![]() On that side of the street we had eight feet. “We’re in the lowest part of town we’re at the bottom of the bowl. “I was over here and we had eight feet of water. Pictures of bodies floating in the water have been widely distributed, but they were not a common sight at the time, said Dr John Kokemor, who worked in the aftermath of the storm at Memorial Baptist hospital in the Broodmoor neighborhood. Public perception of the aftermath of the hurricane has been heavily informed by pictures of devastation in the city and news reports at the time of widespread violence that turned out later to be unfounded. “While there are some pictures of bodies floating around in parts of the more flooded areas of the city, there weren’t any bodies floating around the Quarter.” “There were – most of the Quarter, I would say 95% of the quarter didn’t even get any floodwater,” said Lutz. So I would be skeptical of that, myself.” “I seriously doubt it,” said a longtime resident of North Rampart Street in the quarter, Leo Watermeier, a community activist. Darren Crumpton, director of sales and marketing at the Ritz-Carlton, said the hotel does not provide the names of past or future guests, and said the hotel would not take questions about water outside the property during Katrina. A photograph from the time near the corner of Dauphine and Canal, where the Ritz-Carlton is located (map), shows shin-deep water. ![]() An interactive graphic of flooding during Katrina produced by the New Orleans Times-Picayune depicts the edge of flooding from the storm as having crept into the northern section of the French Quarter. Locals remember NBC crews staying in the Ritz-Carlton or Windsor Court or both.Īn archived United Methodist News report with pictures said to be taken by a minister from the Ritz-Carlton hotel during Katrina documents water deep enough to float a boat and, presumably, a body. “I felt something get dislodged that changes the usual arms-length relationship between me and the stories I cover,” Williams said. He described the experience in a 2006 interview with Michael Eisner, who had just stepped down as CEO of Disney, the parent company of ABC News. One of Williams’ most vivid descriptions from his time in New Orleans was of seeing a man “float by face down” from his “hotel room window in the French Quarter”. “This has been a difficult few days for all of us at NBC News,” Turness said. Network president Deborah Turness, a former ITV executive, said in a memo to staff that an internal investigation was under way. NBC News did not respond to several messages left seeking comment on Friday. The Advocate later published a second report that documented flooding around the Ritz-Carlton, one hotel where Williams is believed to have stayed, and acknowledged that “a number of bodies were recovered in that general area”. Two of Williams’ claims about Katrina explored by the Guardian, of seeing a floating body from his hotel and encountering threatening gangs, while attracting the deep skepticism of locals, were difficult to verify because it was unclear which hotel or hotels Williams stayed in. “That’s absolutely hogwash.”ĭetailed doubts about Williams’ recollections of Katrina were raised in a New Orleans Advocate story on Friday. He said he was told not to drink bottled water in front of people because people would kill you for it?” said Dr Brobson Lutz, a former director of the New Orleans city health department who is a longtime resident of the French Quarter and who ran an EMS station there after the storm.
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