Posted on 09/09/2005 6:06:57 PM PDT by Happy2BMe
NEW ORLEANS
Authorities said their sweep of this deluged city for the last voluntary evacuees was nearly complete, with officers ready to carry out the mayor's order to forcibly remove the thousands who remain in their homes.
"The ones who wanted to leave, I would say most of them are out," said Detective Sgt. James Imbrogglio.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 residents are believed left in the city, where toxic floodwaters have started to slowly recede but the task of collecting rotting corpses and clearing debris will likely take months.
Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jason Rule said his crew pulled 18 people from their homes Thursday. He said some of the holdouts did not want to leave unless they could take their pets.
"It's getting to the point where they're delirious," Rule said. "A couple of them don't know who they were. They think the water will go down in a few days."
Police Chief Eddie Compass said officers would use the "minimum amount of force" necessary to persuade those who remain to evacuate. Although no one was forcibly removed Thursday, some residents said they left under extreme pressure.
"They were all insisting that I had to leave my home," said Shelia Dalferes, who said she had 15 minutes to pack before she and her husband were evacuated.
"The implication was there with their plastic handcuffs on their belt. Who wants to go out like that?"
As searches for the living continued, the grim task of retrieving corpses intensified under the broiling sun. Officials raised the death toll in Louisiana to 118 Thursday, though New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said up to 10,000 could be dead in that city alone. State officials have ordered 25,000 body bags.
Authorities are now faced with the challenge of how to identify bodies that may be bloated and decayed beyond recognition. At two collection sites, federal mortuary teams were collecting information that may help identify the bodies, such as where they were found. Personal effects were also being logged.
At the temporary morgue set up in nearby St. Gabriel, where 67 bodies had been collected by Thursday, the remains were being photographed and forensic workers hope to use dental X-rays, fingerprints and DNA to identify them.
Dr. Bryan Patucci, coroner of St. Bernard Parish, said it may be impossible to identify all the victims until authorities compile a final list of missing people.
Decaying corpses in the floodwaters could pose problems for engineers who are desperately trying to pump the city dry. While 37 of the 174 pumps in the New Orleans area were working and 17 portable pumps were in place Thursday, officials said the mammoth undertaking could be complicated by corpses getting clogged in the pumps.
"It's got a huge focus of our attention right now," said John Rickey of the Army Corps of Engineers. "Those remains are people's loved ones."
Some 400,000 homes in the city were also still without power, with no immediate prospect of getting it back. And fires continued to be a problem. At least 11 blazes burned across the city Thursday, including at historically black Dillard University where three buildings were destroyed.
Also Thursday, Congress rushed through an additional $51.8 billion for relief and recovery efforts and President Bush pledged to make it "easy and simple as possible" for uprooted storm victims to collect food stamps and other government benefits.
In an attempt to stem the criticism of the slow federal response to the disaster, Vice President Dick Cheney also toured parts of the ravaged Gulf Coast, claiming significant progress but acknowledging immense obstacles remained to a full recovery.
Meanwhile, Democrats threatened to boycott the naming of a panel that Republican leaders are proposing to investigate the administration's readiness and response to the storm. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said it was like a baseball pitcher calling "his own balls and strikes."
Democrats have urged appointment of an independent panel like the Sept. 11 commission.
Confusion continued to be a problem in many areas:
_ Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that radio equipment and portable generators she requested from the federal government a week ago had yet to arrive. Federal officials said they were tracking down the status of the items.
_ In Houston, hundreds of storm victims waited for hours to pick up debit cards for cash that had been promised by relief agencies. By noon Thursday, so many people had jammed the entrance to the sign-up area that some were overcome by the heat and police were summoned.
___
They aren't moving all these people out to restore the state. These people will never be allowed back in.
They can drive for groceries. The streets and highways are fine in certain areas of town. (I have to keep repeating this...)
Don't worry sweetie, none of them want you as their mother. You would make a great Democrat.
Just add them to the list with the Red Cross and the Salvation Army who were not allowed in.
Let'm stay. They know by now the process of cleanup will take months and if they are willing to live in those conditions, I say let'm. Make them sign a release that they understand the circumstances may cause death and no help will be available.
Umm. I think that was my point but thanks for restating it for me. I wasn't sure I understood what I meant. /sarcasm/
Plenty of parts of NO are dry because they were higher. That man, Ashton O'Dwyer, is on one of them. The better-off parts of town were not built down low.
You can see his house looks fine. I heard him earlier today on tv, he is not leaving. Others in his part of town are not giving up their property to the land-grabbers either.
Maybe I'll be able to find the article that was in.
Isn't it amazing how some people see the backdrop of a single CNN newscast and in their mind every square inch of New Orleans looks like that.
The control freaks care more about control than the people's well-being.
And shame on _jim,deejay and the other jack-booted statists;this is supposed to be a free country with inalienable rights.
Rights (and responsibilities) don't just disappear if inconvenient to your agenda.
I knew there was a reason for the Second Admendment!
Of course gov't programs are what allowed a huge population to live in a swamphole;without the gov't levees and dredges New Orleans would still be a little backwater village. It is gov't programs that promoted building in natural floodplains,swamps,beachfronts and other +u+nsuit able locations for so long.
I don't think they should make them leave and I don't think they have the will down there to make them leave.
What I would do, give them all a legal form to sign verifying them that they've been informed of the danger and still choose to stay.
ALSO, they should leave them with a body bag AND tattoo their social security number somewhere on their body. OR how about those implant things they give dogs? Something so that when their body is found they are quickly identified.
I tell you, the sight bites of people being dragged, kicking and screaming from their home, is not going to sit well with the American people.
Falls under the right to choose to be stupid.
I'm not sure it's such a simple matter to say it's not legal. I can't think of the guys name, but on Fox this evening (maybe the O'Reilly show but might have been Hannity and Combs, neither show had their regular hosts so I was confused!) he said it is quite legal. So, whether it is or not seems to be subject to debate.
As for pets, what are you going to feed your pets with when the food runs out? How about water? I understand about pets, as my two goldens are like my kids, and they would go out with me. As I said, I would hate to leave my stuff, however, I dont think this is as cut and dried as people are making it sound.
And, I wonder who will end up being liable when some of these people get sick, die, need help, etc. I suspect it will be you and me. As usual.
susie
That lady had a pistol in her hand.
You make it sound as if all is perfectly fine and normal and the government is just doing this for the fun of it.
susie
I can't believe you of all people is falling for this deadly toxin hype.WHO is talking about the 'toxin' hype?
DID I mention ANYHING about 'toxins'?
POINT out where I wrote ANYTHING about 'toxins' ...
ALL I have to do is go back in history, HISTORY on this continent, too:
Among the major contributions of the drainage, sewerage, and water systems was their effect on public health.HOW was this done again -In 1899, the death rate from malaria stood at 70 persons per 100,000 residents, and from typhoid, 40 persons per 100,000 population.
By 1905, malaria deaths had been reduced to 13 persons per 100,000 residents, and deaths from typhoid declined to 30 per 100,000 residents (Sewerage and Water Board 1926:n.p.).
By 1913, the incidence of typhoid in New Orleans had been halved, and deaths from malaria virtually eliminated.
The overall death rate per one thousand residents decreased by 7.4 persons per year between 1900 and 1913, a 25% reduction from 1900.
The lives of thousands of New Orleanians were saved in the first decade of the twentieth century alone by the net effects of drainage, sewerage, and water system modernization (Behrman 1914:11, 13). Martin Behrman in 1914 lauded the drainage system in unreserved terms: ?no project ever brought to a successful issue in the history of New Orleans had so deep and wide an influence for good in all directions as that which ensued from this achievement (Behrman 1914:5).
- a proper drainage and 'sewerage' system ...
How about malaria, encephalitis, dengue, and all of the others that can't be kept at bay without a functioning public health system?
How about the basic risk of tetanus? Think the good, educated, wealthy denizens remaining have up to date immunizations?
My theory: PC. They can't go after the embedded gangsters holed up in the projects until they've gone after the white folks first. Otherwise, racism. They can't seem to have one law for the rich and white; another law for the poor and black.
From sickness and disease, lack of food and water. OR all of the above. Lest we forget, the looter shooters trying to kill anyone in sight.
Leaving voluntarily or by force, is for their own good.
So you say. I say not. The owners say not.
I saw an owner of 5 hotels (downtown) being intervied tonight. He's up and ready for guests. The bars are open.
All that said, doesn't it bother you AT ALL that millions of brave American men gave their very lives to prevent this kind of governement abuse of our Constitution?
Evidently not. I'm glad I'm older. This is going to end terribly.
Like all good arguements there is always a grey area. Few rational souls would stay at their home knowing dead corpses rotted in a warm swamp near their house. In a city of 1 million, 5,000 to 10,000 is only .5-1%. It is easy to believe that 7,500 or so urban dwellers are:
A. Delusional, not in touch with reality. Removing them is like pulling a schitzophrenic person out of the way of an oncoming truck. They may be irate that you jerked them out of a conversation with their shoe, but the alternative is worse.
B. Those that aren't done looting yet. The only way to ensure that we don't tie down our elite paratroopers fighting an insurgency quagmire is to get them rested, refitted and capable of returning to Iraq. Odds are Iraq will have a stable, operating government several years ahead of Louisiana. As to the looters, this is the same crowd that delivers their Christmass presents in January. We can call them procrastinating illegal shoppers. They should be promptly removed with pitchforks. C. The tragicly uninformed. These people have been living in a hazardous waste sewer for a while now. They are not watching the news. If I were in that condition, thinking that the waters would recede and I would go back to work next week I would tell a rescuer to go to hell if he wanted me to put my life in a rubber dingy that leaves in 15 minutes. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Remember that family flying their personal jet back from a camping vacation September 2001. They were forced to land by F-16's and were very confused, prior to that they refered to the 11th as Tuesday. If 0.5% of the current population is in this boat, chock up anouther 5,000 people. I suspect this number includes MANY of the people who were properly prepared for a hurricane and are surviving just fine now. How many of them prepared for a hurricane by stocking up 30 days supply of food, water and essentials? Unless you already had all of these supplies for an alterior motive (Such as surviving other circumstances) it would be borderline paranoia to assemble that much for a hurricane.
The fact of the matter is, New Orleans is destroyed. What is together and functioning is likely to be altered severely. In what may become the largest urban renewal project in American history, roads will be moved, bridges left standing shattered, the groun torn up from replacing water sewer and NG lines. Check with anyone who had their house built. The builder hates it when you move in there at the start of construction. If these people think anything will be normal anytime soon in New Orleans we can safely put them in the delusional catagory. I have seen the result of flooding here in North Carolina and just because alot of the buildings stood, it does not mean you can live in them. Nor do your new neighbors want to build next to your stinking, poop-smelly house.
It is easy to say "O.K. stay here, but we wont be responsible for your well being" To leave people the option of staying in the city. The problem is that we are going to be sending in police and firemen in to save these people as their patience, health, food or water runs out. This is an unavoidable externality to allowing thousands to live there. There is no way an EMT could know that people are dying there while he or she pointed his finger and said "see, I told you you were going to die, tisk, tisk" These folks save people who would really rather be dead.
By the way I hope it never comes to this but if an Oklahoma National guardsman comes to my door to remove the weapon fron my warm, law abiding hand, I will give him a 7.62 mm answer.
Well, those men had guns in theirs.
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