New Orleans Lakefront Airport appears in the account as a crowded refugee-collection point during the aftermath of the Memorial evacuation. For Susan Mulderick and her colleagues, it was neither a secure destination nor the end of their displacement: they arrived exhausted, were asked to care for people there, and eventually left amid fears that others waiting for transport might attack them to avoid being abandoned.

A Refugee-Collection Point

After rescue helicopters stopped coming for the night, Mulderick and about fifty other staff members and family members had spent the night on Memorial’s open helipad. The group included Mulderick’s aged mother, still wearing her housedress. They did not reenter the hospital because they feared encountering looters, while armed employees blockaded the staircases. The next stage of Mulderick’s journey brought her to New Orleans Lakefront Airport, a small airport serving as a crowded collection point for refugees.

Care Amid Displacement

At the airport, Mulderick and her exhausted colleagues were asked to care for people gathered there. The hospital workers had left a crisis in which they had been responsible for patients, only to find themselves again in a setting where people needed care and assistance. Their passage through the airport therefore extended, rather than concluded, their displacement: they were both evacuees and caregivers.

Unequal Routes Out

A sympathetic official ushered Mulderick and her colleagues onto an airplane ahead of people who had waited longer. The favor offered them a way onward, but its consequences sharpened the danger of the crowded setting: they feared that the desperate people left waiting might attack them rather than be left behind. The account does not say that an attack occurred.

Mulderick later learned that some Memorial executives had followed a markedly different route. They were flown by helicopter to a nearby Tenet Healthcare hospital, where they received a hot meal and a room to shower, shave, and change; from there they went to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and then by private jet to their preferred destinations. Other people rescued through Tenet Healthcare arrangements also received meals and showers at the nearby hospital. Set against those routes, the airport’s crowded waiting and improvised care reveal how sharply evacuation experiences could diverge even among people leaving the same disaster.