A movie expected to be released next year will be set in Mid City New Orleans. The script is based on the story of a Hurricane Katrina hero, a resident in an apartment building along Bayou St. John who made sure the hundreds of people inside stayed safe while floodwaters raged all around them.
Dodie Smith Simmons and her husband, John, rode out Katrina in their second floor apartment at the American Can Company. Her elderly parents, two sisters and brother-in-law, instead of evacuating out of town, stayed at the Can Company too, and Smith Simmons said about 400 others, residents and their families, had the same idea..
“This building is not going to blow down.. Camille, Betsy didn’t do anything to it so I felt I was safe,” said resident John Keller. Keller said they were safe, during the storm. It was hours after the storm had passed when everything changed.
“There was water cascading down Orleans (Avenue), past the Can.. went over the bayou (Bayou St. John) and continued down, and it got higher and higher and higher,” said Smith Simmons.
The neighborhood was under at least five feet of water. “We thought once the pumps started working the water was going to go down,” said John “Kid” Simmons. “But it didn’t go down. It just kept rising,” said Smith Simmons.
By that time, the Can Company had lost electricity. It was dark, getting hotter, and the only way up or down the five-story building was the stairwell. The elevators obviously were not working.
It would be five days before Simmons’ family and most others could get out. What happened there during that time is the story line for a movie that Columbia Pictures has “in development,” according to IMDB, the Internet movie database. The movie, called the American Can to be released next year, centers around Keller who many say kept them safe and got them rescued.
“We weren’t trying to save anybody in the beginning because we thought the water was going to be pumped out,” said Keller. The 6 ‘7 former marine would soon become the go to guy.
Smith Simmons said, “it would have been mass chaos had not John (Keller) stopped in and played the role that he did.”
Keller explained the people who could get out, did, but more than 200 others waited for help.
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thisismyboard reblogged this from defendneworleans and added:
slight hesitation...i see things like this. they have
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