"I'd rather die' than go"
By NICOLE BODE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
NEW ORLEANS - Seventy-five-year-old Toney Almeda stood in the doorway of her hurricane ravaged apartment yesterday and swore she'd kill herself before letting rescuers take her to safety.
"I'd rather be dead than in a shelter. The thought of it makes me sick," Almeda spat at Norrie Edgar, 34, a special investigator with the state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control. He was one of three people trying to convince the feisty woman to leave her stiflingly hot ninth-floor apartment at the Nazareth Inn home for the elderly.
"You can die a couple of years down the road. But not today," Edgar shot back coolly. "We've seen enough dead people. Don't you be one of them."
Almeda and the dozen or more other residents still left inside the Nazareth Inn home in the New Orleans East district had survived 11 days without electricity or running water. A son of one of the residents had brought them generators, bottled water and other supplies.
They said they had been abandoned at the 150-unit retirement facility, owned by the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the day after the storm. A manager told them to leave but provided no transportation, they said.
But instead of welcoming their rescuers - a military-led team of National Guardsmen, firefighters and New Orleans police officers - survivors like Almeda resisted as much as they could.
While one crew worked on convincing Almeda, three dozen other rescuers banged on doors throughout the complex. In four hours, they found seven people, but suspected that many others were hiding behind their doors, waiting for the rescuers to leave.
Only five agreed, reluctantly, to leave - including an elderly blind man, a 72-year-old woman with Alzheimer's, and a woman who had begun urinating blood after falling three times in the dark.
Outside, as Almeda stepped into a light armored vehicle - a massive camouflage-colored tank that can navigate on land and in water - she got her first glimpse of the 12-foot-deep floodwaters just a few miles from her dry street. She realized she was wrong to resist.
"I wasn't myself this morning. I was just so scared," she said quietly, her thin arms braced against the vehicle's walls.
Her silver, braided hair was tucked into a black Oakland A's cap. She clutched a small bag filled with two pairs of shorts, two pairs of blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a carton of Salem Ultra Lights cigarettes. All the money she had was tucked into her back pocket - three folded $5 bills.
With no mandatory evacuation order to back the use of force, rescuers have had to rely on their wits and charm to get out thousands since the storm hit.
But even if they were authorized to use force, many of the rescuers would be reluctant to do so, they said.
"You want to do what's right. But at the same time, you don't want to hurt anybody," said Sjon Shavers, senior special agent with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been aiding the rescue effort.
But their patience generally pays off as the survivors finally come to terms with the reality of their situation and make the choice to leave.
"If it wasn't for the two kind men and the one young soldier, I wouldn't have come down," said Almeda, as she watched her rescuers crack open a couple of Army-issued meals ready to eat, or MREs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make so much work for you."
http://www.nydailynews.com/09-09-2005/news/story/344827p-294387c.html