Eight doctors and thirty nurses seek to serve and survive seven thousand prisoners when riots break out in a prison that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has trapped them
Now That Should Be A Movie
It is called No Ordinary Heroes.
It is a disaster drama
In the vein of The Perfect Storm.
It’s like Shawshank Redemption meets Downfall.
It follows Air Force veteran and Medical Director of the New Orleans Jail Dr. Demaree Inglese
And a stickler for rules but dog-loving deputy named Mike Higgins.
As they provide medical care and security at the New Orleans Community Correctional Center.
Problems arise when the power goes out and the prisoners begin rioting.
Together they will remain calm and professional as they carry out their duties until evacuated.
The idea came to me when I was doing research for a possible action film set in post-Katrina New Orleans and gave Dr. Inglese’s book a read.
My unique approach would be the tense setting of being trapped between lawless, flooded streets and the cinderblock walls of a prison filled with hungry, rioting inmates.
A set piece would be when cells on the lower floor begin flooding. Inmates begin screaming and standing on the toilets. Because the power is out, the doors have to be opened manually. In their impatience, some inmates kick the doors off their runners. Prison guards have to use crowbars or sledgehammers to open the doors. The water is rising, so the deputies have to dive under the surface to position the crowbars. While the deputies are submerged, the inmates have to work with the guards as they push the door open. The water is up to inmates’ chests when the deputies resurface, and the prisoners swim out of the cells. Together, officers and prisoners make their way to dry ground.
Target audiences would be men and women (20-50), law enforcement, and fans of thrillers, action, suspense, and disaster films.
Audiences would want to see the film because of the story of law enforcement, first responders, and medical personnel doing their job in the face of insurmountable obstacles, and for the themes of suspense, thrills, rising tension, disaster, action, and devotion to duty.
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is No Ordinary Heroes: Eight Doctors, Thirty Nurses, Seven Thousand Prisoners and a Category 5 Hurricane by Demaree Inglese, M. D. with Diana G. Gallagher, from Citadel Press.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the news media treated viewers to a variety of images of lawlessness reigning in the streets of New Orleans. There were reports of police officers deserting the city. Rumors spread that the doors to prisons were opened and the inmates were allowed to run free. There were accusations of inmates being left to drown in cells. To this day the urban legend that prisoners are still missing continues.
No Ordinary Heroes shows a different picture. Told through the eyes of Dr. Demaree Inglese, medical director for the New Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office, it shows how the 13 buildings of the 12-story high Community Correctional Center became an island both physically, its steps and upper stories being above the waterline, and metaphorically, as law officers and prison guards kept control of the inmates while disorder reigned in the rest of the city.
While Dr. Inglese admits that mistakes were made by law enforcement and the prison system during the storm, he does not try to justify or explain the decisions of others, instead mainly focuses on his own experience of using his skills as an US Air Force veteran to organize and lead his medical staff as they care for inmates. From August 28th to September 2nd, 2005, Inglese, his coworkers Mike Higgins, Sam Gore, and Gary French and medical staff and deputies at the Correctional Center, struggled against rising water, sewage contamination, psychotic inmates off their medications, fires, rioting prisoners and dwindling food and medical supplies. No Ordinary Heroes vividly describes the sensory assault that he and his staff endured while going about their duties. One time he had to swim through the kitchen, the surface of the water covered with soaked bread and rotten meat. The reader can smell the stink of the sewage and oil-covered water he wades through and feel the sweltering Louisiana heat as he attends to patients in rooms reeking of backed-up toilets. Dr. Inglese says that making his way through darkened cinderblock hallways filled with putrid water while being aware that loose inmates might be lurking in the shadows made him feel like he was in the movie Aliens.
Dr. Inglese records acts of cowardice and selfishness on the part of law enforcement and medical personnel. He is called to help deputies claiming to have heart attacks, only to find that they are having anxiety attacks or just high blood pressure. One deputy refused to enter a part of the jail because of the smell of fuel. Then he disappeared with the keys. Others stand around doing nothing. One rotund deputy sits in a chair while sampling MREs, then dumping the contents of those he didn’t like on the floor.
But he also records how the storm brought out the best in people. Two unnamed Latino men who lived in the vicinity of the prison mounted their own rescue mission. Using the side of a house as a raft to which they had tied tires to the sides and corners to keep it afloat, they evacuated civilians from their flooded homes to the dry steps of the prison where many of the families of the staff had also taken shelter. A nurse named Carol Evans was called by her husband. He told her that the water had broken down the back door of their house and was up to the second floor. He couldn’t swim. Then the phone went dead. Nurse Carol remained at her post at the prison. Another nurse, Audrella Mazant, also lost her home and did not know if her husband was alive. Yet she continued working. At one point a rescue party had to go find her because, in the course of her duty of supplying meds, she had gone into a section of the jail where the prisoners were loose. Other nurses volunteered to accompany infirm inmates during the evacuation with their medications and medical records so that when they arrived at their new prisons they could inform the staff of the prisoners’ conditions and treatments. At first, the nurses were told there was not enough room for records and meds in the boats, but they insisted on taking them. Transporting them was something they could control in the face of the disaster.
Those law enforcement and medical personnel who remained at their posts during the storm and its aftermath should be honored with a movie. No Ordinary Heroes is great IP for such a movie. Not only is the story contained mostly in one place, but it has all the basic story conflicts: Man vs Nature, Man vs Society, Man vs Man, Man vs Himself, and Man vs Time.
Man vs Nature
During the storm water begins to accumulate in the prison’s sallyport. The police and inmates assigned to work detail waded to the pumps. through twelve inches of water while under assault from Hurricane Katrina’s wind and rain. It took several tries to engage the pump engines. Then they bolted large steel plates to the basement doors and piled up sandbags
At 8:00 AM on August 29th, the sally port flooded. If the water reached the electrical room, the generators would shut down, taking out the power to the prison. No electrical power, and no control over the prison. If the inmates escaped, it would be a disaster.
Katrina’s gale-force winds beat upon the guards and inmates as they formed a human chain to find the trailer on which the pumps set. Slowly, using their feet to feel their way, they made their way into the water until their heads were barely above the surface.
In submarine movies, there is usually a scene where a compartment is flooded. Then it becomes critical for a member of the crew to swim into that area and make repairs while underwater. A similar scene takes place as deputies have to swim and find the steel plate and place it against the door again. Then they have to swim to find the trailer and pump hoses. When they upcome for air, they’re assaulted by the shriek of the hurricane winds. It takes fifteen minutes, but they find the hoses. The deputies tried to use the hoses to pull the trailer out of the nine-foot-deep water. When that didn’t work, some of the deputies dove down and then for twenty minutes pushed the trailer inch by inch until it was out of the water.
Then the lower jail cells began filling with water. Inmates stood on their toilets as they called for help. Due to a combination of the prison’s age, the electricity going and the desperate inmates kicking the doors off their runners, each cell had to be opened manually with crowbars or sledgehammers. A deputy would duck under the water to position a crowbar. Then the inmates would push the door forward and then swim out. Sometimes the staff had to use a blowtorch.
Other ways nature attacked were less visible to the naked eye. Several inmate patients were wheelchair-bound, one had severe lung disease, and a few suffered from advanced AIDs. For them, standing in contaminated water could be a death sentence. Another patient needed dialysis, having missed his hospital appointment the previous Saturday. If contaminated floodwater reached his dialysis port, it would become infected. One inmate was a four-hundred-pound paraplegic. It took four men to move him and his wheelchair. A chain of deputies carried the inmate up the steps out of the reach of the rising waters.
After a few days, the deputies and the civilians taking shelter in the jail began to have health issues. Trench foot, fever, rashes, cuts, skin irritations, diarrhea. Most of the refugees had only brought medication for a few days for serious conditions like diabetes and heart failure and soon ran out. The prison staff suffered from stress, dehydration, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation. Skin began peeling off Dr. Inglese’s chest.
One way the nurses and deputies fought nature was by forming a bucket brigade. Then they transported medications down the darkened stairwell as Dr. Inglese called out the needed medicines and medical supplies.
There is even a heartwarming moment when the work inmates help kids evacuate. A rope leading from the front porch of the prison was tied to a half-submerged truck. The truck was used as a dock from which people would board boats. Wearing lifejackets, the children would swim to the truck while holding onto the rope. Deputies and inmates would carry children on their shoulders. One boy had an injured leg wrapped in a trash bag to keep his cast dry. A deputy held him above his head out of reach of the floodwaters.
A more personal conflict between man and nature is Mike Higgins refusing to leave his dogs behind during the evacuation.
Man vs Society
Dr. Inglese recounts how deputies and medical professionals were trapped between rising waters, a collapsing society in the streets outside the jail, the families of deputies and civilians from the neighborhood, along with their pets, on the front porch and lobby, and the loose inmates inside the prison. There is only one shower for the staff and civilians. The high-pitched noises of children at play grate on nerves.
There are hundreds of prisoners on each floor. A lot were on drugs and they hated the doctor for his refusals to give them fixes. The Psychiatric Unit held some dangerously psychotic inmates. People who were not bailed out of jail were held in prison while awaiting their court hearings. Court had not been held for three days because of the storm, so the cells were close to overflowing. There were three hundred more inmates who had been transferred from the St. Bernard prison.
One reviewer on Amazon said the book is like Lethal Weapons meets Lord of the Flies, but while was reading No Ordinary Heroes I kept thinking of the German war drama Downfall, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The film follows both leaders and ordinary citizens during the final days of the Battle of Berlin. Some characters act with indifference to the collapse of society around them. There is a similar scene when Dr. Inglese has to take a four-hundred-fifty-pound officer experiencing a heart attack to the hospital. He and another doctor managed to hoist the corpulent officer into an inflated raft and transported him through the darkened streets. When they arrive at the first hospital, they are informed by security that it is closed. Same answer at the next one. There are rumors that another is on fire. When the water gets too low, they have to walk with the officer, supporting him on each side, to the Veterans Administration Hospital.
When they arrive at the VA they are greeted by the sight of medical personnel sitting around the nursing station playing cards. At first, they ignored Dr. Inglese and the deputy. We’re closed, one said. Administration instructed us not to take any new patients in, says another. Dr. Inglese insists on speaking with the physician in charge. One nurse gives him a dirty look and then disappears. A few minutes later she returns with the physician in charge. He gives Dr. Inglese the same answer: They are closed. Finally, after a tongue-lashing from Dr. Inglese, one nurse gets up. She does not care what the Administration says and takes the officer to the emergency room.
Another scene similar to Downfall is that of people not taking the collapse of society around them seriously. In Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film, there are scenes of people partying in Berlin even while Russian artillery and bombs pummel the city. Drunk German soldiers and women are shown laughing as they walk down streets of rubble. Dr. Inglese records in No Ordinary Heroes that on the fifth day after most of the inmates and civilians had been evacuated, a female deputy began a lewd dance that turned into a striptease. Male deputies hooted and hollered as she threw pieces of her uniform into the crowd. One deputy shouted obscenities over a blowhorn. Dr. Inglese and his compatriots ignored the party while they tried to get some sleep.
In Downfall there are scenes of the German people being stuck between the Red Russians and the Gestapo. If one did not kill them, the other one would. Dr. Inglese had a similar scene when he and Sam Gore went to check on reports of an inmate having a medical emergency. On their way to the location, they must push through prisoners in a corridor. Most let them pass with just muttered threats and shoves. Suddenly two large, hardened inmates block their path. With deputies few and far between, Dr. Inglese knew that if assaulted, help would not come in time. The inmate asked if they were going to treat inmates or deputies. When the doctor answered the inmates, the two hardened prisoners let them pass. Then later Dr. Inglese and Sam are stopped by a guard. “Hey, you two! Get back here!” Because they had stripped to their t-shirts, the guard thought they were inmates. The guard let them pass with a warning the inmates were loose and had not eaten for a while.
Man vs Man
Some inmates started escaping. Some made their way through a hole onto the roof. The guards said they had not escaped. They were contained on the roof, just not secure. Dr. Inglese recalls with sarcasm how safe that made him feel.
There’s a comical scene when two escaped inmates are jumping from one roof to another. When they hit a walkway roof, it broke and they fell, crashing into a cesspool of food and sewer water. They landed face-to-face with a nurse. Both the nurse and inmates look at each other for a moment and then flee in opposite directions.
But as the days passed in the dark and heat without food, the inmates became more desperate. Unaware that evacuations had already begun, they kicked out windows, screamed and waved sheets, and crudely made signs for help. Dr. Inglese could hear the sounds of cinderblocks cracking, pipes banging, and ductwork being torn from the ceiling as inmates tried to break free. They kicked their cell doors off the runs and set fire to toilet paper, mattresses, sheets, and anything else that could burn. They banged on the walls and bars. They fought among themselves. Riots started,
Still, the medical staff went about their duty of treating the patients. One doctor goes to check on a prisoner having an asthma attack. Due to the riot, the deputy will not open the jail door. The doctor reaches through the bars and begins working on the patient. As he does so, another inmate reaches through the bars, grabs the doctor’s head, and slams it against the metal. Two other inmates drag the prisoner to the back of the cell. The doctor recovers after a few seconds and continues treating the patient.
Some deputies shoot out windows with rubber bullets so the inmates can have fresh air. Dr. Inglese and his coworkers create a pulley system that lifts water bottles up to the inmates. Their kindness is repaid when the inmates throw the bottles back down, this time filled with urine. The riots escalate.
On the fourth day, the police captain ordered everyone out on the porch. The stairwell was breached. The yells of hungry, thirsty, and hot inmates, including some who had been locked up for decades, reverberated off the walls. The doors to the stairwell that the prisoners descended were locked. Deputies raised their guns and batons. One female deputy held up a curling iron. Dr. Inglese and the other medical personnel broke mops and chairs and picked up the handles and legs to use as weapons. Then the desperate inmates began banging on the door. BAM! BAM! BAM!
Then there was the sound of boat motors approaching the steps of the center. A SWAT team wearing Kevlar and wielding automatic weapons from Angola State Prison has arrived, like the cavalry in a Western. The door to the stairwell was opened and the heavily armed officers rushed the startled inmates and chased them back into the prison.
Man vs Himself
Dr. Inglese had to face his fears while carrying out his duties during the disaster. A few times Dr. Inglese had to wade for a couple of blocks to the courthouse and old city jail to treat patients. He had to overcome his disgust at sewage, fire ants, and oil-covered water. He must overcome his concerns that his cuts and scratches might get infected. He had to watch out for downed electrical wires. He had to ignore his fear that he would fall into an open manhole and drown.
He had to keep a lid on his frustration with people who were behaving badly. He recalls a civilian angrily demanding a Coke from the prison kitchen staff even though they had none to offer. Two civilians got in a fight over a pillow. He even called a diabetic deputy a jark. The deputy had claimed to be too weak to work, but when the doctor tested him twice in one day his vitals and blood sugar were normal.
Man vs Time
There are races against time contained within the pages of No Ordinary Heroes. Since many people believed the worst of the storm would be over in a couple of days, they began running out of medication. The food and water supplies at the prison begin running low. One pregnant woman starts having contractions.
One of the most obvious races against time that contributes to the conflict of man versus man is that without electricity, normal procedures would take hours instead of minutes. Without elevators, the inmate worker would have to carry food up to ten stories. That would take longer and soon the hungry inmates began banging on bars, yelling, and stopping up toilets in protest. With all the children running around, the staff would also have to keep a close eye on the inmate workers moving around freely.
Then there is the evacuation of the prisoners. It started off with five boats taking patents on the afternoon of August 30th. Then off-duty deputies from St. James Parish arrived with several large airboats and helped speed up the evacuation process of the patients. Sometimes the evacuation slowed down when families refused to be separated. As a result, half-empty boats had to leave the complex for the overpass where people were being bused out of the city. Mike Higgins refuses to evacuate without his dogs.
When I was reading the climax of Dr. Inglese’s account where he and his compatriots evacuated with the last of the personnel and prisoners on September 2, it reminded me of the final scene in Black Hawk Down. In Ridley Scott’s telling of the Battle of Mogadishu, the US Army Rangers have to run down the main streets of the city to get to a United Nations compound. In No Ordinary Heroes, the guards and prisoners, wearing flex cuffs, have to disembark on the end of a half-submerged interstate and trudge up a thirty-foot overpass. Then they have to climb a three-story scaffolding to the dry ground outside the Superdome before loading up on buses.
And yes, Mike Higgins was able to evacuate with his dogs.
Conclusion
Despite rumors to the contrary, only ten inmates escaped from the center during the ordeal, and all were recaptured. One officer later died from a lung infection. While no inmates drowned, several of the infirm inmates died in the weeks following the ordeal.
I believe a movie could help set the record straight about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It would honor the law enforcement, first responders, medical personnel, and even the inmate workers who remained at their post and did their duty despite the harsh conditions. I could see, Peter Berg, Ridley Scott, Peter Weir, Matthew Michael Carnahan, John Erick Dowdle, or even Oliver Hirschbiegel directing a tense, atmospheric thriller in the dark, hot, stinking cinderblock walls of the New Orleans Correctional Center.
Because it is an intense, thrilling account of good people arising in bad times is why I believe that No Ordinary Heroes by Dr. Demaree Inglese Should Be Be A Movie filmed in Louisiana.
