Neenah woman returns from vacation in 'hell’

Posted Sept. 05, 2005

Carla Weisshahn (right) is greeted by her sister, Susan Boettcher and niece, Danielle Boettcher, 9, at Outagamie County Regional Airport on Sunday in Greenville. Weisshahn and her friend, Mary Sosinski, both nurses in the Fox Cities, were vacationing in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. They were able to evacuate and finally return home. Post-Crescent photo by Sharon Cekada

Neenah woman returns from vacation in 'hell’

By Dan Wilson
Post-Crescent staff writer

A Neenah woman trapped at a New Orleans convention center in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina returned home Sunday and said, “I have been to hell.”

After weathering Katrina at their hotel in the French Quarter, Carla Weisshahn, 45, and a friend Mary Sosinski were told by the manager to leave. The nurses ended up with thousands of others in a mass of suffering humanity at the convention center waiting for a rescue that didn’t come until Saturday.

“There was no food. There was no water. There wasn’t anything,” Weisshahn said. “So people finally broke into the kitchen area and we used that, but by Thursday that was all gone.”

“And no police ever showed up,” she said. “And when you could flag one down and tell them we don’t have any provisions here they simply said "You have to fend for yourselves.’”

Weisshahn, a nurse at Theda Clark Medical Center, and Sosinski, a nurse at Appleton Medical Center, were rescued Saturday when National Guard troops arrived at the convention center. They were flown to Austin, Texas, where they made arrangements to fly into Outagamie County Regional Airport where they were greeted by relatives and friends Sunday. Sosinski declined to be interviewed.

Happy to be home, Weisshahn understood that unlike thousands of others in New Orleans, she was able to return to her home and loved ones.

“These people came from the poorest section of town. They have nothing left,” she said.

Weisshahn’s stay at the convention center was captured by a Times-Picayune photographer and appeared Saturday in the News Orleans newspaper.

The New Orleans vacation that began Aug. 25 was a trip the women had made before. As they went on a tour of the city on Aug. 27, they saw signs of hurricane preparations.

“While we were on the tour we noticed lines at all the gas stations,” said Weisshahn.

Alarmed, she and Sosinski, tried to leave the city. “But they shut everything down on Saturday, no planes, nothing, you couldn’t get out,” Weisshahn said.

The women stocked up on food and endured Katrina in their hotel.

“We lost our electricity on Monday morning, but we still had water,” Weisshahn said.

However, on Tuesday, for unknown reasons, they were asked to leave by the manager.

When attempts to go to another hotel failed, they were told to go to the Superdome, but after a report of a fire there, the pair headed to the convention center, where they found themselves with about 22,000 other people.

“It was stifling and there was a horrible stench,” Weisshahn said.

Despite the conditions, the women bonded with a family of five, two grandparents and four other fellow travelers.

Weisshahn the most heart-wrenching stories came from people separated from their loved ones with no news of their status.

“There was one woman who gave up her two children on a chopper and she had to stay behind,” she said. “And she doesn’t know where they were taken.”

And there were stories of survival.

“There was one woman who said she survived after she managed to break through her roof,” said Weisshahn.

But as the week went on, conditions in the convention center continued to worsen.

“I felt it was getting close to the riot stage,” she said. “I took care of a young boy who had passed out in the heat. The biggest problem was dehydration.”

And Weisshahn said there were those who succumbed to the conditions.

Dan Wilson can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 304, or by e-mail at dwilson@postcrescent.com