Paul Ribaul, 37, a New Orleans TV-station engineer from Gretna, said New Orleans and the suburbs have a complicated relationship.
"We say we're from New Orleans, but we're a suburb," he said. "The reason we don't live there is we don't like the crime, the politics."
Ribaul was among Gretna residents who praised the decision to close the bridge. "It makes you feel safe to live in a city like that," he said.
Critics suspect a racial motive for the blockade. City officials heatedly deny any such thing.
Among black residents of Gretna, some say that although they get along with most of their white neighbors, a few of the neighbors harbor strong prejudices.
Some black Gretna residents also speak fearfully of New Orleans. "We don't have as much killing over here as in New Orleans," said Leslie Anne Williams, 42.
Nonetheless, Williams' mother, a lifelong Gretna resident who is also black, disapproved of the Police Department's decision. People fleeing New Orleans "probably had a better chance of survival over here," said Laura Williams, 70, "especially with all that shooting" across the river.
When Katrina hit, about 5,000 of Gretna's residents were still in town. Police zigzagged the trim streets of ranch houses and older wooden buildings, checking on those who had not evacuated.
Like New Orleans, Gretna lost power and water. Town officials pleaded unsuccessfully for help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Then they learned that New Orleans officials had told the thousands trapped in that city's downtown, similarly deprived of food and water but also dodging gunfights and rising floodwaters, to cross to Gretna.
Not sure how to feed even their own residents, Gretna officials were overwhelmed by New Orleans' evacuees. They organized bus caravans Aug. 31 to take the arrivals to Metairie, 16 miles away, where a food and water distribution center had been set up.
The evacuees waited for rides out of Gretna at the foot of the bridge, across the street from Oakwood Mall. As the hours ticked by and the crowd swelled, trouble began, Gretna authorities said.
Sometime on Wednesday, Aug. 31, a fire broke out in the mall, next to the local branch of the sheriff's office, and police chased suspected looters out of the building.
Mayor Harris had had enough. He called the state police.
"I said: 'There will be bloodshed on the west bank if this continues,' " Harris recalled. " 'This is not Gretna. I am not going to give up our community!' "
