Posted on 09/02/2005 6:20:49 PM PDT by HAL9000
NEW ORLEANS, Sept 2 (Reuters) - With the rotors of President George W. Bush's helicopter sounding overhead, New Orleans' poor and downtrodden recounted tales of murder, rape, death threats and near starvation since Hurricane Katrina wrecked this city.Ending days of abandonment since the hurricane struck on Monday, the U.S. National Guard handed out military rations and a bottle of water to thousands of evacuees -- the first proper meal most had eaten in days.
But as the masses lined up outside, herded by Army troops toting machine guns, inside the convention center where these people slept since Monday was the stench of death and decay.
Leroy Fouchea, 42, waited in the sweltering heat for an hour to get his ration -- his first proper food since Monday -- and immediately handed it over to a sickly friend.
He then offered to show reporters the dead bodies of a man in a wheelchair, a young man who he said he dragged inside just hours earlier, and the limp forms of two infants, one just four months old, the other six months old.
"They died right here, in America, waiting for food," Fouchea said as he walked toward Hall D, where the bodies were put to get them out of the searing heat.
He said people were let die and left without food simply because they were poor and that the evacuation effort earlier concentrated on the French Quarter of the city. "Because that's where the money is," he spat. A National Guardsman refused entry.
"It doesn't need to be seen, it's a make-shift morgue in there," he told a Reuters photographer. "We're not letting anyone in there anymore. If you want to take pictures of dead bodies, go to Iraq."
As rations were finally doled out here on the day President Bush visited the devastated city, an elderly white woman and her husband collapsed from the heat.
"I had to walk two blocks to get here and I have arthritis and three ruptured discs in my back," said Selma Valenti, 80, as her husband lay beside her, being revived by a policeman in riot gear. The two had eaten nothing since Wednesday.
Valenti and her husband, two of very few white people in the almost exclusively black refugee camp, said she and other whites were threatened with murder on Thursday.
"They hated us. Four young black men told us the buses were going to come last night and pick up the elderly so they were going to kill us," she said, sobbing. "They were plotting to murder us and then they sent the buses away because we would all be killed if the buses came -- that's what the people in charge told us this morning."
Other survivors recounted horrific cases of sexual assault and murder. Sitting with her daughter and other relatives, Trolkyn Joseph, 37, said men had wandered the cavernous convention center in recent nights raping and murdering children.
She said she found a dead 14-year old girl at 5 a.m. on Friday morning, four hours after the young girl went missing from her parents inside the convention center.
"She was raped for four hours until she was dead," Joseph said through tears. "Another child, a seven-year old boy was found raped and murdered in the kitchen freezer last night."
Several others interviewed by Reuters told similar stories of the abuse and murder of children, but they could not be independently verified. Many complained bitterly about why they received so little for so many days, and they had harsh words for Bush.
"I really don't know what to say about President Bush," said Richard Dunbar, 60, a Vietnam veteran. "He showed no lack of haste when he wanted to go to Iraq, but for his own people right here in Louisiana, we get only lip service."
One young man said he was not looking forward to another night in the convention center and wondered when conditions would improve. "It's been like a jail in there," he said. "We've got murderers, rapists, killers, thieves. We've got it all."
The governor hasn't done a darn thing down there but bitch and moan about it.
Of course, the Mayor did give her a lot of help with that. Guess the plan all along was to bitch & moan until a "John Wayne type" showed up.
STARVING TO DEATH IN 4 DAYS....GET REAL,you are barely hungry in 4 days..thirst is one thing but thete people are within WALKING DISTANCE of food, water, ice, electricity and every other amenity that American society has to offer. these people have been fed the "we will take care of you" line for so long that they don't know the difference....this is our fault, not theirs but it is time to STOP the welfare cart and require everyone to carry their share of the load.....and only their share...you don't blame the rich for the condition of rhe poor. {one t.v. talking head tonight referred the situation to their
"lot in life" or some other such nonsense.
Hugo hit Charleston SC a mighty blow in '89, two hours away from me. The flooding was nothing like NO, but the devastation was. I recall reports of looting, but nothing like this embarrassing display of human degeneration down in New Orleans. If that was my home city I'd be ashamed to admit I was from there.
I don't know why all those leaders didn't go to New Orleans before the storm and help them fill up gallon jugs of water in the superdome. They had running water until halfway through the storm. All they needed were empty containers.
We have enough empty containers around our house to keep our family in water for about a week -- and that's just so we can always have water around in the car.
Disaster prep happens before the disaster. Does anybody remember hearing the Mayor of New Orleans on, say, FRIDAY OF LAST WEEK, screaming that he wasn't prepared if the hurricane hit and he needed the feds to be ready if anything went wrong?
No, he wasn't even telling his people to evacuate. He got his own family out OK though. If he had started on Thursday telling people to store water for emergencies, and on saturday to evacuate, and had used city buses to take poor people out somewhere.
Except that, and here I'm not sure they were wrong, the convention center and the stadium were probably the safest places they had to take thousands of people to ride out the storm.
But the should have moved the buses there to take people out after the storm ended. If they had had buses parked in the parking garage, they could have driven them up to the main road before the tuesday flooding, and used them starting tuesday to ferry people to outlying areas.
Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. But if the mayor of the city can't think of this stuff, why is the President supposed to?
Now that Bush is there, things are getting under control. It's a shame the NO government officials needed the President of the U.S. to come all the way down there to do their jobs for them. Those people need to be replaced!!!!
Ruck Feuters.
Didn't the French give us that thing though.:-)
Actually, that is wrong too, because really the brand-new canal wall breaking is what 'wrecked' the city. That and the lawless looters and rioters.
Before the canal levy broke, most people thought N.O. had dodged the bullet.
I doubt it. Nobody starves to death in four days. There are people who need acute medical care, oxygen, insulin, etc, who may not make it, but that is the nature of a major tragedy. Wringing hands about it will not change it. When you go and actually help then you will have something worth talking about.
They're named for Springfield, Massachusetts - home of the liberals. Buy two. It's good for the economy.
Well, if he wouldn't have caused this hurricane with his bombs in his war for oil, the levees wouldn't have broke, now would they? < /sarcasm >
I am not there, so I cannot say what would be preventing them from using those busses right now...
And he did it all to help the eeeeeeeeeeevil Jews, too. (Hanoi Cindy taught us that one. LOL.)
New Leftist mantra: “hurricane for oil”
Comment I heard from an old AA member, of many years sobriety--"About the time you think you're humble, you best realize you aren't."
These people were not at the Superdome. They were at the Morial Convention Center.
From the stories they have been telling, these people were largely those who weathered the storm at home and were told to walk to the Crescent Connection bridge to find transport.
There weren't any buses, so they found shelter at the Convention center -- which was being used by the dregs of society.
The NO mayor didn't know if he had the legal authority to do that. Of course, the NO mayor probably doesn't know if he has the legal authority to pick his own nose.
Heard Haley Barbour on TV earlier this evening. He said they would "deal with looters ruthlessly." And he sounded like he meant it. I guess the MS looters-to-be think so too.
And I think that has always been the side of humanity we've seen in disasters past. I know I wasn't prepared to see such evil run amok in this country, and even the innocent will be viewed with suspicion as a result.
HATE CRIME.
Jesse Jackson?
Al Sharpton?
ACLU?
Lousiana Office of Civil Rights?
New York Times?
Democratic Underground?
John Edwards?
Anyone out there?
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