Katrina Live Thread, Part XIV

President Bush continues to assess the catastrophic damage by air and on the ground in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Bush spent the day meeting with search and rescue personnel, relief commanders, and displaced residents in Mobile, Biloxi, and the New Orleans area. U.S. Congress passed a $10.5 billion relief package for the hurricane ravaged areas. First Lady Laura Bush issued a press statement from an evacuation shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Patient and staff evacuations continue from numerous New Orleans Hospitals. Thousands of patients are being airlifted to a field hospital at Louis Armstrong New Orleans Airport for triage, staging, and transport to hospitals throughout the United States.

The U.S. Coast Guard and civilian volunteers continue to evacuate thousands of survivors from their flooded homes in New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers continues work to repair the damaged levees.

The nation's airlines today began an operation intended to fly up to 25,000 refugees out of New Orleans. The airlines are volunteering their aircraft and crews for the program. Long convoys loaded with relief supplies arrived throughout the day into New Orleans, while convoys of buses are moving survivors out of the city.

Several large fires are burning in the city and greater New Orleans area. Reports indicate snipers are holding down firefighters. Reports of shots fired with LEO down in the St. Bernard Parish area. Rescue operations are underway. A bus carrying NOLA evauees rolled over in Opelousa, LA.

New Orleans Emergency Operations Center - is now open:
504-463-1000
504-463-1001
504-463-1002

WWL-TV New Orleans (via WFAA Dallas) - WWL-TV is operating from studios at Louisiana Public Broadcasting. CBS has a relay during the morning and afternoon. When available, use the CBS relay first as they have greater streaming capacity. Yahoo has also provided a relay.

WDSU-TV New Orleans - The news staff has started to return to temporary news studios near New Orleans. However, expect evening coverage from Hearst-Argyle sister stations WAPT Jackson and WESH Orlando when the New Orleans staff needs to take a break.

WGNO-TV New Orleans - New Orleans' ABC affiliate has returned to the air with WBRZ-TV and launched video streaming with continuous Katrina coverage.

WPMI-TV Mobile, AL - WPMI is webcasting from 5:30am - 10:30pm CDT. When off air, you can view pre-recorded reports on demand. This feed is often unreliable.

WKRG-TV Mobile, AL - This station is providing good coverage of the situation to the east in Mississippi and Alabama. However, the station is now signing off at around 10:30pm CDT like WWL and WPMI.

WJTV-TV Jackson, MS - The CBS affiliate in Jackson is providing live coverage for both the Jackson area and south Mississippi (knowing a lot of media in that area is off the air).

United Radio From New Orleans: WWL-AM, WNOE-FM, "KISS-FM," WRNO-FM, WYLD-FM, and WJBO-AM who have joined forces as United Radio From New Orleans, and they are streaming.

Due to the number of requests to assist, the following list of some charities is provided.
This is not intended as an endorsement for any of the charities.

www.redcross.org or 1-800 HELP NOW - note: website is slow, and lines are busy
Salvation Army - 1-800-SAL-ARMY or Salvation Army currently looking for in-state volunteers - (888)363-2769
Operation Blessing: (800) 436-6348.
America's Second Harvest: (800) 344-8070.
Catholic Charities USA: (800) 919-9338, or www.catholiccharitiesusa.org.
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee: (800) 848-5818.
Church World Service: (800) 297-1516 or online at www.churchworldservice. org.
Lutheran Disaster Response: (800) 638-3522.
Nazarene Disaster Response: (888) 256-5886.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: (800) 872-3283.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is accepting donations at its 3,800 stores and Web site, www.walmart.com.
National Black Home Educators Resource Association http://www.nbhera.org/ Southern Baptist: NAMB - http://www.namb.net/
Samaritan's Purse - http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

I'm not sure I should reply to your post...but I will take a deep breath and try...

I'm not sure I should reply to your post...but I will take a deep breath and try...

They don't need clothes from Talbot's. They need ordinary, clean, clothes of the type they are used to wearing. It might be a novelty, but I don't think they would appreciate them . . .now. Maybe sometime they would.

Been there done that. Gave some really nice stuff to a family whose house was destroyed by fire. They might have bartered with some of the nice stuff I donated, but I doubt they ever wore them. That was back when my kids were able to have really nice things from good stores.

Now I don't care about those fancy clothes any more. Am so glad I'm past that. I have sufficient and could show up at almost any function properly dressed. My sister has given me two nice coats and some nice-quality summer outfits. I'm saving them for something special mostly and wearing my cheaper stuff because that is me now.

Nothing at all against you.

ON THE STREETS

Algiers was once an affluent New Orleans suburb. Today it is a war-zone. In one incident, a gun battle broke out between a group of residents keeping watch on the streets and three armed men turning into the road. “They estimate that 25 shots were fired,’’ says Daryl Holmes. She used to live in Algiers and has many friends and family trapped in the area. Holmes is now acting as a point of contact between residents and the outside world – and trying to highlight their plight. ‘‘Of the three guys, two were hit – one in the back and the other in the shoulder. All three got away.

“What’s happening in Algiers is a microcosm of the rest of New Orleans. It is total social breakdown. It is very, very, very scary for everyone. To me, it is less a racial issue than a conflict between the haves and the have-nots. On top of that there is screaming panic – a sense of ‘who cares what happens, we are all gonna die’. It is out of control.

“There are small groups of armed residents walking the streets in Algiers. I understand completely why they would want to do that, but it’s amplifying the anxiety. There are armed looters walking openly on the streets, and they are facing them alone.

“Somebody needs to get some help to these folks. Many of them desperately want to get out, but they can’t see a path to safety through the incredible violence surrounding them. Are there no authorities left? Is everybody gone? For Algiers, the storm is coming again.”

Fergie Lewis, who lived in Algiers and is now trying to get help for her friends still trapped in the area, says some 100 people are now having to face down and kill armed men on their own doorsteps. “The residents still left are now under siege from the mob,” she says, adding that they had to “kill four people in an attempt to protect property and life”. She asked the international press to send this message out: “Please get the state police in!”

Race war, class war and pure unadulterated anarchy have now gripped New Orleans – despite the eventual arrival of the military. When the National Guard did finally roll into New Orleans on Friday, Lieutenant-General Steven Blum, commander of the National Guard, declared: “The cavalry is and will continue to arrive.” He said 7000 Guardsmen would be in the city by last night.

At least a thousand corpses, some being eaten by rats, are floating through the city’s drowned streets. Wealthy whites are shooting indiscriminately at blacks who they believe to be murder gangs and looters; women, children and grown men are being raped and killed in alley-ways; cops are running away from the frontlines and telling survivors that it’s now a case of “every man for himself”. People are killing themselves in despair. Rescuers, heli copters and hospitals have been sniped at.

One of the first places looted was a Wal-Mart store which had its arms and ammunition stocks emptied. In downtown New Orleans, screams could be heard from tenement blocks as men wielding stainless steel baseball bats – knee-deep in a toxic stew of floodwater, effluent and chemicals – methodically beat their way inside the buildings. Some flooded streets bubbled with gas escaping from beneath the water.

TB, West Nile fever, typhoid, cholera and dysentery are on the way. Mosquitoes are swarming around survivors who walk through corpse and rubble-strewn roads. The victims continually ask where the water is, where the police are, why the army isn’t there, why the government is not doing anything. One said: “It’s hard for me to believe that this is America.” Another chanted ‘Where is Bush! Where is Bush!’”

Bodies of dead elderly folk sit propped up in their wheelchairs on the sidewalk with tartan travel rugs thrown over them; nearby shopping malls burn to the ground and fires spread across the city. Pointing to a dead elderly woman in the street, Daniel Edward says: “I don’t treat my dog like that. You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military, but you can’t get them down here.”

The destruction, like the violence, seems to be splitting along racial grounds. The city’s old Georgian piles, owned by affluent whites, have survived, but the crime-ridden slums and housing projects, which were home to blacks, have been swept away. The city has a two-to-one black-white population split and most crime is being seen as a black-on-white issue – although there was also violence and chaos in white areas.

Military analyst Colonel Bill Cowan fears a “Saigon situation” on the streets, where helicopters landing to save stranded people will be overwhelmed by desperate survivors. This scenario has already been seen at evacuation points where buses arriving to ferry survivors away have been mobbed. One helicopter came under sniper fire at the Superdome.

According to Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police, many officers have been handing in their badges. “They indicated that they had lost everything and didn’t feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives,” he says, while insisting the looters “will not take control of the city of New Orleans”.

Debbie Durso, a tourist from Michigan, said that when she asked a police officer for help he told her: “Go to hell. It’s every man for himself.”

Some 88 police officers retreated when confronted by an angry crowd at the convention centre, while they were trying to investigate rapes and beatings. Mayor Ray Nagin later issued a “desperate SOS” and ordered 1500 police officers to suspend their search and rescue missions to restore order in the city as reports of murder and mayhem mounted up. Then the National Guard were issued with orders to shoot to kill. Louisiana’s governor, Kathleen Blanco, said that among the soldiers were 300 “battle-tested” guardsmen: “They have M-16s and are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will.”

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