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.
___
Okay, I just have to ask: what do you do for a living?
See # 46 of the below thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1481512/posts
There you go again calling someone names and posting with mispelled words. BTW NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH. NO is crawling with mosquitoes, roaches, and flies ALL THE TIME.
It's not a world I want to live in...
Think.
Mingle? Now there's a scientific term.
"What you say is neglible I say is important. Lets say you have a rack in the sink. In the sink is one cup of feces and you fill the sink up with water. The feces will mingle with the feces and contaminate the entire water supply in the sink."
Rubbish. I want a scetch with proper scale and the appropriate calculations. I want diffusion rate constants for each of your identified contaminants.
Folks are having their property, and Freedom stolen by a petty tin pot dictator hear at gunpoint by members of the US military. Niether your BS, or the BS coming out of baby doc nagin's mouth is going to cut it. SHOW YOUR WORK!
>>>There you go again calling someone names and posting with mispelled words.>>>
Excuse me? Who did I call a name? And please, don't send the spelling the police after me!!! Jeez, Oh God, I MYSPELED, cin yu furgiv me?
>>>BTW NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH. NO is crawling with mosquitoes, roaches, and flies ALL THE TIME.>>>
NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH. NO is not flooded with sewage water and rotting corpse water ALL THE TIME. Why can't you get that through your head?
Is there a way to find out? I'm reading where city services are up in some areas, so perhaps in these areas, folks can use their toilets.
All the gas, diesel,fuel oil, and who knows what chemicals in the flood water will kill mosquitos.
>>>Rubbish. I want a scetch with proper scale and the appropriate calculations. I want diffusion rate constants for each of your identified contaminants.>>>
Well, since I won't set foot in the damn city, you won't get that from me because I would not have sample to go by. But you know what I do have? Something most people on this thread seem to have lost somewhere along the way, it's called common sense. You want to allow an epidemic to spread? Oh yeah, I guess you do. We didn't eradicate diseases like Typhoid, Malaria, etc... by just letting rotting bodies and sewage set in a NONDRAINING bowl for weeks or months on end. MY right to not have an epidemic start because people don't have the common sense to got gave a pissant is more important than someone else's right to sit in a freaking septic tank. That's my opinion and your scientific inquiry be damned.
I'm getting a bad feeling about this. Apparently some neighborhoods are dry, undamaged, and utilities are up and running? Why are they being forced out? Why are pets being shot? What the hell is going on?
I can see if half your house is under water, filled with toxic soup, but if you're just sitting in your well stocked home, what is the damn problem????
>>> Given your spelling I would say you are the idiot
Here's the spelling police again. Do you get a salary for this or is it strictly a volunteer position?
I will stipulate to that if you stipulate that these neighborhoods are not flooded with sewage water and rotting corpses NOW!
>>>Is there a way to find out? I'm reading where city services are up in some areas, so perhaps in these areas, folks can use their toilets. >>>
Are these the areas they are forcibly evacuating? I'm reading that the places they are evacuating are the places without city services.
It is purely for the satisfaction of pointing it out. I love it when someone rants how someone is an idiot in a post rife with misspellings. It's . . . . . Ironic!
So, what does that mean? The toilets don't work? If so, I know that. Are the treatment facilities under water? If so they are contained except for ponds. What are the details? The coliform numbers I saw certainly don't indicate the flood waters are anywhere near open septic. They were described as yellow, which is delta silt.
Salmonella T is generally transfered by carriers. The kind of folks that are in te town are capable. That's not something insurmountable in the short run to just be neat. In fact Norwalk is what has shown up and that can be handled the same way, by keeping things clean.
If baby doc nagin and his health minister was concerned about these things, why'd he let them poop all over the inside of the dome.
Your family has lived there for nearly 300 years?! I know I'm impressed. My family didin't get here until the 1860's.
Not rich? I'm under the impression that being poor, and no government saftey net, was NO indicater of a families future. America was a wonderful place. Still is, but man, we've got termites.
One of the ditzy twits.
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