toledoblade.com --

What began as Paul and Robie's Excellent Adventure has turned into Journey to the Twilight Zone.

Toledoans Paul Kunkel and Robie Waganfeald, chums since childhood, were returning from a seven-week summer vacation on Aug. 26 when they stopped in New Orleans for a night of revelry in the French Quarter.

A few too many drinks, a stumble and a fall on Bourbon Street, and the appearance of a dispute, which the men say was overblown, resulted in misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges against them and an overnight visit to the Orleans Parish Prison.

In normal times, Mr. Kunkel, 44, and Mr. Waganfeald, 39, would have paid fines totaling about $300 each the following morning - a Saturday - fetched their car from the French Quarter parking garage, retrieved their luggage from the Super 8 motel on nearby I-10, and left for Toledo.

There was nothing normal about that weekend in New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina was homing in on the city, prompting mass evacuations on Saturday and Sunday.

Along with everything else, the legal system shut down, leaving the Toledo men stranded in the prison.

They were joined by 7,000 other inmates - 511 of whom were being held on misdemeanor charges like Mr. Kunkel and Mr. Waganfeald, according to Louisiana Department of Cor-rections officials.

What followed, according to letters sent from the Toledo men to their families and friends and substantiated in part by authorities, has been a distorted, 26-day odyssey that shows no sign of ending.

When Katrina struck the city on Aug. 29, Mr. Kunkel and Mr. Waganfeald were in separate cells and hadn't seen each other since their arrests. The brunt of the storm missed New Orleans, but after a pair of levees broke, the city began flooding Aug. 30. Water reached the prison sometime that day.

Mr. Kunkel, in a letter to a friend, Cynthia Meyers of Toledo, said the guards abandoned the prison sometime on Aug. 28 and that the prisoners were left unattended and without food, anything to drink, or electricity for three days, as the floodwaters slowly filled their cells.

"I thought I was going to die in that jail. I was locked down in a cell made for two with five people, no working toilet, no food, and no protection. People were panicking, breaking windows, setting fires - anything to try to get someone's attention from the outside. No one knew if we were forgotten. Three days later they [authorities] cut the jail bars and let us out. The water was up to my chest. I was drinking that water for a day and a half. It was filthy and contaminated. But I did not know what else I could do. I wanted to live."

Corrections department spokesman Pam Laborde said she was not aware of mass defections of prison guards at the Orleans jail. But she conceded that normal prisoner care ceased sometime that weekend.

"I don't know when the meals and other services stopped. They might have gone without food or water a day or two, or maybe three days," she said.

Ms. Laborde said water levels reached five feet in the prison's first floor.

Boats were used to move the 7,000 inmates - Mr. Kunkel and Mr. Waganfeald among them - to the Broad Street overpass, an effort that began Aug. 30 and ended 72 hours later, according to Ms. Laborde.

"It was quite an accomplishment," she said.

In a letter to his father, Gerald Waganfeald of Toledo, Robie Waganfeald recalled arriving at 8 a.m. Aug. 31 at the overpass, where thousands of other prisoners were being guarded by National Guard troops.

"I sat in the sun from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. - 10 hours - [with] no water and with National Guardsmen threatening to shoot people. Some got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray. It was the most humiliating, unjustifiable thing I've ever seen."

On the overpass, Mr. Waganfeald and Mr. Kunkel saw each other briefly but could not talk. Buses had arrived to take them to prisons elsewhere in the state.

Mr. Waganfeald, his hands bound with a nylon band, he said, was moved to the Catahoula Corrections Center in Harrisonburg, a six-hour ride from New Orleans. His situation improved considerably in the subsequent days, he told his father.

"I [was] very afraid"

Mr. Kunkel, who said he developed an eye infection at Orleans, was not as fortunate, his letter said. He was taken to a fenced-in field at Elayne Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, where he was held four days along with several thousand other prisoners, a number of them serving hard time.

"Some were very dangerous criminals. We lived in 90 degree-plus sun with no protection from the elements. One day it poured and the ground was all wet and muddy. We were given one blanket and we were freezing at night. My right eye was still infected and I can no longer see very well because my contacts had to be taken out. Inmates were stealing blankets and convicts were armed with homemade knives. They were no sanitary facilities. It was like a concentration camp. I [was] very afraid."

Ms. Laborde said the field served as a staging ground for transport to other prisons. She said she was aware of the difficult conditions.

"We tried to pass out blankets and [provide] them with as much shade as possible. But it was typical [summer] Louisiana weather."

As for why Mr. Waganfeald was shipped directly to another facility, while Mr. Kunkel ended up in the staging area, Ms. Laborde said, "That probably was a matter of timing."

Around Sept. 5, Mr. Kunkel was transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, where he was last night. His eye infection has improved, but he remains without glasses. Medication for anxiety and stress were left behind at Mr. Kunkel's hotel. New medications have been prescribed by a prison doctor, but Ms. Meyers worries they might be more harmful than helpful.

Ms. Meyers has had a number of short phone conversations with Mr. Kunkel, as has Mr. Waganfeald with his son. Their concerns remain constant. They don't understand why they're still being held for a misdemeanor offense.

Rita ruins plans

They wonder what happened to their car, their luggage, wallets, and other belongings. Mr. Kunkel worries about his job at Sodt Elementary School in Monroe County, where he is a special education teacher. They want to come home.

Ms. Laborde said plans to begin releasing the misdemeanor prisoners yesterday have been tabled because of looming Hurricane Rita, which has caused the system to evacuate about 1,700 inmates from a number of southwest Louisiana prisons to other, already overcrowded facilities.

"We would love to clear the space," she said. "[But] we have to redirect our efforts. I don't know how much more we can take."

Gerald Waganfeald and Cynthia Meyers feel the same way.

"I think it's a God-awful shame. I'm heartbroken, and so is my family," Robie's father said Wednesday afternoon, his voice cracking with emotion, his eyes bleary from too many sleepless nights.

Ms. Meyers, exhausted from spending day after day on the phone with Louisiana prison officials to no avail, said she feels helpless and frustrated because no one seems to care.

She's also steamed.

"[Paul and Robie] were part of a huge number of people who didn't do anything serious but were left to drown. The animals have been treated better than those inmates. It says to me that there is a total lack of compassion for these [people]," she said.

Ms. Meyers received this letter from Mr. Kunkel yesterday:

"This is more horrible than words can describe. Please keep praying. That's all I have been able to do to keep my mind straight and focused."

Staff writer Karamagi Rujumba contributed to this report.

Contact George Tanber at:
gtanber@theblade.com
or 419-724-6050.

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