Posted on 09/01/2005 5:57:30 PM PDT by Uncle Joe Cannon
New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes
Friday September 2, 2005 12:46 AM
AP Photo MSDP112
By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken. ``This is a desperate SOS,'' mayor Ray Nagin said.
``We are out here like pure animals,'' the Rev. Issac Clark said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where he and other evacuees had been waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.
``I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive,'' said tourist Larry Mitzel of Saskatoon, Canada, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. ``I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire.''
Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.
New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a ``national disgrace'' and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.
About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.
``We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten,'' Compass said. ``Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon.''
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.
``This is a desperate SOS,'' Nagin said in a statement. ``Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses.''
At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
``I don't treat my dog like that,'' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
``You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people,'' he added. ``You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here.''
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
``They've been teasing us with buses for four days,'' Edwards said. ``They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up.''
Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.
At one point the crowd began to chant ``We want help! We want help!'' Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, ``The Lord is my shepherd ...''
``We are out here like pure animals,'' the Issac Clark said.
``We've got people dying out here - two babies have died, a woman died, a man died,'' said Helen Cheek. ``We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us.''
Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, ``'Go to hell - it's every man for himself.'''
``This is just insanity,'' she said. ``We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave.''
At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.
After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.
One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.
Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.
``If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God,'' said refugee John Phillip. ``Nothing could be worse than what we've been through.''
By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.
As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
``This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy,'' he said. He added: ``We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans.''
FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out.
A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings - and not all the crimes were driven by greed.
When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, ``there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'''
Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.
``I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there,'' he said.
Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. ``Look, I'm only getting necessities,'' he said. ``All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with.''
While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.
Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. He said contractors had completed building a rock road to let heavy equipment roll to the area by midnight.
The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.
In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.
The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.
``I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this - whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,'' Bush said. ``And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.''
Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.
``They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out,'' he said. ``We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!''
----
This may sound stupid but why would a tourist have stayed in New Orleans after being warned the storm was coming? Its easy to understand why the poor and the old and even the regular citizens stayed, But even the dumbest tourist should have cleared out.
The liberal death wish has come true!! Anarchy and Selfishness!
Where are the governor and mayor of this state and city??
What ever happened to self control and each of us acting on behalf of the common good?
The buck stops with YOU, Terry Ebbert. Quit, dude, and save us all another minute of your incompetent aggravation.
It will be especially horrifying for those from Europe and Australia. No food, water, or weapons, and stuck in a zoo of savages.
One small problem there is no I-10 west now.
Wonder how many of those tourists were there for Southern Decadence Week, the homosexual extravaganza that was to begin on Wed. and end Sunday?
"Please people learn from this! You are the only person you can count on to save yourself. Please think what you would do right now if disaster struck where you were. The gov is trying but is unable to help if you rely on the gov for help expect to be effectively placed in custody and have any means of protection taken from you!"
If people would have listened, they were told this to start with. Every preparedness situation manual I have ever seen has stated this up front. History tells us this over and over and over. But then one needs to be a student to hear and understand these things.
Do you understand the Constitution and States rights? He can't do anything he isn't invited to do.
BUMP
You know, it will be impossible to evacuate anybody. I can see stampedes and violence the second anybody starts to get onboard. I tis impossbile these people will just stand by and watch others get onboard a bus.
Mayor Nagin is directly responsible for this situation. Had he established law and order initially, the relief workers could have been more effective.
Niicceeee..Real nice.
Wasn't the quote something like the looters that should be investigated are the ones charging $6/gal for gas in Atlanta? That's a 3fer there in one sentence!
1. shore up his looter constituency in NO
2. throw red meat to the anticapitalists
3. let his constituents in Atlanta know he's still thinking about them.
With DUE respect of CNN and reporters, Is it ONLY women who are at the Convention Center and the Superdome? Where are the dad's...of these babies. Are they only single mom's?
I agree 150%.
You've got it! This is liberalism in action. NO is totally a welfare/nanny state city. From all of the people incapable of doing anything for themselves to the whole taxpayer funded levee system to sustain a population in an unlivable unviable environment.
Liberals ought to at least get that...NO is not viable! Abort it! /sarcasm
Not true,
I-10 east is gone,
the causeway north to Covington is gone,
There is no where south to go to.
I-10 west goes to Houston
and as long as buses are moving along it so can the people of New Orleans.
I agree, but up to a point. What about the people who chose to stay behind? What about all the looting? What about the shooting of cops and coast guards, what about the raping of toursits? What about the mayor not issuing a mandatory evac before this?
There is PLENTY of blame everywhere
This is far far far worse than almost any terorist attack I could imagine. Think about it! Even a small nuke would not have caused such damage overall as we see upon us.
Bull! Do you understand what marshal law is?
YOu bring up a good point. If Shep Smith is so radicalized, why not lead a Walk to Salvation? The MSM have fielded reporters and sat trucks, the basis of command and control, use them to inform and lead the refugees out of NO?
NOLA tourists are there to "eat, drink and be merry"... maybe too much of a hangover to get out of dodge...
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