A rush to normalcy? New Orleans truck attack survivors struggle with trauma - chof 360 news

New Orleans, Louisiana – It was 3am on New Year’s Day, and Tyler Burt, a pedicab driver working in New Orleans’s historic French Quarter, decided to take one last fare.

He pedalled to Bourbon Street, a busy pedestrian thoroughfare pulsing with music and laughter. It wasn’t long before a family of four flagged him down.

The two daughters in the group were wearing high heels, and their feet ached from walking. So they climbed aboard the carriage latched to the back of Burt’s bicycle, and he cycled them to the corner of Bourbon and Canal, their parents following behind on foot.

Every little movement from then on would shape the rest of their lives.

Burt remembers one girl dug through her purse, frowning. “Can you wait for my parents?” she asked, polite but tired. “They have my phone.”

They chatted on the sidewalk amid the night’s debris: mudded-over confetti, cracked neon-green cocktail cups. A police car was stationed at the end of the street a few yards away, separating the party-goers from nearby traffic.

The parents soon walked up and paid Burt. It was 3:16am. Burt wished the family a happy new year, and he and the dad exchanged a high five.

“He was standing right in front of me, [close] enough for me to touch him,” Burt recalls. “As we were high-fiving, we turned to the left, and this big white truck veered around the police vehicle.”

It was a Ford F-150 Lightning pick-up truck – weighing upwards of 2.7 tonnes (6,015 pounds) – careening down the street straight towards them. Burt tried to get out of the way, but his own bicycle blocked his path; he could only watch.

“First, it ran over his wife. And then it ran him over in front of me,” Burt says. It passed so close that, when Burt reached out towards the dad, the speeding truck grazed his hand, leaving behind a blood blister.

He watched the truck speed two more blocks down Bourbon Street, smashing into revellers. When he turned back, the two daughters were kneeling around their mom, trying to shake her awake, screaming.

An unsettling clarity descended upon Burt in the minutes that followed, and he felt as if he had never been so alert in his life.

Burt remembers every detail: the bloody gash on the unconscious father’s brow, the screams of a fellow pedicab worker. She would later tell him that she saw the driver’s face as the truck swept past.

In the hours afterwards, law enforcement announced the car-ramming was no accident. It was a planned attack, culminating in a shootout between police and the driver, Texas-born veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who died at the scene.

United States officials have called it an act of terror. Two improvised explosives were discovered nearby, and a flag for the armed group ISIL (ISIS) was found tied to the back of Jabbar’s truck hitch.

A total of 14 victims died that day. Another 57 were injured. The family Burt had escorted down Bourbon Street were among those who miraculously survived.

But within 36 hours, the crime scene was cleared, and crowds returned to Bourbon Street. Tourists sipped from oversized beers and stumbled past improvised memorials: wooden crosses with candles and flowers heaped on the pavement.

“We’re going to put it all behind us,” Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry told a news conference on January 2. The night before, he had called New Orleans a “resilient city” while sharing a photo of himself at a luxury steakhouse, just a few blocks from the crime scene.

In the wake of mass violence, public discourse often emphasises the importance of quickly returning to normalcy.

The aim is to defuse the disruptive aims of the attackers. But experts warn that kind of push can leave some survivors struggling without adequate support.

“Recovery takes a really long time from these types of collective traumas. We can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s gone. We’re OK,’” said Tara Powell, a professor who researches behavioural health during disasters at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Burt and other witnesses of the New Orleans attack – many of whom are gig workers and hospitality employees, without medical leave or paid time off – told Al Jazeera they were frustrated by the rush to normalcy.

“No mental health resources have been offered to me or any of my peers,” Burt said, though he added he had received overwhelming support from his community.

At least one of his pedicab colleagues has dealt with the trauma through repression.

“They started working again immediately, just distracting themselves to cope,” Burt explained.

Another is self-isolating: “They’re not talking to anyone. It took them days to leave their house. They’re very scared.”

Jacob Finkelman, also a pedicab driver, was working in the French Quarter the night of the attack. Three days later, he was back at work, though he admits he now avoids Bourbon Street.

He suspects the swift reopening of the French Quarter’s entertainment district was about business above all else.

“Normalcy for us, in this situation, just means making the city and our bosses more money,” Finkelman said.

He added there had been no “human, compassionate response” from his employers. “I wish there had been a designated grieving period, where we didn’t have to go back to work the next day.”

At the time of the truck-ramming attack, New Orleans was preparing for several mega-events.

On New Year’s Day, a championship football game, the Sugar Bowl, had been planned. The city was also readying itself to host the Super Bowl in February, as well as its annual Mardi Gras festivities in March.

Governor Landry cited those events in his remarks after the attack. He promised to attend the Sugar Bowl, which was postponed for one day.

“Believe you me, we care about each one of the lives that were lost in this city on that day. We will never forget them. But it would be a tragedy if we let their losses be snuffed out because of fear,” Landry said.

“And so today, we’re going to have us a Sugar Bowl. We’re going to enjoy ourselves. We’re going to keep those, again, who have lost loved ones in mind. And we’re going to get onto the business of this city and this great country.”

Powell acknowledged that cities like New Orleans rely on tourism to rake in much-needed income. About 17 million tourists visit New Orleans each year, and the tourism industry makes up about 40 percent of the city’s operating budget.

But Powell advised officials to proceed with caution after traumatic events.

“It’s understandable that they wanted to return to a sense of normalcy, because of how much income these big events bring into the city,” Powell said. “But doing that is not recognising the significant impact it [the attack] had.”

Iris, a dancer at a club on Bourbon Street, was on stage when the attack happened, less than a block from where the truck crashed to a stop. She asked not to use her real name in order to speak freely about her job.

For over an hour, police ordered Iris and her colleagues to stay inside the club, while other dancers texted them about “dead bodies everywhere” outside.

More than a week later, Iris explained she was still grappling with feelings of guilt and anxiety – common symptoms of trauma.

Her club’s managers set up grief and trauma counselling sessions. Other witnesses have relied on ad hoc resources: a therapist offering pro bono care, a “death doula” leading a support group. There was even restorative yoga for Bourbon Street dancers.

But Iris said many of her colleagues had no choice but to return to work immediately. Several of the women she dances with have young children they must work to support.

She also wishes the city had shut down to mourn. “Officials like [Mayor] LaToya [Cantrell] and Landry – their press conference was so disturbing,” Iris said, calling their focus on the Sugar Bowl “disorienting”. She added “just a little more humanity” would have helped.

Research published last month in the science journal Ecology and Society examined how US society emphasises “resilience as a central recovery theme” after terrorism.

While that idea “aligns neatly with the hallmark ideologies of American individualism”, the report explained the pressure to be resilient after a disaster can itself have “harmful consequences”.

Calls for resilience put the pressure on individuals to recover, drawing focus away from socioeconomic conditions or structural failures that leave people vulnerable in the first place, according to the report.

If left unaddressed, symptoms of collective trauma can emerge up to a year later, Powell said. That might mean feeling hyper-alert, numb or hopeless and struggling with intrusive thoughts. At the community level, it contributes to widespread tension and fatigue.

Jessica Mueller, a clinical forensic psychologist who has written about emotional responses to terrorism, told Al Jazeera that research showed “survivors of terrorist attacks had unmet mental health and physical health needs up to 18.5 years later”.

In New Orleans, community members have continued to rally together to provide care for those affected by the New Year’s Day attack. But resources have been stretched thin.

Organisers recently held a raffle and fundraiser for Bourbon Street workers, aiming to support their recovery and make up for lost wages. More than 100 requests for support poured in, leaving them overwhelmed.

Burt said the lack of available resources leaves vulnerable people with no choice but to work.

“Locals should have resources to not have to retraumatise themselves by coming back to work immediately,” he said.

The way he sees it, government support should include “funding to take paid time off and workers’ rights, so you cannot fire someone for not wanting to come in because they’re traumatised”.

Burt plans to return to work in the French Quarter this week. But he still wishes “mental health services had been offered immediately” after the attack.

“Minutes and hours are really critical to people’s mental health,” said Burt. “It shouldn’t take [people] having to offer free labour.”