans had nothing special for anybody to be rescued, it was just: Get out of town! So, of course, many people could not get out of town either because of disability, they had a family member with a disability or they had no money.
[audio description]: Houses destroyed by the storm.
JEANNE: More affordable, medium income, to low income areas of the city were hit the hardest. People in poverty have a harder time getting out, and it just so happens that there's a large percentage of people with disabilities that live in poverty.
[NARRATOR]: Rickii Ainey, Disability Rights Advocate.
RICKII: You have to think about every single aspect of life. I think a little bit more than most people who can jump in their car and pack their kids up and just drive off. You can't do that. You have to see who's going to take you, where you're gonna go, how you're gonna get there. Someone may just have a physical disability like myself, but then you may have someone who is ill with cancer, and you may have someone with asthma, like you have to think of all those types of things.
[audio description]: Spanish moss blows in the wind. Earl Robicheaux, Hurricane Katrina survivor.
EARL: My name is Earl Robicheaux, I live in Berwick, Lousiana.
[audio description]: Earl sits along at his kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. Earl sits in his living room.
EARL: I was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma in July of 2005, and eventually placed in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and then Katrina hit August 29th. I was placed in a special isolation room and that was to prevent infection. The air condition is very low, usually they keep it around 50, 55, to reduce bacteria counts. Hopefully the antibiotics will work. If they don't work, you'll just die.
[audio description]: Aerial shot of flooded New Orleans.
EARL: It was when the levees broke and the water came that the problems really started occurring. The generators were in the basement, so they got flooded and of course we had no power as a result. So I went from a room that was like 55 degrees, to a room that was like 115 [degrees]. within say, three hours. The only way I could think of surviving the whole thing was to strip down to my underwear and just lay in the bed very still. I was on a gravity drip IV, and I just laid there for five days and watched helicopters fly around the building. So, we were the last, probably the last hospital to be evacuated on day five. First responders were great...it's just that they came there five days later. I feel lucky, I knew it was kinda bad...but I didn't know it was really, really that desperate, you know, for so many people.
[audio description]: Aerial footage of houses flooded to their rooftops.
RICKII: When we left and we saw the devastation that was going on... there's no way, I know I wouldn't have been able to survive that. I lived in New Orleans East, I stayed on the second floor of my apartment. No one would have been able to come to rescue me because the water had hit so fast that, it was, people who were back there were just stuck.
JEANNE: I have a good friend who died, who was on a, who uses a wheelchair and, and was on an overpass for days.
[audio description]: Hundreds of people waiting for rescue on an overpass. An old photo of Alene Bonds sitting in her wheelchair, smiling.
JEANNE: She didn't die there, but she ended up with complications. She probably died about six months later. It was horrible for many. For people with disabilities, the impact is greater.
PAM: My name is Pam Minning, and I used to live in New Orleans.
[audio description]: Old photos of Benilda "Benny" Caixeta.
PAM: I met Benny when I was about nineteen, 20 years old, the first day that we met was actually in an Italian class and a very sweet voice, she said: “Hi, my name's Benilda, but my friends call me Benny.” and after that she was always Benny, and she was always my friend. She enjoyed life, you know...she loved chocolates and coffee and smoking her cigarettes. [laughs] Benny had a rare form of muscular dystrophy, she used an electric wheelchair. She had no use of her two lower legs, there was no strength in them. One of her arms, she had partial use out of and the other arm she had pretty good strength in. But then as the years progressed, she was losing some of the strength. She could cook. She always lived, of course, on the first floor apartment, she had a shower that she could go into. So joy of life and independence were the two most important things for her personally. She wanted other people with disabilities to have comfortable lives, to make sure that they were protected, that people didn't take advantage of them. She volunteered with a bunch of disability rights organizations. Anything that she could do to get involved, and give back.
[audio description]: Powerful wind and rain blow against trees.
PAM: She had decided that she was going to evacuate. She had called a company that was supposed to come and get her, and she said that they were going to take her to the Hyatt. I did not get a phone call from her that day, and at first I thought maybe she got busy, who knows why, but I thought well I'm gonna try and call her.
[audio description]: Powerful wind and rain continues.
PAM: I said, “Benny, What are you doing still there?!” She said, “Pam, they've abandoned me” she said, “Yes, I spoke to the driver,” and I said, “what, why didn't he come and pick you up?” She said, “he told me ‘I can't come and get you, I've got my own family to worry about.’ ” and he hung up on her. The police told Benny that they would take her to the Superdome. They did not want to take her wheelchair or her physical assistant. She physically could not have gotten by without the help of someone and without her wheelchair, she couldn't, she couldn’t have made it.
[audio description]: A deserted street on a clear day.
PAM: Storm passed, everything seemed okay...I called, and she let out a huge sigh of relief, and we started talking and just kind of relaxing...then all of the sudden, she said that she heard something, she goes, “Wait, I hear something.” and she goes, “Oh my God, water's coming in.” and I could just hear this panic in her voice, and then all of the sudden the phone line cut out.
[audio description]: Underwater view looking up at the sunlight.
[tense piano music]
PAM: I tried calling on her cell phone, I tried all during the day and I could not get through. Her physical assistant called here and said when she last left her, she was in water up to her neck. And that Benny handed her her cell phone and her address book and said, “Call Pam, call the others and tell them I'm dead. There's no reason for two of us to drown.”
[audio description]: An aerial view of ruined houses with the water level reaching the rooftop.
PAM: Now it's sadness, but for about three years it was anger. It shouldn't happen.
[audio description]: Pamphlet with text that reads, "Benilda Caixeta 1954-2005." Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier.
ADRIEN: My name is Adrien Weibgen, I'm a staff attorney of the Urban Justice Center Community Development Project in New York, and I'm also the author of the article "The Right To Be Rescued: Disability Justice in an Age of Disaster.” "The Right To Be Rescued” refers to the idea that people with disabilities have a right, equal to that of people without disabilities to receive emergency services. In California, disability rights advocates brought a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles alleging that the City's plans violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act (RA), and the parties negotiated a settlement to improve emergency plans in those areas and make them more responsive to the needs of people with disabilities. In New York, disability rights advocates brought another lawsuit which again alleged that the city's emergency plans violated the ADA and RA, and the court enumerated very specific ways in which the city would have to revise its plans in order to be compliant with the ADA and RA. Unfortunately, I do expect more cities and states to be sued, and I say it in that manner because they could avoid being sued if they revise their plans sooner. And I think that is going to happen in some places, and it’s already started to happen in some places. I think that that's a positive sign, I don't, I don't think people should wait to be sued.
RICKII: Emergency planners have to think about space, like, where they're going to put people, how they're actually going to organize people according to their needs.
JEANNE: Assistive devices, communication devices are of course, extremely important to people who depend on those day to day.
RICKII: You have to think about food, what if someone needs help administering their own medication, you know, how, how do you do that? How do you know the proper dosages of that stuff?
JEANNE: To make sure that the shelters are accessible if somebody has to go to a shelter, to make sure that to get to the shelter that the transportation is accessible.
RICKII: It's a lot. [laughs] It's really a lot that you have to think of. You need to reach out to the disability community. Nobody can tell you what they need better than getting it straight from the horse's mouth, you know, there needs to be communication.
PAM: You look back, and you wish, you wish, you wish...We can't do anything about the past other than learn from it, and shame on us if we don't move forward.
[audio description]: New Orleans City Hall.
CHARLOTTE: My name is Charlotte Parent. I am Director of Health for the City of New Orleans. What's been developed for us now is a coalition of people who work with people with disabilities, our seniors which is a large portion of our population, to discuss year-long: What are the plans? What are you doing? How can we help you? So when the emergency does happen, we're already at that point of being prepared for it. The original Special Needs Registry began right after Katrina. They call in with the information, we do a one-page sheet to get some basic demographic information: Where do they live? Beyond the wheelchair, is there anything else that you have? When the evacuation would happen at that point, we would then look to say “okay, we got this person, they live in this particular neighborhood, they're in a wheelchair, so they're gonna need a lift bus to pick them up,” and then we dispatch from there and get the right persons into the right places, once the evacuation is started. We feel really good about what we're doing, and we're doing the right thing to prepare our community.
[audio description]: Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier.
[rising music, slow guitar strumming]
RICKII: Everybody definitely has a right to be rescued. Everybody on this Earth deserves to be taken care of, and to be thought of as a human being. You know, people with disabilities, elderly people, whomever, you know, we all need help in some way, shape or form. People with disabilities have a couple extra things but I mean we still need to be rescued, we need to be thought of.
ADRIEN: Every city is going to have some kind of evacuation plan and it's going to need to think about how to make that a plan that works for everyone.
JEANNE: The worst case scenario if we don't prepare, is people die unnecessarily.
[audio description]: Sunset over a lake with a ruined pier.
[NARRATOR]: This film is dedicated to Benilda "Benny" Caixeta, Alene Bonds and all those who were left behind during Hurricane Katrina. Help us make sure everyone has the right to be rescued. RightToBeRescued.com. Special thanks, The Advocacy Center of Louisiana, City of New Orleans Mayor's Office and Department of Health, Adrien Weibgen, Jeanne Abadie, Rickii Ainey, Earl Robicheaux, Pam Minning, Charlotte Parent, Sarah Babcock, Catrina Melograna and Brittany Washington. Archival Footage provided by NBC Universal Archives, Shutterstock. Rooted in Rights logo, Disability Rights are Human Rights, Copyright 2015, Rooted in Rights.
End of transcript