CNN Coverstory: IDIOT trapped in attic for 3 days with kids, mother dies...

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - CNN Coverstory: IDIOT trapped in attic for 3 days with kids, mother dies... (Page 1 of 2)

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:33:34 PM EDT

Why, why, WHY should I give one penny to a total fucking IDIOT like this shithead:

3 days of death, despair and survival

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) -- Trapped inside the darkened, stifling hot attic of her flooded home in New Orleans with her two teenage daughters, Debbie Este watched her own mother die as they waited for help she thought would never come.

For three days they waited, sweating and stripped nearly naked because of the 110 degree heat, with no food and running out of water. The rising water reached the attic and threatened the survival of anyone inside the yellow-sided, single-story house.

During half the time they were trapped, the body of Debbie's mom, Melissa Harold, 68, who didn't make it through the ordeal, lay lifeless on the attic floor.

Debbie and her girls -- Tiffany, 16, and Amanda, 13 -- could hear the churn of helicopters overhead, evacuating neighbors near their house on Arts Street. The sound only reminded them that nobody had come to their rescue.

Their own screams for help were unanswered. Fear got the better of Debbie. She felt so hopeless, she thought about using painkillers she had with her to end her and her daughters' plight.

"I said nobody's going to come save us up here and I don't wanna die like this, three days laying in this stinky, dirty water," Debbie Este said this week. "I couldn't take it anymore. We're gonna die, why don't we just end it quicker?'"
.
.
.
Debbie, who is 47 and uses a wheelchair, had carried her painkillers -- 60 Loratab 10s -- into the attic. And she asked the girls to swallow the pills with her to end the suffering.

"She kept on saying, come on and take 'em," said Tiffany, who marked her 16th birthday in the Baton Rouge River Center shelter on Monday. "I just kept telling her we were going to be saved, but really, I didn't know."

Amanda swayed her mother from suicide by talking about her future.

"I said I want to finish school and have a job and have kids and have a husband," Amanda said.

"She was miraculous. I couldn't believe it," Debbie said of her younger daughter. "I was so proud of her. She just screamed like that for hours and hours. Her and Tiffany kept saying we weren't going to die up here."

Tiffany doesn't remember much else, having slept most of the time, even though her mom regularly woke her up, afraid she had died. "After my grandma died, I just went to sleep. She thought I'd died, but I was just sleeping."

Before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Sunday, August 28, Debbie said she hadn't paid much attention to the warnings and didn't want to evacuate without the family's pets. "I never once dreamed ... I just thought it would be a little wind and rain and then it would just blow over."

The family had lived in the three-bedroom house on Arts Street for 13 years. Melissa Harold, the grandmother, moved in several years ago after Debbie's husband died. They lived with three dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, a gerbil, six hamsters and a parakeet.

"My mom told us we weren't leaving because wherever we went, we couldn't bring our animals with us," said Tiffany, who wants to be a veterinarian and mourned leaving behind the pets, including those buried in the back yard.

On Monday morning, after the levees broke, the water came into the house, and instantly swamped the carpeted floors. Within minutes, it was waist deep.

"It started coming in my bedroom, and before I know it, the mattress is all full of water," Debbie said. "It was that quick."

Amanda woke Tiffany up in her room, the last room to stay dry. The girls quickly started grabbing pets and waited for their mom, who was snatching credit cards from her room.

"When it started getting like that, I said we have to go in the attic, because that's the highest place I know of to go," Debbie said.

Tiffany lost her cell phone trying to save a hamster and nearly drowned trying to save her cat in water that quickly swelled over her head. "It started coming up, faster and faster," she said.

Debbie pulled Tiffany to safety on the attic ladder, and in turn, the girls helped their mom, who has been in a wheelchair for three years after an injury, on the steps into the dry attic. "God must have been with me, I don't know how I did it," Debbie said.

They only found about a gallon of drinking water to take up with them. Then their battle to survive began.

Temperatures climbed with the water level. On the first day, they watched the water reach the fifth ladder step from the top. On the second day, it lapped onto the attic floor.

The family stayed in the back of the attic, not trusting the other side of the floor, which was weaker.
While trapped in her attic, Debbie Este watched her mother die while the family waited for rescue.

There were no windows, or light, just one small air vent. They took off most of their clothes because it was so hot.

With no tools, Tiffany and Amanda banged against the inside of the roof, hoping someone would hear and come to their rescue.

Tiffany dipped her feet in the floodwater to stay cool and thought about a root beer left behind in her room. Her mom wouldn't let her enter the water to go get it. They all repeatedly stopped their grandmother from trying to swim to get her purse from downstairs.

By Monday evening, the 68-year-old woman's condition had deteriorated and her daughter and granddaughters knew she was dying. Six months earlier, she had suffered from congestive heart failure.

"Her breathing was getting slower, she kept saying she wanted water," Tiffany said, but the sips from the almost-empty bottle were not enough.

Melissa Harold, a former newspaper reporter, passed away a day and a half after climbing into the attic. "We told her we loved her, and she said she loved us," Debbie said, in tears. "I told her I was sorry I couldn't help ... And she closed her eyes."

Soon, the drinking water was gone. By Wednesday, the same water they had to urinate in started filling up the attic. They inched farther and farther back.

Then, Debbie Este heard a voice from outside. Her brother, Aldo Harold, 50, had arrived by boat with some friends. Debbie had last talked to him by phone briefly three days earlier when the water started coming in to his house about a mile away.

"I thought I was dreaming," Debbie said. "I heard my brother hollering 'Debbie!' and I don't think I've screamed so hard in my life, I said 'We're here!'"

Tiffany, awakened by her mother's screams, realized they were going to stay alive. "My uncle just kept saying he was going to get us out."

In about five minutes, using an ax, Aldo chopped through the black shingles and wood of the roof so the three of them and two dogs could be pulled into the boat.

During the rescue, more water poured in, raising the level in the attic. Holding her forefinger and thumb about six inches apart, Debbie said, "This much more and we would have been dead."

They were pulled out into a surreal scene. All they could see was water all around as they emerged from their drowned house.

"My mother is dead up in the attic," Debbie said this week in Baton Rouge, her eyes darkened behind sunglasses indoors. "I just keep thinking about watching my mother die, and there was nothing I could do."
Time for recovery

The boat took them to the Save-A-Lot in their neighborhood. Then they rode in the bed of a pickup truck to the University of New Orleans. From there, a helicopter took them to Baton Rouge, where they stayed in a field hospital for one day while Debbie was treated for dehydration.
Tiffany celebrated her 16th birthday at the shelter on Monday, where she's stayed for more than a week.

Finally, they were brought to the American Red Cross' River Center shelter, where they tried to begin rebuilding their lives.

Volunteers are making arrangements to find housing for them in Columbia, South Carolina, and they packed up some donated medicines, stuffed animals and clothes in plastic and cardboard boxes and trash bags.

Debbie grieves the loss of her mother, who had been her support system all her life, and worries about her brother, who she hasn't heard from since he rescued her and her girls. He stayed behind to help find more people.

Two of their dogs survived the flood, a shitzu named Matt and lab mix named Princess, but they couldn't bring the dogs out of the city and had to leave them behind.

"I think I'm in shock. I can't even think," Debbie said. "I just take each thing as it comes. And I still keep blaming myself. I say we should have left.

Now, she said her girls are all she needs. When she got pregnant with her first child, she quit her job as an accountant to be a homemaker. Surprised by how much her youngest, Amanda, loves kids, Debbie's dream now is to live long enough to have grandchildren.

"But not anytime soon," she said, with a smile.

How can such stupidity live to be 47???

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:34:29 PM EDT

[#1]

They should charge her with attempted murder.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:37:42 PM EDT

[#2]

Everybody in that area needs to be required to have an axe and a small boat in their attics.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:38:27 PM EDT

[#3]

How can such stupidity live to be 47???

Simple, uncle sugar.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:39:02 PM EDT

[#4]

the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:40:55 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
They should charge her with attempted murder.

Clearly child endangerment at the very least:

She admits she ignored hurricane warnings thereby putting them in grave danger and THEN tried to kill her daughters by forcing them to overdose on prescription pain pills. Time to call CPS.

What I don't understand is - after the hurrricane passed, WHY did one of them not try to just swim out of the house and climb the nearest roof or tree to attract attention?

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:40:57 PM EDT

[#6]

They wanted to save their animals and then had to leave them behind anyway huh? Like I said if need be I would have walked out with just the clothes on my back.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:41:32 PM EDT

[#7]

Instead of getting into the attics, why did they not instead get on the freaking roofs when the water began rising? In an attic, you are trapping yourself where nobody can see you, enduring horrific temperatures and possibly being drowned if the water rises above that level.

Use a ladder. Use some means. Just get on top of the freaking roof!

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:43:23 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:
They should charge her with attempted murder.

that sounds about right to me

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:46:16 PM EDT

[#9]

Did anyone else think "A couple of strafing runs would have been cheaper and more socially hygeinic"?

Dear God. "Here kids, kill yourselves." Not "One of you kids climb out and swim around to the roof and WAVE AT THE HELICOPTER."

I am beginning to think that anybody who risks a human being's life or safety (other than his own) in the slightest degree for the welfare of an animal should be killed. Is that not the general identifier that says "Kill me now!" - anthropomorphization of pets? Don't you warn your sons "Stay away from women like that, boy. I know by lookin' at her she got 9 cats and she thinks they're people!"?

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:46:25 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:
Instead of getting into the attics, why did they not instead get on the freaking roofs when the water began rising? In an attic, you are trapping yourself where nobody can see you, enduring horrific temperatures and possibly being drowned if the water rises above that level.

Use a ladder. Use some means. Just get on top of the freaking roof!

during a hurricane??? ok.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:48:10 PM EDT

[#11]

Darwin fails again.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:48:16 PM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

Ain't that the fucking truth.

But in a way, parasitism in any form is often extremely efficient from an evolutionary standpoint - whether it be viruses, tapeworms, ticks or even human welfare-parasites feeding of healthy human hosts.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:48:19 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:
Quoted:
Instead of getting into the attics, why did they not instead get on the freaking roofs when the water began rising? In an attic, you are trapping yourself where nobody can see you, enduring horrific temperatures and possibly being drowned if the water rises above that level.

Use a ladder. Use some means. Just get on top of the freaking roof!

during a hurricane??? ok.

floods didn't come in untill afterwards

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:52:56 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
Instead of getting into the attics, why did they not instead get on the freaking roofs when the water began rising? In an attic, you are trapping yourself where nobody can see you, enduring horrific temperatures and possibly being drowned if the water rises above that level.

Use a ladder. Use some means. Just get on top of the freaking roof!

This woman needs killing (see my post above). However, if you have not been on a roof at the latitude of NO between 11 AM and 4 PM in the summer, the experience is hard to describe. Often, if roofing a house you have to vacate the roof during those hours because the heat is so intense that you can't pick up a shingle - if you try, you tear a hand-shaped piece out of the shingle and end up with a semi-liquid handful of asphalt. You'd have to go outside in shifts.

Posted: 9/9/2005 8:57:09 PM EDT

[#15]

"I never once dreamed ... I just thought it would be a little wind and rain and then it would just blow over."

This after EVERY SOURCE ON THE FUCKING PLANET SAID "This is a KILLER storm. There WILL be 20+ foot tidal surges and 100+ knot winds. There WILL BE widespread damage. You will most likely DIE if you stay in the path".

The detachment that sheeple have from ANYTHING involving the REAL FUCKING WORLD never ceases to baffle and amaze me. Spend your whole fucking life in the most media saturated culture in the world where EVERY natural disaster is televised, reported and analyzed in brutal detail and this fucktard thinks that a CAT5 hurricane is just "a little wind and rain".

Does ANYONE need any more proof that we have become a nation of idiots that don't even have the survival instincts that nature gave a fucking flea?

My disgust for the human race keeps growing by leaps and bounds every day that passes watching this shit. I'm ashamed to be a member of the same species with these defective wastes of skin.

Posted: 9/9/2005 11:02:34 PM EDT

[#16]

Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

Amen!!!!

Posted: 9/9/2005 11:24:44 PM EDT

[#17]

t

Posted: 9/9/2005 11:31:17 PM EDT

[#18]

I am sure lots of us are relieved that STUPIDITY isn't a highly contagious, airborne virus.

Posted: 9/10/2005 12:41:41 AM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:
"I never once dreamed ... I just thought it would be a little wind and rain and then it would just blow over."

This after EVERY SOURCE ON THE FUCKING PLANET SAID "This is a KILLER storm. There WILL be 20+ foot tidal surges and 100+ knot winds. There WILL BE widespread damage. You will most likely DIE if you stay in the path".

The detachment that sheeple have from ANYTHING involving the REAL FUCKING WORLD never ceases to baffle and amaze me. Spend your whole fucking life in the most media saturated culture in the world where EVERY natural disaster is televised, reported and analyzed in brutal detail and this fucktard thinks that a CAT5 hurricane is just "a little wind and rain".

Does ANYONE need any more proof that we have become a nation of idiots that don't even have the survival instincts that nature gave a fucking flea?

Denial and desensitized to what is happening around them. Warnings don't apply to them, just other people, then can just watch it on TV and say to themselves "what a shame, what misery, how could such a thing happen?" .

I have learned my lesson about denial in the last couple days.

Posted: 9/10/2005 1:01:57 AM EDT

[#20]

Trapped like rats as they fled upwards away from the rising water.

Posted: 9/10/2005 1:14:22 AM EDT

[#21]

There is hope after all in these words...

"I said I want to finish school and have a job and have kids and have a husband," Amanda said.

At least there is hope for Amanda to not follow her moms footpaths.

Posted: 9/10/2005 1:38:11 AM EDT

[#22]

I'm assuming based on the names that they are toward the whiter end of the color spectrum. If so, it's good to see that absolute stupidity is color blind. Not a f'ing dime from me.
matthew

Posted: 9/10/2005 2:06:21 AM EDT

[#23]

Two of their dogs survived the flood, a shitzu named Matt and lab mix named Princess, but they couldn't bring the dogs out of the city and had to leave them behind

I hope the lab made it out.

Posted: 9/10/2005 2:07:09 AM EDT

[#24]

Ban attics.

Posted: 9/10/2005 2:59:44 AM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:
Why, why, WHY should I give one penny to a total fucking IDIOT like this shithead:

I would not; will not.

Other than that confiscated by the government; no choice about that.

Posted: 9/10/2005 3:01:50 AM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

Every Katrina newstory should start this way.

Posted: 9/10/2005 3:20:48 AM EDT

[#27]

Quoted:
There is hope after all in these words...

"I said I want to finish school and have a job and have kids and have a husband," Amanda said.

At least there is hope for Amanda to not follow her moms footpaths.

In fairness, the story said the father died a few years ago and that's when grandma moved in. I also have to wonder if the husband's death was related to the mother's injuries that left her wheelchair bound (car accident maybe).

Still, I have little or no sympathy for those who stayed behind of their own accord, and even less for those who did so with their children.

Posted: 9/10/2005 3:41:06 AM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
How can such stupidity live to be 47???

Simple, uncle sugar.

EXACTLY!

Posted: 9/10/2005 3:42:26 AM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

TRUE!
Nature has a way of making things right again.........and it WON'T be pretty!

Posted: 9/10/2005 3:56:27 AM EDT

[#30]

Before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Sunday, August 28, Debbie said she hadn't paid much attention to the warnings and didn't want to evacuate without the family's pets. "I never once dreamed ... I just thought it would be a little wind and rain and then it would just blow over."

First, I have to say that I would not of been around to here the second warning to leave the area. Second, in a situation like, this my cat would only come with me if I could take her some place or I needed her to be extra food supply(meat does not spoil when still alive). Hunger is a very strong emotion. Plus, I know my cat would eat me if she could.
Dan

Posted: 9/10/2005 4:11:28 AM EDT

[#31]

Just a little wind and rain, not the only person ever to think that during a huge hurricane bearing down on your area, I remember the stories of people who stayed at home during Andrew, they watched their homes disappear right before their eyes, Andrew was fast and small the most fury lasting about 3 hours....

Posted: 9/10/2005 4:42:29 AM EDT

[#32]

The worst part is she was wheelchair bond, had two young girl and an elderly mother with heart problems. Those reasons alone should tell you to leave ASAP. Knowing you can't just get up and walk out if something happens is another reason to get out NOW! Like my dad likes to say common sense isn't so common.

Posted: 9/10/2005 4:49:41 AM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:
There is hope after all in these words...

"I said I want to finish school and have a job and have kids and have a husband," Amanda said.

At least there is hope for Amanda to not follow her moms footpaths.

Children learn what they live...I believe this one won't raise any rocket scientists either..

Posted: 9/10/2005 5:37:28 AM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:
Trapped like rats as they fled upwards away from the rising water.

Man, you were soooooo close:

Trapped like rats, they fled
upward and away from it:
the rising water.

Posted: 9/10/2005 5:47:13 AM EDT

[#35]

Its Bush's fault.

Posted: 9/10/2005 6:15:10 AM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:
They should charge her with attempted murder.

She's dead (right?)

Charging her would be a waste of time wouldn't it?

(Maybe I read it wrong, but it hurts my head to think of the utter stupidity and helplessness otherwise reasonably able people are capable of- and will not subject myself to re-reading it)

Posted: 9/10/2005 6:31:16 AM EDT

[#37]

My favorite quote:

Tiffany lost her cell phone trying to save a hamster and nearly drowned trying to save her cat in water that quickly swelled over her head. "It started coming up, faster and faster," she said.

Posted: 9/10/2005 6:48:59 AM EDT

[#38]

Give her the big fuckin' scarlet letter... L

Posted: 9/10/2005 6:52:25 AM EDT

[#39]

Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong

So F%^&ing true!!!!

Posted: 9/10/2005 7:08:51 AM EDT

[#40]

Quoted:
Quoted:
the welfare state has blown a HUGE hole in darwins theory...we permit the weakest to breed at the cost of the strong
So F%^&ing true!!!!

Like I said, parasitism has its evolutionary advantages.

Human welfare-parasites have found their niche - feeding off of US.

Posted: 9/10/2005 7:10:54 AM EDT

[#41]

Quoted:
Quoted:
Instead of getting into the attics, why did they not instead get on the freaking roofs when the water began rising? In an attic, you are trapping yourself where nobody can see you, enduring horrific temperatures and possibly being drowned if the water rises above that level.

Use a ladder. Use some means. Just get on top of the freaking roof!

during a hurricane??? ok.

Hurricane had already passed before the levee broke.

Posted: 9/10/2005 7:13:00 AM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:
They wanted to save their animals and then had to leave them behind anyway huh? Like I said if need be I would have walked out with just the clothes on my back.

+1.

Posted: 9/10/2005 9:04:02 AM EDT

[#43]

Quoted:
Quoted:
They should charge her with attempted murder.

She's dead (right?)

Charging her would be a waste of time wouldn't it?

(Maybe I read it wrong, but it hurts my head to think of the utter stupidity and helplessness otherwise reasonably able people are capable of- and will not subject myself to re-reading it)

Grandmother's dead. Mother is alive and continuing to waste oxygen.

"Quick! I have only seconds to grab survival supplies! I'll grab narcotics and credit cards!

Posted: 9/10/2005 9:20:38 AM EDT

[#44]

Well, she saved her pain pills. Priorities folks, priorities.

Posted: 9/10/2005 10:34:50 AM EDT

[#45]

Everybody in that area needs to be required to have an axe and a small boat in their attics.

I heard years ago from some New Orleans friends that it used to be very common, everyone kept an axe in the attic in case of flood. Just as natural as a toilet plunger next to the toilet, you had an axe in the attic.

Posted: 9/10/2005 10:57:02 AM EDT

[#46]

Quoted:
How can such stupidity live to be 47???

Socialism, welfare, Democraps. Hey, where's the husband/father in all this?

Posted: 9/10/2005 10:59:17 AM EDT

[#47]

"Keep an axe in the attic!!" apparently was more than just a tale handed down from the elder old wive's tales.

Pay attention to this shit, people!!!

Posted: 9/10/2005 11:03:29 AM EDT

[#48]

I have never been more appalled at a news story than that posted by CNN.

Because seriously, this hurricane, you know, since it's Bush's fault anyway, justified her urging her daughters to kill themselves with her.

ETA: And oh... WTF is this - God is watching over me, now I think I'll commit suicide?

Fucking liberal media, pisses me off. And this bitch isn't going to get charged for child abuse/endangerment or attempted murder (even more so because they were minors that she was trying to sway)??

But noooo, it's ok, the hurricane makes you exempt from the law and COMMON SENSE.

Posted: 9/10/2005 11:09:44 AM EDT

[#49]

The most pathetic parts of the story are their failure to leave because of their stupid pets and the part about risking their lives over a hamster and a cat!
Sure would have been nice to keep that cell phone.

Posted: 9/10/2005 11:13:43 AM EDT

[#50]

Quoted:
The most pathetic parts of the story are their failure to leave because of their stupid pets and the part about risking their lives over a hamster and a cat!
Sure would have been nice to keep that cell phone.

I actually would try my best to get the cat. Not drown for it, but try my damndest until then. Cell phone, no. Mom telling me to kill myself, uh uh.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - CNN Coverstory: IDIOT trapped in attic for 3 days with kids, mother dies... (Page 1 of 2)

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