Their turn to be rescued

This, a city constructed essentially of malls, is an odd refuge from the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. Here, time stands still and air-conditioned air is pumped with extra oxygen, the statues speak and the blue skies overhead are just authentic-looking frescoes. There’s no such thing as too much.

“Forget your watch,” a sign at the airport reads. “A.M. and P.M. are interchangeable.”

Yet this week, for dozens of New Orleans firefighters, paramedics and police officers, Sin City became a way station to the rest of the world, the one untouched by tragedy. More than 45 emergency workers arrived Tuesday evening, the first of as many as 400 scheduled to visit in the next six weeks. They came with their kids and spouses in tow, still in the floodwater-soaked uniforms they’d worn for a week, still dazed from their ordeal.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman invited them for a four-day, all-expenses paid reprieve from their plight, offering his city’s casinos and hotels, stage shows and buffets. This charity came at the request of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin who, after the suicides of two first responders and desertion by scores of others, hoped to salvage the remaining crews with some R&R.;

“I just went from hell to Vegas,” said paramedic Keeley Williams on Thursday. “It was almost overwhelming.... The hotels. The lights. The amount of people. It’s almost like it’s not real. Like we’re not really here. Like we’re in a movie or something.”

For many in this first group, the journey to Las Vegas started Sunday when Nagin offered a furlough to first responders living in a makeshift compound near the Mississippi River. Many of these folks had been working nonstop since Aug. 28 with no power, communication or transportation.

One group of paramedics spent days moving from hotel to hotel, running from the rising water and gun-toting gangs, until they were airlifted from a highway overpass by the National Guard and taken to the Superdome. There they were confronted by swarms of desperate people but had no supplies to help them.

“I just saw my co-workers losing it, shouting and screaming ‘What’s happening?’ and ‘What are we going to do?’ ” said Ronald Mason, another paramedic. “We weren’t mentally prepared.”

All this chaos seemed like someone else’s life Thursday as the group toured the city in air-conditioned vans, courtesy of the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Department, hitting Target, Walgreens and a clinic. They were all homeless, the most tangible thing in their lives the scraps of news coming from their neighborhoods. Was Gentilly still underwater? Did the looters leave anything intact at Engine House 24? Where would the kids start school? Did everybody get out OK?

“The majority of the people here have nothing to go back to,” said Jean Arnon, who joined her husband, Alphonse Arnon, a New Orleans arson investigator. The Arnons were lucky, she said. Their families were safe. And they themselves have a place to live in the short-term: the rectory of their son’s church in New Iberia, La.

As they rode past strip malls and billboards, the Las Vegas sun shone and it was 107 degrees. But it’s a dry heat, they assured themselves. None of that Louisiana humidity. “I don’t even sweat here,” Alphonse said.

Inside their host hotel, the Boulder Station Hotel and Casino, about 10 minutes east of the Strip, it felt like a cool, crisp October day in Maine, albeit a day streaked with stale cigarette smoke and busy with the hypnotic chimes of slot machines.

The theme in this self-contained universe was Wild West era railroad town -- all 130,000 square feet of it -- with 12 restaurants, six bars, an 11-theater movie multiplex, a performance hall, a carwash, an “edutainment center” for the kids, acres of parking and a Starbucks.

It’s a place designed to dislocate even the most grounded visitor. And for the folks from New Orleans, that wasn’t an altogether bad thing. Here they could blend in with the other tourists, pretend they were on vacation. They walked the Strip, rode the roller coaster at New York-New York, saw the risque Broadway show “Avenue Q” and mingled with Robin Leach, of all people, at the after-party.

They marveled that life outside their devastated city carried on as usual, that people were still vacationing, still taking for granted all the conveniences the hurricane had seized from them.

“All this could change before your eyes,” said Mason, who came with his wife, Barbara, and 19-year-old daughter, Renee. He sat in the Boulder Casino’s concert hall, wearing clean clothes, sipping hot coffee and planning a second day of sightseeing.

Mason remembers what it’s like to feel lucky. This time last month, he had three cars, a house in a nice neighborhood, a daughter in college and a wife with a good job. As he toured the lobbies of Las Vegas with his family, he couldn’t help feeling a little wiser than everyone else.

“I walked through a shopping mall on Canal Street that was like the shopping malls right here but after looting and ... water and the lights out ... “ his voice trailed off and he looked away. “Anything like that could change for anybody. Overnight.”

After a hot shower, a good night’s sleep and breakfast, after they called faraway relatives, filled their prescriptions, washed clothes, visited doctors, stocked up on socks and underwear, the rescue workers began to revive. They pieced together their experiences -- the screaming wind, the rising water, the snipers, the dying babies -- trying to figure out just how they landed here.

Some tried not to watch TV because it was too painful to see news reports from New Orleans. But they were still haunted by a creeping sense of guilt that they’d abandoned their city, even for a short time.

“My co-workers are still there, dealing with God knows what,” paramedic Jeanne Dunn said.

Dunn left her uptown New Orleans apartment Aug. 29 to start work. Like most of the others, she’d taken just four days worth of food, water and uniforms. After so many near misses, the locals expected the worst of the hurricane damage to be over by then. But the ambulances were useless after the winds hit 40 miles per hour. She and her colleagues were left powerless to help anyone.

Dunn said she reluctantly agreed to come to Las Vegas, where her brother lives. She was grateful for the showers, the beds and the clean clothes. But the time away hadn’t been all that relaxing. Yes, she’d visited the Strip and planned to see Barry Manilow, but Dunn said she spent much of her time on the phone to friends back home. On Thursday, she did laundry and scoured Las Vegas for new uniforms for the crew.

“I don’t know what to expect when I go back, which is a little bit frightening for me,” she said.

Today, as the first group of workers heads back to New Orleans and their families scatter to cities across the South, Las Vegas welcomes the next wave of weary first responders.

Five hotels -- Station Casinos Inc., the Palms, Boyd Gaming, the Hard Rock and Fitzgerald’s Las Vegas -- have offered free room and board for the workers in the coming weeks. The Las Vegas Hilton donated tickets to Manilow’s performance. Las Vegas-based Allegiant Airlines flew the workers to and from Baton Rouge, La. The city also housed about 500 evacuees and dispatched its own paramedics, police officers and firefighters to New Orleans to help with rescues.

In a strange way, Las Vegas is a natural sister city to New Orleans. They differ mightily in culture and scale, but there’s a certain knack for whimsy and indulgence that the communities share, as if they were born of the same family but centuries apart. After the hurricane, the flashier, less sophisticated cousin could show the clan’s eccentric grand dame just how worldly and wise he’d grown.

“We’re going to treat them graciously, with respect,” said Goodman. “But at the same time, we’re going to honor the reason that they’re here. And that is to get better. It’s not going to be a circus.”