Katrina Live Thread XII

President Bush: "We are dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history." Push has appropriated vast federal resources to assist with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

78,000 people are currently in shelters. New Orleans evacuation continues. 10,000 additional National Guard troops have been called to service.

Hospitals are running low on supplies, and public health concerns include water borne disease, poor sanitation, food and drinking water contamination and shortages, mosquitoes, carbon monixide poisoning from electricity generators, lack of childcare, and the special needs of the elderly.

2theAdvocate - Baton Rouge Includes Slidell, St. John Parish, St. Bernard Parish updates, and other locations.

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
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.

Thursday, September 01, 2005
	Evacuees begin arriving in HoustonBy Josh Peter Staff writer HOUSTON – This was not how it was supposed to happen, but this is how it did. Without an escort from Texas state troopers, without being on the official list of evacuees expected to arrive and about 30 minutes after being turned away, the yellow Orleans Parish school bus rolled through the entrance, past the security guards and onto the parking lot leading to the Astrodome. Several children about waved and shouted “thank you,’’ loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the closed glass windows. A reporter looked at his watch: 12:31 a.m. So began the arrival of evacuees from Louisiana, with busload after busload on the way and about 23,000 victims of Hurricane Karina in all scheduled to take shelter at the Astrodome. But the first ones admitted, the children and a handful of adults riding on Orleans Parish school bus No. 0235, weren’t on the official list. Robert Eckels, who as judge of Harris County presides over the Astrodome, said he knew about the “renegade’’ bus and that the indoor stadium wasn’t ready for evacuees – particularly the unexpected arrivals. “That bus that arrived earlier was a young man who had loaded up a bunch of kids and just gotten into the bus and driven here,’’ Eckels said. “It was not one of those (official) buses. At this point, our plan, our agreement, is to take the Superdome buses.’’ But shortly after Eckels left, the judge was overruled. Margaret O’Brien-Molina, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, discovered the school bus sitting outside the entrance and gave the orders: Let them in. Yet at the same time, O’Brien-Molina indicated she understands the risk of bringing in too many evacuees. “You’ve got to go with what the agreement is,’’ she said. “I’m not the one who decided we’re going to take 35,000 people, or 25,000 people or whatever it is. We’ve got to make sure that we can take care of them. “On the other hand, you got to do what’s right.’’ Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said this morning that the evacuation of the rest of New Orleans was in full swing. At least 70 buses had picked up refugees from the Superdome, and officials were considering using trains and boats to ship people to safety. Schneider also said that an executive order allows authorities to take over the state's fleet of school buses, if necessary, to expedite the evacuation to Houston and elsewhere. When the Orleans Parish school bus came through early today in Houston, a charter bus trailed behind without the joyous sound of children. The first three people off the charter bus were lifted into wheelchairs and pushed past Doug Hamilton, an internist who was prepared to help those who needed immediate medical attention. Generally, those patients were the dehydrated evacuees who needed to get back on their medication for illnesses like diabetes. But Hamilton also played the role of official greeter. “The first thing I say to these patients,’’ Hamilton said, “is, “Welcome to Houston. Stay a while.’ ’’ The evacuees were unavailable for interviews under the rules set forth by officials running the relocation effort. But O’Brien-Molina said she was pushing for more media access to the shelter for later today and beamed as she recounted a moment from earlier that night. When she heard about the school bus, she walked outside the gates and talked with the passengers that included a 5-year-old daughter and the girl’s mother. O’Brien-Molina had decided to let the evacuees in – with or without the required state troopers – and held the 5-year-old girl as the girl’s mother climbed back aboard the bus. About 20 minutes later, she saw the girl settling by one of the thousands of green cots on the dry floor and under the covered roof of the Astrodome. “That little girl, think about what she’s been through the last few days,’’ said O’Brien-Molina, who heard about the sweltering heat, malfunctioning plumbing and limited food and water that evacuees had endured before arriving at the clean and cot-lined Astrodome.’’ That makes it worthwhile to me.’’ Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	DDS says direct deposits will be on timeEvacuees receiving social services assistance through EBT cards can access their funds as usual, the state Department of Social Services announced this morning. Nanette White, a spokeswoman for DDS, also said those receiving Social Security benefits can also expect their direct deposits to be credited as usual. However, others who receive checks should go to the nearest Social Security Office for help. For more information, call 1-800-772-1213. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Bush: Help on the wayPresident Bush said that he was confident New Orleans would be restored to a great city and called for “zero-tolerance’’ in handling looters. “There ought to be zero tolerance’’ whether the crime is looting or price gouging, Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview on “Good Morning America.’’ “Citizens ought to be working together…'' Stressing that help is on the way, Bush said that authorities are working hard to get water and food to the city. “I understand the anxieties of the people on the ground. There is frustration. There is a lot of help coming,’’ he said. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Mayor closes city to evacueesBaton Rouge Parish Mayor Kip Holden said that no more evacuees would be accepted. He also called for refugees housed in the River Center be moved elsewhere, WBRZ Channel 2 reported. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	CNN says caravan to Houston suspended6:20 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 The buses filled with refugees enroute to the Astrodome in Houston from the Louisiana Superdome have been suspended for unknown reasons, CNN is reporting this morning. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Evacuees start arriving in Astrodome5:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 The first wave of evacuees from the Louisiana Superdome began arriving in Houston early this morning, as volunteers scrambled to prepare the Astrodome for thousands of homeless people. But the earliest arrivals weren’t from the Superdome. Two so-called “renegade buses” filled with evacuees from Orleans Parish tried to convince American Red Cross officials that they were part of the Superdome caravan, according to CNN. The agency figured out the truth, but relief officials decided to accept the evacuees because they were in such bad shape, CNN said. The Astrodome was to be reserved for more than 20,000 people fleeing dangerous and filthy conditions in the Superdome. Upwards of 500 buses are expected to make the trip from New Orleans to Houston. Inside the Astrodome, 800 food workers are getting ready to prepare three meals a day. Each evacuee, officials said, will get a "comfort kit" with tolietries and other basics. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Coast Guard: "We have our work cut out for us"4:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard said its crews have rescued more than 3,000 people from rooftops and other spots in the New Orleans area. "The sheer number is impossible to tell," Lt. Russell Hall told Fox news this morning. The Coast Guard is staffing rescues around the clock, he said. "We have our work cut out for us." Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)


	Wednesday, August 31, 2005
	Radio captures the horror, exhaustionBy Dave Walker TV columnist The exasperation, sadness, shock and exhaustion in Dave Cohen’s voice said more than the words he was saying, and they were bad enough. This was midday Wednesday, and Cohen was manning the microphone at WWL AM 870, the New Orleans news-talk station that was providing a lifeline of information to thousands of evacuees around the region, one of them me. The hole in the levee allowing Lake Pontchartrain to dump into unflooded portions of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had not been mended. The “bowl effect” was going to be achieved, with the city filling with water, maybe all the way to the brim created by the walls built to protect it. Cohen sounded defeated by the implications. Toxic contamination, structural wasting by weeks of submersion, the horrific liquid funk that would harbor insects, disease, more death. The possibility that the city itself would be uninhabitable, even once the breach was blocked and the water was drained and the destroyed trees and houses and corpses cleaned up and the looters at last in retreat, seemed utterly real and likely to Cohen, and, no doubt, many of his listeners. That WWL had stayed on the air at all was a dramatic tale that will be told here in fuller detail in later weeks and, I’m sure, years. WWL abandoned its downtown cluster of studios overlooking the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina blew out all of the office windows. Listeners who heard host Garland Robinette’s narration of the live, on-the-air retreat farther inside the building as Katrina pounded away, heard horrible/wonderful broadcasting – a horror to listen to, but a wonder, too. Literally blown out, a broadcast skeleton crew moved to the basement of the Jefferson Parish emergency operations center, according to a spokesman for Entercom Communications, the Pennsylvania-based parent company to WWL and several other New Orleans radio stations. As last-gasp efforts were underway to remove the thousands of people still trapped in New Orleans on Wednesday, Entercom was making plans to remove its makeshift studio all the way to Baton Rouge, which has become the local media staging area for post-Katrina coverage. With cable news carrying pictures of the USS Bataan steaming into position to provide a command center for the relief effort, it was hard not to frame the day in Biblical context. Wednesday began with TV and radio coverage of live prayers by the governor and a collection of holy men. By the time New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas joined Cohen and Chris Miller on WWL in mid-afternoon, the things he’d seen in the streets were going to be literally unforgettable. He’d seen a body, probably many, in the water on a reconnaissance boat trip. “I still see that body,” he said. “I see his position. I see the color of the clothes he had on.” He’d seen looters, too, and asked anybody with ulterior intentions “to get on your knees and pray for intervention.” He’d seen hell where a kind of heaven should be. He’d heard references to Sodom and Gomorrah. “Maybe God’s going to cleanse us,” said Thomas. No place is that wicked. TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at davewala@yahoo.com. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Ant balls not an urban mythIn addition to all of the other horrors befalling New Orleanians during the flood was the creepy discovery that red ants form themselves into floating clusters to avoid drowning. As Dante Ramos and I paddled along Carrollton Avenue on Wednesday, I saw two glittering, golf ball-sized masses of ants floating beside our canoe. - Doug MacCash Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Diving in to help othersNew Orleans resident Cynthia Shephard took several steps closer to heaven on Tuesday, when she left the safety of her room at the W Hotel in order to rescue flood refugees stranded along the Interstate. When I encountered her on Oak St., her Ford pickup was crowded with 10 people. Between draws on her cigarette, Shephard explained her motives: "They needed it. It's crowded out there. Law enforcement is too busy. I can't get a straight answer. So I took it on myself. And I'm in a truck, so I should utilize it." - Doug MacCash Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Causeway closed but hardly damagedWednesday, 11:35 p.m. By Meghan Gordon St. Tammany bureau Although still closed to civilian traffic, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway sustained only minor damage from Katrina’s storm surge, General Manager Robert Lambert said Wednesday night in the first official report on the twin bridges' condition. “There’s no questions about the safety, the integrity of the Causeway,” Lambert said from his Metairie office. The bridge’s northbound lanes have been used since Tuesday strictly for emergency vehicles shuttling rescuers and critical supplies to the south shore. The southbound lanes remain closed while Boh Bros. Construction Co. repairs two small segments of limestone and concrete that connect the bridge to land. Lambert said the work is likely to take about six days. Lambert said multiple teams of engineers, including federal and state officials, inspected the bridge from boats and from the roadway. He said divers would inspect the hundreds of underwater pilings Thursday. “They stopped and checked every inch of this bridge,” he said. Lambert said that even though both directions of the bridge would be passable in six days, he will not open them to the public until officials in St. Tammany and Jefferson parishes allow evacuees back in. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Desperation, death on road to safetyWednesday, 11:09 p.m. By Keith Spera Staff writer At 91 years old, Booker Harris ended his days propped on a lawn chair, covered by a yellow quilt and abandoned, dead, in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Mr. Harris died in the back of a Ryder panel truck Wednesday afternoon, as he and his 93-year-old wife, Allie, were evacuated from eastern New Orleans. The truck's driver deposited Allie and her husband's body on the Convention Center Boulevard neutral ground. And there it remained. With 3,000 or more evacuees stranded at the convention center -- and with no apparent contingency plan or authority to deal with them -- collecting a body was no one's priority. It was just another casualty in Hurricane Katrina's wake. A steady stream of often angry or despondent people, many from flooded Central City, trickled first toward Lee Circle and then to the convention center, hoping to be saved from increasingly desperate straits. Food, water and options had dwindled across Uptown and Central City, where looters seemed to rage almost at will, clearing out boutique clothing shops and drug stores alike. Hospitals would no longer accept emergencies, as staffers prepared to evacuate with patients. "If you get shot," said a security guard at Touro Infirmary, "you’ve got to go somewhere else." As a blazing sun and stifling humidity took their toll, 65-year-old Faye Taplin rested alone on the steps of the Christ Cathedral in the 2900 block of St. Charles Avenue. Rising water had finally chased her from her Central City home. She clutched two plastic bags containing bedding, a little food and water and insulin to treat her diabetes. She needed help but was unsure where to find it. She wanted to walk more than 15 blocks to a rumored evacuation pickup point beneath the Pontchartrain Expressway, but she doubted that was possible. "I'm tired," she said. "My feet have swollen up on me. I can't walk that far." The church custodian, Ken Elder, hoped to free his car from the parking lot behind the church as soon as the water went down. He rode out Katrina on the Episcopal church’s altar steps and was well stocked with food. But he feared the marauding looters that roamed St. Charles Avenue after dark. "I lived in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots," Elder said. "That was a piece of cake compared to this." Clara Wallace pushed her brother in a wheelchair down St. Charles from Fourth Street to the Pontchartrain Expressway. Suffering from diabetes and the after-effects of a stroke, he wore only a hospital robe and endured part of the journey through standing water. "Nobody has a bathroom he can use," Wallace, 59, said of her brother. "Nobody would even stop to tell us if we were at the right place. What are we supposed to do?" A man in a passing pickup truck from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finally directed Wallace and the 50 other evacuees under the overpass to the convention center. But they would find little relief there. New evacuees were being dropped off after being pulled from inundated eastern New Orleans and Carrollton, pooling with those who arrived on foot. Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions. They waited both inside and outside the cavernous building. The influx overwhelmed the few staffers and Louisiana National Guardsmen on hand. With so much need and so few resources, the weakest and frailest were bound to suffer the most. Seated next to her husband's body on the neutral ground beneath the St. Joseph Street sign, Allie Harris munched on crackers, seemingly unaware of all the tragedy unfolding around her. Eventually, guardsmen loaded her into a truck and hauled her off with other elderly evacuees. Mr. Harris' body was left behind. Such a breakdown did not bode well for other evacuees. As the afternoon wore on, hope faded, replaced by anger. "This is 2005," John Murray shouted, standing in the street near Mr. Harris' body. "It should not be like this for no catastrophe. This is pathetic." Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Refugee archbishopBy SUSAN FINCH Staff writer BATON ROUGE - Forced out of his New Orleans headquarters by Hurricane Katrina, Archbishop Alfred Hughes was busy here Tuesday praying fellow storm evacuees, then huddling with top aides to make plans for a Capitol City “administrative headquarters in exile.” “Our first concern is for the people - the people who have died, the people who are left behind, the people who rescued and who were rescued,” said Hughes, who ministered to evacuees gathered at the Baton Rouge Centroplex and three Baton Rouge Catholic churches. His itinerary included stops at St. George Catholic Church to visit with residents brought here from the Chateau de Notre Dame nursing home in Uptown New Orleans and at St. Timothy Catholic Church, where his audience was a group from eastern New Orleans, many of them Vietnamese. “I am also a refugee,” Hughes said. “It’s not easy to be so drastically dislocated without any early hope of being able to return." Sounding like other storm evacuees anxious for details about what’s happening back home, Hughes said the archdiocese is still waiting to find out how the 2,600 residents of Christopher Homes apartments fared in the storm. “We don’t know if some have died; We are waiting for confirmation,” Hughes said. Christopher Homes is made up of more than 30 apartment complexes for the elderly, families and people with physical disabilities. Hughes said he received news Tuesday that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced that bishops will set aside a particular Sunday service to take up a special collection to help with the hurricane relief effort. In light of the damage Katrina left in New Orleans, Hughes said the archdiocese wants to develop a Baton Rouge headquarters “because it looks like we’re going to be located here for the foreseeable future.” Telephone connection problems in the storm’s wake have prompted Hughes and his team to get cellphones with 985 area code numbers. Their old cellphones, hooked into the 504 area code, were putting through only about one out of every 25 calls, he said. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Along Esplanade, pleas for helpWednesday, 10:30 p.m. By Doug MacCash and Dante Ramos Staff writers Esplanade Avenue, one of New Orleans' historic high grounds, was submerged for most of its length Wednesday afternoon in 2 to 3 feet of murky water. It was impasswable to most vehicles between North Rampart Street at the edge of the French Quarter to Moss Street beside Bayou St. John. A few small boats navigated downed power lines, large tree branches and other jetsam, including a memorial wreath for a recent murder vicitim. Meanwhile, desperate staff at homes for elderly people alongside Esplanade sought medical help for their charges. The scene there -- and in the areas of Mid-City near City Park -- suggested an eerie, post-cataclysmic urban version of a swamp tour. At Esplanade and North Claiborne Avenue, an agitated woman tried to hail a boat to carry off patients from nearby St. Martin's Home. Patients had fled up floor to floor as waters rose. The woman was especially fearful for a wheelchar-bound womanb patient with a stent in her stomach. This patient could not even have her dressing changed without clean water, which was in short supply. Near Esplanade and Broad Street, attendants sat on the porch of the Bethany Home. The 30 patients, attendants said, were incapable of traveling out of New Orleans before the storm. The home's supply of drinking water was almost exhausted, and two patients had died. Hanging from the roofline was a banner spellling out the facility's predicament: "HELP. THIS IS A HEALTH-CARE FACILITY. NEED MEDICINE. NO FOOD." Others in Mid-City tried to make the best of the situation. A man sat on his front steps on North Carrollton Avenue, lathering his hair and face and rinsing away the soap suds with the passing floodwater. Some stranded residents got relief from a National Guard helicopter that hovered low near Dumaine Street and North Carrollton. The Black Hawk chopper dropped bottles water in front of one woman's home. She couldn't get to it because it fell in the floodwaters, however, and she couldn't enter the water because of her chemotherapy. A neighbor soon waded to her assistance. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Joe Horn wants to make a differenceWednesday, 10:10 p.m. By Mike Triplett Staff writer FREMONT, CALIF - An obviously distraught Joe Horn said he feels impassioned to do something that can make a difference in New Orleans. Few Saints players are as tied to the community as the veteran wide receiver, who is in his sixth season with the team. He said when the players get three days off this weekend, he plans to head in to the city. “I’m going to try to get in there. I’m going to try to do something,” Horn said. “I’m going to try to help, donate money and try to feed the families. I’m going to do whatever I can, because I feel like that’s a part of my family that’s starving. “If I have to spend a million dollars in getting food, trying to help people get food, whatever I have to do to help people, help monetarily, help all I can, I’m going to do it.” Horn is a North Carolina native, but he considers New Orleans a second home. His wife and six children have taken up temporary residence in Tupelo, Miss., he said. Horn touched upon a variety of subjects during a brief chat with the media, saying he has been glued to the television set and the images he sees are “sad, very sad.” “Just to see kids like that, it’s horrible, it’s sad. Just to sit back and watch babies that can’t even eat, that are suffering,” Horn said. “I’m just hoping that the government goes in, sends ships in and gets people out as quickly as possible and tries to rebound from this catastrophe.” Horn said he hopes people learned that they have to evacuate when a hurricane approaches. “The people that couldn’t make it out or couldn’t afford to make it out or just were too ill or not financially able, I understand," he said. "But the people who rode through hurricanes before, to take it as a joke, as if it were a movie or something … my heart goes out to them. When something like that magnitude comes through and they give you warning to leave, you have to go. “I talked to one lady at Denny’s before I left, and I said, ‘You have to get out of here.’ She said, ‘Well, I’ve been through three before.’ You have to understand, some people love New Orleans that much, just to stay and risk their lives. She said, ‘I’ll be on top of my house trying to survive.’ You have people who love New Orleans enough to die for New Orleans, you have people who thought it was a game. And you have people who just couldn’t afford to get out.” Horn also said he understands the actions of some of the looters. “If people are there trying to survive, I have no problem with that, because I would be doing the same thing. If I was in New Orleans and my children needed to eat, and they were on top of a building, or I can take a boat and try to go to a Winn-Dixie, or a Target or the mall to get something to wear for my kids or eat, guess what? You’d be calling Joe Horn a looter. “Right now it’s a catastrophe. Police officers with guns, trying to make people drop stuff, they should put their guns up and throw them in the water and try to get people out of there. That’s the most disappointing part to me, people trying to make it out like looters, it’s terrible. So what? It’s people whose lives have to be saved here. You think I give a damn about a TV or something like that? It’s just a sad situation right now.” GAME NOTE: Rookie quarterback Adrian McPherson said he expects to play the entire second half against Oakland tonight. McPherson became the undisputed No. 3 quarterback when the team released Kliff Kingsbury on Saturday, but he said, “That’s great, it’s a great opportunity, but if I don’t get the job done, they’ll bring somebody else in to replace me.”

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Thursday, September 01, 2005
	Evacuees begin arriving in HoustonBy Josh Peter Staff writer HOUSTON – This was not how it was supposed to happen, but this is how it did. Without an escort from Texas state troopers, without being on the official list of evacuees expected to arrive and about 30 minutes after being turned away, the yellow Orleans Parish school bus rolled through the entrance, past the security guards and onto the parking lot leading to the Astrodome. Several children about waved and shouted “thank you,’’ loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the closed glass windows. A reporter looked at his watch: 12:31 a.m. So began the arrival of evacuees from Louisiana, with busload after busload on the way and about 23,000 victims of Hurricane Karina in all scheduled to take shelter at the Astrodome. But the first ones admitted, the children and a handful of adults riding on Orleans Parish school bus No. 0235, weren’t on the official list. Robert Eckels, who as judge of Harris County presides over the Astrodome, said he knew about the “renegade’’ bus and that the indoor stadium wasn’t ready for evacuees – particularly the unexpected arrivals. “That bus that arrived earlier was a young man who had loaded up a bunch of kids and just gotten into the bus and driven here,’’ Eckels said. “It was not one of those (official) buses. At this point, our plan, our agreement, is to take the Superdome buses.’’ But shortly after Eckels left, the judge was overruled. Margaret O’Brien-Molina, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, discovered the school bus sitting outside the entrance and gave the orders: Let them in. Yet at the same time, O’Brien-Molina indicated she understands the risk of bringing in too many evacuees. “You’ve got to go with what the agreement is,’’ she said. “I’m not the one who decided we’re going to take 35,000 people, or 25,000 people or whatever it is. We’ve got to make sure that we can take care of them. “On the other hand, you got to do what’s right.’’ Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said this morning that the evacuation of the rest of New Orleans was in full swing. At least 70 buses had picked up refugees from the Superdome, and officials were considering using trains and boats to ship people to safety. Schneider also said that an executive order allows authorities to take over the state's fleet of school buses, if necessary, to expedite the evacuation to Houston and elsewhere. When the Orleans Parish school bus came through early today in Houston, a charter bus trailed behind without the joyous sound of children. The first three people off the charter bus were lifted into wheelchairs and pushed past Doug Hamilton, an internist who was prepared to help those who needed immediate medical attention. Generally, those patients were the dehydrated evacuees who needed to get back on their medication for illnesses like diabetes. But Hamilton also played the role of official greeter. “The first thing I say to these patients,’’ Hamilton said, “is, “Welcome to Houston. Stay a while.’ ’’ The evacuees were unavailable for interviews under the rules set forth by officials running the relocation effort. But O’Brien-Molina said she was pushing for more media access to the shelter for later today and beamed as she recounted a moment from earlier that night. When she heard about the school bus, she walked outside the gates and talked with the passengers that included a 5-year-old daughter and the girl’s mother. O’Brien-Molina had decided to let the evacuees in – with or without the required state troopers – and held the 5-year-old girl as the girl’s mother climbed back aboard the bus. About 20 minutes later, she saw the girl settling by one of the thousands of green cots on the dry floor and under the covered roof of the Astrodome. “That little girl, think about what she’s been through the last few days,’’ said O’Brien-Molina, who heard about the sweltering heat, malfunctioning plumbing and limited food and water that evacuees had endured before arriving at the clean and cot-lined Astrodome.’’ That makes it worthwhile to me.’’ Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	DDS says direct deposits will be on timeEvacuees receiving social services assistance through EBT cards can access their funds as usual, the state Department of Social Services announced this morning. Nanette White, a spokeswoman for DDS, also said those receiving Social Security benefits can also expect their direct deposits to be credited as usual. However, others who receive checks should go to the nearest Social Security Office for help. For more information, call 1-800-772-1213. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Bush: Help on the wayPresident Bush said that he was confident New Orleans would be restored to a great city and called for “zero-tolerance’’ in handling looters. “There ought to be zero tolerance’’ whether the crime is looting or price gouging, Bush told Diane Sawyer in an interview on “Good Morning America.’’ “Citizens ought to be working together…'' Stressing that help is on the way, Bush said that authorities are working hard to get water and food to the city. “I understand the anxieties of the people on the ground. There is frustration. There is a lot of help coming,’’ he said. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Mayor closes city to evacueesBaton Rouge Parish Mayor Kip Holden said that no more evacuees would be accepted. He also called for refugees housed in the River Center be moved elsewhere, WBRZ Channel 2 reported. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	CNN says caravan to Houston suspended6:20 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 The buses filled with refugees enroute to the Astrodome in Houston from the Louisiana Superdome have been suspended for unknown reasons, CNN is reporting this morning. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Evacuees start arriving in Astrodome5:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 The first wave of evacuees from the Louisiana Superdome began arriving in Houston early this morning, as volunteers scrambled to prepare the Astrodome for thousands of homeless people. But the earliest arrivals weren’t from the Superdome. Two so-called “renegade buses” filled with evacuees from Orleans Parish tried to convince American Red Cross officials that they were part of the Superdome caravan, according to CNN. The agency figured out the truth, but relief officials decided to accept the evacuees because they were in such bad shape, CNN said. The Astrodome was to be reserved for more than 20,000 people fleeing dangerous and filthy conditions in the Superdome. Upwards of 500 buses are expected to make the trip from New Orleans to Houston. Inside the Astrodome, 800 food workers are getting ready to prepare three meals a day. Each evacuee, officials said, will get a "comfort kit" with tolietries and other basics. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Coast Guard: "We have our work cut out for us"4:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 1 A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard said its crews have rescued more than 3,000 people from rooftops and other spots in the New Orleans area. "The sheer number is impossible to tell," Lt. Russell Hall told Fox news this morning. The Coast Guard is staffing rescues around the clock, he said. "We have our work cut out for us." Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)


	Wednesday, August 31, 2005
	Radio captures the horror, exhaustionBy Dave Walker TV columnist The exasperation, sadness, shock and exhaustion in Dave Cohen’s voice said more than the words he was saying, and they were bad enough. This was midday Wednesday, and Cohen was manning the microphone at WWL AM 870, the New Orleans news-talk station that was providing a lifeline of information to thousands of evacuees around the region, one of them me. The hole in the levee allowing Lake Pontchartrain to dump into unflooded portions of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had not been mended. The “bowl effect” was going to be achieved, with the city filling with water, maybe all the way to the brim created by the walls built to protect it. Cohen sounded defeated by the implications. Toxic contamination, structural wasting by weeks of submersion, the horrific liquid funk that would harbor insects, disease, more death. The possibility that the city itself would be uninhabitable, even once the breach was blocked and the water was drained and the destroyed trees and houses and corpses cleaned up and the looters at last in retreat, seemed utterly real and likely to Cohen, and, no doubt, many of his listeners. That WWL had stayed on the air at all was a dramatic tale that will be told here in fuller detail in later weeks and, I’m sure, years. WWL abandoned its downtown cluster of studios overlooking the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina blew out all of the office windows. Listeners who heard host Garland Robinette’s narration of the live, on-the-air retreat farther inside the building as Katrina pounded away, heard horrible/wonderful broadcasting – a horror to listen to, but a wonder, too. Literally blown out, a broadcast skeleton crew moved to the basement of the Jefferson Parish emergency operations center, according to a spokesman for Entercom Communications, the Pennsylvania-based parent company to WWL and several other New Orleans radio stations. As last-gasp efforts were underway to remove the thousands of people still trapped in New Orleans on Wednesday, Entercom was making plans to remove its makeshift studio all the way to Baton Rouge, which has become the local media staging area for post-Katrina coverage. With cable news carrying pictures of the USS Bataan steaming into position to provide a command center for the relief effort, it was hard not to frame the day in Biblical context. Wednesday began with TV and radio coverage of live prayers by the governor and a collection of holy men. By the time New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas joined Cohen and Chris Miller on WWL in mid-afternoon, the things he’d seen in the streets were going to be literally unforgettable. He’d seen a body, probably many, in the water on a reconnaissance boat trip. “I still see that body,” he said. “I see his position. I see the color of the clothes he had on.” He’d seen looters, too, and asked anybody with ulterior intentions “to get on your knees and pray for intervention.” He’d seen hell where a kind of heaven should be. He’d heard references to Sodom and Gomorrah. “Maybe God’s going to cleanse us,” said Thomas. No place is that wicked. TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at davewala@yahoo.com. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Ant balls not an urban mythIn addition to all of the other horrors befalling New Orleanians during the flood was the creepy discovery that red ants form themselves into floating clusters to avoid drowning. As Dante Ramos and I paddled along Carrollton Avenue on Wednesday, I saw two glittering, golf ball-sized masses of ants floating beside our canoe. - Doug MacCash Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Diving in to help othersNew Orleans resident Cynthia Shephard took several steps closer to heaven on Tuesday, when she left the safety of her room at the W Hotel in order to rescue flood refugees stranded along the Interstate. When I encountered her on Oak St., her Ford pickup was crowded with 10 people. Between draws on her cigarette, Shephard explained her motives: "They needed it. It's crowded out there. Law enforcement is too busy. I can't get a straight answer. So I took it on myself. And I'm in a truck, so I should utilize it." - Doug MacCash Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Causeway closed but hardly damagedWednesday, 11:35 p.m. By Meghan Gordon St. Tammany bureau Although still closed to civilian traffic, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway sustained only minor damage from Katrina’s storm surge, General Manager Robert Lambert said Wednesday night in the first official report on the twin bridges' condition. “There’s no questions about the safety, the integrity of the Causeway,” Lambert said from his Metairie office. The bridge’s northbound lanes have been used since Tuesday strictly for emergency vehicles shuttling rescuers and critical supplies to the south shore. The southbound lanes remain closed while Boh Bros. Construction Co. repairs two small segments of limestone and concrete that connect the bridge to land. Lambert said the work is likely to take about six days. Lambert said multiple teams of engineers, including federal and state officials, inspected the bridge from boats and from the roadway. He said divers would inspect the hundreds of underwater pilings Thursday. “They stopped and checked every inch of this bridge,” he said. Lambert said that even though both directions of the bridge would be passable in six days, he will not open them to the public until officials in St. Tammany and Jefferson parishes allow evacuees back in. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Desperation, death on road to safetyWednesday, 11:09 p.m. By Keith Spera Staff writer At 91 years old, Booker Harris ended his days propped on a lawn chair, covered by a yellow quilt and abandoned, dead, in front of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Mr. Harris died in the back of a Ryder panel truck Wednesday afternoon, as he and his 93-year-old wife, Allie, were evacuated from eastern New Orleans. The truck's driver deposited Allie and her husband's body on the Convention Center Boulevard neutral ground. And there it remained. With 3,000 or more evacuees stranded at the convention center -- and with no apparent contingency plan or authority to deal with them -- collecting a body was no one's priority. It was just another casualty in Hurricane Katrina's wake. A steady stream of often angry or despondent people, many from flooded Central City, trickled first toward Lee Circle and then to the convention center, hoping to be saved from increasingly desperate straits. Food, water and options had dwindled across Uptown and Central City, where looters seemed to rage almost at will, clearing out boutique clothing shops and drug stores alike. Hospitals would no longer accept emergencies, as staffers prepared to evacuate with patients. "If you get shot," said a security guard at Touro Infirmary, "you’ve got to go somewhere else." As a blazing sun and stifling humidity took their toll, 65-year-old Faye Taplin rested alone on the steps of the Christ Cathedral in the 2900 block of St. Charles Avenue. Rising water had finally chased her from her Central City home. She clutched two plastic bags containing bedding, a little food and water and insulin to treat her diabetes. She needed help but was unsure where to find it. She wanted to walk more than 15 blocks to a rumored evacuation pickup point beneath the Pontchartrain Expressway, but she doubted that was possible. "I'm tired," she said. "My feet have swollen up on me. I can't walk that far." The church custodian, Ken Elder, hoped to free his car from the parking lot behind the church as soon as the water went down. He rode out Katrina on the Episcopal church’s altar steps and was well stocked with food. But he feared the marauding looters that roamed St. Charles Avenue after dark. "I lived in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots," Elder said. "That was a piece of cake compared to this." Clara Wallace pushed her brother in a wheelchair down St. Charles from Fourth Street to the Pontchartrain Expressway. Suffering from diabetes and the after-effects of a stroke, he wore only a hospital robe and endured part of the journey through standing water. "Nobody has a bathroom he can use," Wallace, 59, said of her brother. "Nobody would even stop to tell us if we were at the right place. What are we supposed to do?" A man in a passing pickup truck from the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finally directed Wallace and the 50 other evacuees under the overpass to the convention center. But they would find little relief there. New evacuees were being dropped off after being pulled from inundated eastern New Orleans and Carrollton, pooling with those who arrived on foot. Some had been at the convention center since Tuesday morning but had received no food, water or instructions. They waited both inside and outside the cavernous building. The influx overwhelmed the few staffers and Louisiana National Guardsmen on hand. With so much need and so few resources, the weakest and frailest were bound to suffer the most. Seated next to her husband's body on the neutral ground beneath the St. Joseph Street sign, Allie Harris munched on crackers, seemingly unaware of all the tragedy unfolding around her. Eventually, guardsmen loaded her into a truck and hauled her off with other elderly evacuees. Mr. Harris' body was left behind. Such a breakdown did not bode well for other evacuees. As the afternoon wore on, hope faded, replaced by anger. "This is 2005," John Murray shouted, standing in the street near Mr. Harris' body. "It should not be like this for no catastrophe. This is pathetic." Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Refugee archbishopBy SUSAN FINCH Staff writer BATON ROUGE - Forced out of his New Orleans headquarters by Hurricane Katrina, Archbishop Alfred Hughes was busy here Tuesday praying fellow storm evacuees, then huddling with top aides to make plans for a Capitol City “administrative headquarters in exile.” “Our first concern is for the people - the people who have died, the people who are left behind, the people who rescued and who were rescued,” said Hughes, who ministered to evacuees gathered at the Baton Rouge Centroplex and three Baton Rouge Catholic churches. His itinerary included stops at St. George Catholic Church to visit with residents brought here from the Chateau de Notre Dame nursing home in Uptown New Orleans and at St. Timothy Catholic Church, where his audience was a group from eastern New Orleans, many of them Vietnamese. “I am also a refugee,” Hughes said. “It’s not easy to be so drastically dislocated without any early hope of being able to return." Sounding like other storm evacuees anxious for details about what’s happening back home, Hughes said the archdiocese is still waiting to find out how the 2,600 residents of Christopher Homes apartments fared in the storm. “We don’t know if some have died; We are waiting for confirmation,” Hughes said. Christopher Homes is made up of more than 30 apartment complexes for the elderly, families and people with physical disabilities. Hughes said he received news Tuesday that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced that bishops will set aside a particular Sunday service to take up a special collection to help with the hurricane relief effort. In light of the damage Katrina left in New Orleans, Hughes said the archdiocese wants to develop a Baton Rouge headquarters “because it looks like we’re going to be located here for the foreseeable future.” Telephone connection problems in the storm’s wake have prompted Hughes and his team to get cellphones with 985 area code numbers. Their old cellphones, hooked into the 504 area code, were putting through only about one out of every 25 calls, he said. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Along Esplanade, pleas for helpWednesday, 10:30 p.m. By Doug MacCash and Dante Ramos Staff writers Esplanade Avenue, one of New Orleans' historic high grounds, was submerged for most of its length Wednesday afternoon in 2 to 3 feet of murky water. It was impasswable to most vehicles between North Rampart Street at the edge of the French Quarter to Moss Street beside Bayou St. John. A few small boats navigated downed power lines, large tree branches and other jetsam, including a memorial wreath for a recent murder vicitim. Meanwhile, desperate staff at homes for elderly people alongside Esplanade sought medical help for their charges. The scene there -- and in the areas of Mid-City near City Park -- suggested an eerie, post-cataclysmic urban version of a swamp tour. At Esplanade and North Claiborne Avenue, an agitated woman tried to hail a boat to carry off patients from nearby St. Martin's Home. Patients had fled up floor to floor as waters rose. The woman was especially fearful for a wheelchar-bound womanb patient with a stent in her stomach. This patient could not even have her dressing changed without clean water, which was in short supply. Near Esplanade and Broad Street, attendants sat on the porch of the Bethany Home. The 30 patients, attendants said, were incapable of traveling out of New Orleans before the storm. The home's supply of drinking water was almost exhausted, and two patients had died. Hanging from the roofline was a banner spellling out the facility's predicament: "HELP. THIS IS A HEALTH-CARE FACILITY. NEED MEDICINE. NO FOOD." Others in Mid-City tried to make the best of the situation. A man sat on his front steps on North Carrollton Avenue, lathering his hair and face and rinsing away the soap suds with the passing floodwater. Some stranded residents got relief from a National Guard helicopter that hovered low near Dumaine Street and North Carrollton. The Black Hawk chopper dropped bottles water in front of one woman's home. She couldn't get to it because it fell in the floodwaters, however, and she couldn't enter the water because of her chemotherapy. A neighbor soon waded to her assistance. Print \| Send To A Friend \| Permalink (Learn More)
	Joe Horn wants to make a differenceWednesday, 10:10 p.m. By Mike Triplett Staff writer FREMONT, CALIF - An obviously distraught Joe Horn said he feels impassioned to do something that can make a difference in New Orleans. Few Saints players are as tied to the community as the veteran wide receiver, who is in his sixth season with the team. He said when the players get three days off this weekend, he plans to head in to the city. “I’m going to try to get in there. I’m going to try to do something,” Horn said. “I’m going to try to help, donate money and try to feed the families. I’m going to do whatever I can, because I feel like that’s a part of my family that’s starving. “If I have to spend a million dollars in getting food, trying to help people get food, whatever I have to do to help people, help monetarily, help all I can, I’m going to do it.” Horn is a North Carolina native, but he considers New Orleans a second home. His wife and six children have taken up temporary residence in Tupelo, Miss., he said. Horn touched upon a variety of subjects during a brief chat with the media, saying he has been glued to the television set and the images he sees are “sad, very sad.” “Just to see kids like that, it’s horrible, it’s sad. Just to sit back and watch babies that can’t even eat, that are suffering,” Horn said. “I’m just hoping that the government goes in, sends ships in and gets people out as quickly as possible and tries to rebound from this catastrophe.” Horn said he hopes people learned that they have to evacuate when a hurricane approaches. “The people that couldn’t make it out or couldn’t afford to make it out or just were too ill or not financially able, I understand," he said. "But the people who rode through hurricanes before, to take it as a joke, as if it were a movie or something … my heart goes out to them. When something like that magnitude comes through and they give you warning to leave, you have to go. “I talked to one lady at Denny’s before I left, and I said, ‘You have to get out of here.’ She said, ‘Well, I’ve been through three before.’ You have to understand, some people love New Orleans that much, just to stay and risk their lives. She said, ‘I’ll be on top of my house trying to survive.’ You have people who love New Orleans enough to die for New Orleans, you have people who thought it was a game. And you have people who just couldn’t afford to get out.” Horn also said he understands the actions of some of the looters. “If people are there trying to survive, I have no problem with that, because I would be doing the same thing. If I was in New Orleans and my children needed to eat, and they were on top of a building, or I can take a boat and try to go to a Winn-Dixie, or a Target or the mall to get something to wear for my kids or eat, guess what? You’d be calling Joe Horn a looter. “Right now it’s a catastrophe. Police officers with guns, trying to make people drop stuff, they should put their guns up and throw them in the water and try to get people out of there. That’s the most disappointing part to me, people trying to make it out like looters, it’s terrible. So what? It’s people whose lives have to be saved here. You think I give a damn about a TV or something like that? It’s just a sad situation right now.” GAME NOTE: Rookie quarterback Adrian McPherson said he expects to play the entire second half against Oakland tonight. McPherson became the undisputed No. 3 quarterback when the team released Kliff Kingsbury on Saturday, but he said, “That’s great, it’s a great opportunity, but if I don’t get the job done, they’ll bring somebody else in to replace me.”