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190 If a contest were held to name the worst possible job for a New Orleanian trapped in the city by Katrina, there would be many serious contenders, but few would outscore prison deputy. Even before the hurricane, the Orleans Parish Prison was a rough place to work. Perpetual overcrowding lowered the morale of prisoners and guards alike and contributed to a state of constant tension. But on the morning of August 29, 2005, when Katrina’s waters filled its first floor, the prison became a deathtrap, and it was left to a handful of guards to lead hundreds of disoriented, enraged, terrified prisoners to the only high ground available: a highway overpass, where they would suffer for days in searing heat, forced to fend for themselves to find food, water, and other bare necessities. The unenviable prize of Katrina prison guard fell to, among others, Sidney Harris, who was just twenty-four years of age at the time. He is one of the few “official” responders who appear in this collection. Sidney spent the night in the Orleans Parish Prison to do a task, which he performed with remarkable dedication. Indeed, like the civilians whose stories are central to this book, he considerably outperformed the official standard. As SIDNEY HARRIS “On the strength of my little nephew, I started getting a little strong” Sidney Harris 191 Sidney and his fellow officers faced the worst that Katrina had to offer, their commanders and reinforcements were not to be found. Each deputy was essentially on his or her own to try to forge the human bonds that would ensure survival. In Sidney’s case, as in so many others, the powerful bonds of family continued to function as all else failed. Ironically, he had brought his nephew to the prison to ensure the boy’s safety, but thereby cast him into one of the most dangerous corners of a city where danger was painfully easy to find. Sidney modestly admits the feelings of fear that assaulted him during the crisis, but he beat them back in order to be strong for his kin. In the end, he effectively enlisted his nephew as a deputy at a time when many of the official deputies were throwing down their badges and fleeing the bridge. Again and again, Sidney overrides his nephew’s pleas to seek safety; he gives up their places in the evacuation line to prisoners, the elderly, and the injured. But when Sidney offers the boy a choice between staying with him and a ride to safety, the boy stays and tells his uncle, “You lucky I love you. ” Sidney simultaneously faces off seven hundred prisoners, cares for numerous people in distress, and inducts his nephew into manhood. Fellow survivor Darlene Poole recorded Sidney’s story on February 1, 2006. Born in 1980 in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Sidney lived in a house that his father had occupied since 1950, surrounded by sibs: eight brothers and nine sisters as well as extended family. He begins his narrative with memories of his neighborhood. It was all right. I mean, some people might say that it was a bad neighborhood , but the block I stayed on was quiet. And the blocks surrounding probably was a little bad, but they had people that mostly got along, and we just didn’t have nobody come around and ruin it for us: [folks from] the younger generations living on the other blocks. See, my block was mostly older people; that’s why I used to have to go on other blocks to see my friends, or we would meet up at the park and play basketball or football. I lived in the Ninth Ward, on Bartholomew Street, off of Claiborne. Yeah, most of [my family] lived in the Lower Ninth Ward—in eastern New Orleans. It was laid back, you know. Well, I’m going to tell you, the crime really this year here, 2005, the crime rate it started picking up. And you know it was more drugs in the community, but it was younger people too. They had younger generations: like on my block a lot of the older people moved or died off, but a lot of the younger people too. The few we did have, they was gone too so that led us, the ones who was left, to go another block. And it was, it was violent, you know, but...

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