Exit to the Convention Center

Via Google Earth, this is a picture of the half-mile long Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, where thousands of people waited days for food and water after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. I've highlighted it in red.

This image looks east. The Mississippi River runs a couple hundred feet behind the center. Passing over the Morial is US90, and the Greater New Orleans Bridge. It runs right over the top of the building. There are at least three exit/entrance ramps (colorized) which hit the surface within a few hundred feet of the center. One of them touches down right on the center's doorstep.

The next image (a north-oriented detail from an August 31 satellite photo) shows the section of US90 between the Superdome (upper left) and the convention center (lower right). On the full-sized image, you can see vehicles on the highway near the Superdome, damage done by the hurricane to the roof, and some of the flooding in the streets to the west (left).

If vehicles could get to the Superdome, what was preventing them from getting to the convention center? In fact the bridge (also known as the Crescent City Connection) was the primary route for getting supplies into the Superdome and getting people out, because the levees on the other side of the river weren't breached and less flooding occurred. Low-lying portions of the freeways to the north and west of this picture were flooded. The trucks and buses to the Superdome went right over the the people at the Convention Center.

Getting supplies to the convention center was hardly a matter of driving through miles of waterlogged streets beset by gangs and snipers. All FEMA had to do was take the exit ramp past the blockade of police keeping people from walking across the bridge and drop it off at the front of the building. Or toss it off the bridge.