CANTON – Marine Corps veteran Richard McCollister went to Vietnam four times in 1972 and 1973, but nothing there prepared him for the horrors he faced in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“Going to Vietnam was like going to church compared to this,” McCollister, 53, said Wednesday afternoon of New Orleans, his home for the past 12 years.
“I saw another war zone there. There were dead, bloated bodies floating everywhere. I saw sheriffs down there looting. A lot of people were shooting each other. There are no pictures to even explain what it was like,” he said.
The native of Hartford lost everything, including his job of building race cars since 1997 and managing St. Tammany racetrack, which was obliterated by Katrina.
On Tuesday, McCollister sat on a wooden chair on the deck of a trailer on Bixby Road in Canton off Route 140.
His childhood friend Perry Tucker of Buckfield found him the place to live and gave him an old pickup truck.
Tucker’s sister, Patty Jacobs of Turner, told him he could stay in the trailer if it isn’t sold. On Tuesday, a real estate agent stuck a “For Sale” sign in front of it, McCollister said.
Puffing a cigarette and drinking Coca-Cola that Tucker gave him, he talked about the ordeal.
A pipe welder, McCollister said he left Maine in search of a better-paying job. He found it in New Orleans, working at Avondale Shipyard in Orleans Parish.
He lived in the parish in an apartment on South Gayoso Street, one block from Canal Street.
On Aug. 27, with the severe hurricane and 165 mph winds bearing down on New Orleans, martial law was declared, he said. That’s when the looting and shooting began, “and it just never stopped,” he said.
“The biggest problem I have is that President Bush went to sleep Saturday night knowing that a Category 5 hurricane was about to hit. He should have sent 3,000 National Guard troops there to haul people out,” McCollister said.
He left home Saturday and stayed with three Vietnam veteran friends at a house on higher ground in the parish.
“The Marine Corps taught me how to survive, so I took care of me and got me where I needed to be,” he said.
He said the storm hit Sunday, but it wasn’t the levees that caused the most problems initially.
“It was the 20-foot-tall storm surge. It happened so fast that people didn’t get out. They didn’t get out. If I’d have been drinking like many were, I would have been in that wave,” he said.
Water flooded to within three blocks of the house to which he fled. When he returned to his apartment by boat he found it under 17 feet of water.
Soon after, he volunteered to help rescue people stranded on rooftops, traveling all over the city in a flat-bottomed boat.
“I rode in the front of the boat and I had to push dead bodies out of the way so they wouldn’t foul up the propeller,” McCollister said.
He remembers floating over the top of a utility pole.
After seven days at the house, shootings forced him to get out.
“It started a block down from the police station near us. The police, they got all them guns and flak jackets, and they bailed. They left. So I bailed,” McCollister said.
He stole a bicycle on the morning of Sept. 3 and pedaled 17 miles. He caught a ride to Baton Rouge Airport, arriving Sept. 6. His sister, Diane Wood of Livermore, had bought him a ticket on a flight to Portland Jetport on Sept. 7.
Since then, McCollister has been trying to get his life back. He profusely thanked Sen. Olympia Snowe’s secretary, Colleen Tremblay, saying she had helped him get his necessary medication for high blood pressure, and got him in touch with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He filled out a lot of forms but added, “I don’t plan on getting anything from FEMA for months.”
He now has nothing but a teapot, a microwave, some clothes and sparse furniture.
“Any donation would be greatly appreciated. I don’t care what it is. Even a can of soup will be a help,” he said.
He said he wants to stay in Maine.
“Somebody asked me if I was going back. To what? New Orleans? There is no New Orleans. It’s history,” McCollister said.
People wanting to help can send donations to:
Richard McCollister
P.O. Box 539
Canton, ME 04221
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