Posted on 08/31/2005 8:34:26 PM PDT by Flavius
EW ORLEANS - With thousands feared drowned in what could be America's deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans' leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city — perhaps for months. ADVERTISEMENT
Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.
Nagin also called for an all-out evacuation of the city's remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
With most of the city under water, Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of remaining people and practically abandon the below-sea-level city.
Nagin said there will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months." And he said people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
If the mayor's death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which have blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.
An exodus from the Superdome began Wednesday as the first of nearly 25,000 refugees left the miserable surroundings of the football stadium to be transported in a caravan of buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. The conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.
In Mississippi, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have brought to the morgue already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well above 100.
Tempers were beginning to flare. Police said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg, Miss.
President Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."
"We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history," Bush said later in a televised address from the White House, which most victims could not see because power remains out to 1 million Gulf Coast residents.
The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in U.S. history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the "golden 72 hours" rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.
As fires burned from broken natural-gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters frantically dropping baskets to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145-mph fury Monday. Atop one apartment building, two children held up a giant sign scrawled with the words: "Help us!"
Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.
Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched the looting. But Nagin later said the looting had gotten so bad that stopping the thieves became the top priority for the police department.
"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 — the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east — pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings.
On some of the few roads that were still open, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.
Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm's way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.
"We have to," Nagin said. "It's not living conditions."
He also expressed concern about people staying in the water: "People walking in that water with those dead bodies, it can get in your pores, you don't have to drink it."
In addition to the Astrodome solution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories.
The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.
Around midday, officials with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers said the water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalized, and water had stopped spilling into New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling. But the danger was far from over.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone as early as Wednesday night into the 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.
But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
In Washington, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from the federal petroleum reserves after Katrina knocked out 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's output. But because of the disruptions and damage to the refineries, gasoline prices surged above $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.
The death toll has reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone. But the full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days — in part, because some areas in both coastal Mississippi and New Orleans are still unreachable, but also because authorities' first priority has been the living.
In Mississippi, for example, ambulances roamed through the passable streets of devastated places such as Biloxi, Gulfport, Waveland and Bay St. Louis, in some cases speeding past corpses in hopes of saving people trapped in flooded and crumbled buildings.
State officials said Nagin's guess of thousands dead seemed plausible.
Lt. Kevin Cowan of the state Office of Emergency Preparedness said it is too soon to say with any accuracy how many died. But he noted that since thousands of people had been rescued from roofs and attics, it could be assumed that there were lots of others who were not saved.
"You have a limited number of resources, for an unknown number of evacuees. It's already been several days. You've had reports there are casualties. You all can do the math," he said.
On the flooded streets of New Orleans, dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out.
One of those rescued was 40-year-old Kevin Montgomery, who spent three days shuttling between the attic of a one-story home and a canopy he built on the roof.
Every once in a while, Mongtomery would see a body float by. But he cannot swim and had to fight the urge to wade in and tie them down.
"It was terrible," he said. "All I could do was pass them by and hope that God takes care of the rest of that."
A welfare account#
For three and four generations, too.
It must be hard for law abidng blacks to see mostly black looters. It must be especially galling to have liberals defend that behavior as a response to being victims of society. Many blacks managed to be honest and law abiding in the most difficult of circumstances. They reared children, worked, valued an education in the days before civil rights. Weren't they opressed then? Yet like all God fearing people they knew they would answer to God for all they did in this life. It also angers me that so many blacks fought for the right to be treated as equals and here you have a bunch of savages spitting in the face of everything y'all fought for.
It must be hard for law abidng blacks to see mostly black looters. It must be especially galling to have liberals defend that behavior as a response to being victims of society. Many blacks managed to be honest and law abiding in the most difficult of circumstances. They reared children, worked, valued an education in the days before civil rights. Weren't they opressed then? Yet like all God fearing people they knew they would answer to God for all they did in this life. It also angers me that so many blacks fought for the right to be treated as equals and here you have a bunch of savages spitting in the face of everything y'all fought for.
You have a point.
Police officers seen joining in on the free-for-all.
Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slipped into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday -- with some police officers and firefighters even joining looters in picking stores clean.
Totally agree. Obvious they were not prepared. Rescue and aid is not coordinated. Why are people wandering around aimlessly not knowing what to do?
Friends and family have always thought we were crazy because we have bottled water and easy prep food on hand and guns to protect ourselves. Let this be a lesson to all.
Bravo! Nicely stated!!
Regardless, ANYONE who breaks into my home will be welcomed with three Pb injections.
Glocks are Good, Rugers Rule, Sigs are Superior.
I pray this story is wrong. Looking at the TV footage makes it seem like hoping against hope, but I pray that the numbers in this article are wrong.
"I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that "thousands" of dead will be found in New Orleans, at least not from the flooding.
If the death toll exceeds 500, I'll be shocked."
Are you amenable to openly posting a vanity post quoting this comment and stating error, IF the NOLA toll exceeds, say 10x your shock level (5000)?
I am very willing to do the same on the counter-bet - say less than 500?
Only issue I see on corpse counting is those in attics that aren't found for weeks or longer.
Don't worry. As soon as just one black looter is shot, Sharpton, Jackson, and the rest of that sorry lot will have plenty to say, just to get their mugs on TV.
They say that there's alot of footage that they just can't show.
Well, it's not just African-Americans. It's the remnants of the Southern Democratic Party. And I'm sure, the suffering and "loot with impunity" might have caused some ordinarily balanced innocent poor to lose their sanity and join the looters.
They say that there's alot of footage that they just can't show.
Watch for it to pop up on ogrish.com and rotten.com. There's a market for that kind of thing.
I knew this day would come, and when it did the media would apply a double-standard.
They were more than happy to splatter the most horrible, impersonal, and prying pictures of "brown people" from the other side of the planet when Thailand was hit by the Tsunami.
But now that the disaster's come home to roast, they hypocritically sit on their imaginary high horses and pretend they have ethics.
Disgusting pigs.
Hold your tongue, from the looks of the destruction the number of deaths is going to be in the thousands.
A hint for those seeking water: there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of hot water tanks sitting around.
They are all mostly full of drinkable water.
Im guessing 40,000 dead
How many square miles of NO is underwater ?
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