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 might even do something that some Big Brother types would really fear: rebuild the city themselves.>>>
Has common sense totally left FR tonight?
And where would they gather the materials to do this? Maybe they can grow their own wilderness in the middle of the French Quarter?
>>>They are no more of a risk now as a disease vector than they were a month ago.>>>
Really? So we waste all that money on DDT in places Malaria is common?
Uptown is high ground, not as high as the Quarter, so gravity takes it to the river or the lake. Don't recall any canals left uptown.
Descendants of early settlers are not necessarily rich. My family first arrived in the area in 1711.
Just unbelievable. Shooting pets, and hancuffing old people.
You failed to address the issues at hand, seeking instead to totally ignore a serious issue which has reared its head throughout mankind's existance; one would think that you might just grasp the weight and gravity, but, I don't think so.
You're too mired is 'some other world', seeking instead to avoid the reality of contagin and disease that human waste represents ...
Right On!
Maybe they're on septic tanks, not city sewer? Maybe they dug latrines or outhouses?
I don't know. Maybe eventually the state will allow them passage over the perfectly usable roads without fear of being denied safe return to their homes. Maybe they will start small and rebuild naturally. Maybe they won't feel constrained to honor someone's timetable or demands that the city be rebuilt as it was. Maybe they just want to set up their own little neighborhood as a town for now, building businesses and new homes as needed.
Maybe we should get out of the way and let them answer your question by demonstration.
Same here.
Makes you wonder doesn't it?
Just how conserative this site truly is.
I'm a member of several message boards and this is the only one where discussions must be kept one-sided.
I was only using logical reasoning and was call a dem. [shrug.]
Yes, those pesky facts. Of course the 'facts' that freeandfreezing posted are for NORMAL MOSQUITO activity. Why don't we gather some facts involved in flood situations.
Vector-borne diseases
Floods may indirectly lead to an increase in vector-borne diseases through the expansion in the number and range of vector habitats. Standing water caused by heavy rainfall or overflow of rivers can act as breeding sites for mosquitoes, and therefore enhance the potential for exposure of the disaster-affected population and emergency workers to infections such as dengue, malaria and West Nile fever. Flooding may initially flush out mosquito breeding, but it comes back when the waters recede. The lag time is usually around 6-8 weeks before the onset of a malaria epidemic.
You've been talking like the flood waters are an open sewer. Can you explain how the sewage enters the waters? Can you even setup the proper diffusion equations for each step out of all the toilets. I say the amount of sewage is negligible. You've got natural humas production and storm sewer traps that probably put more Ecoil in there than any link through a toilet to the sewer did.
>>>Ok, let me use some small words so you can comprehend understand.
You know, you are so clever. Do you do standup for a living? I thought not.>>>
She's one to talk. I've tried to explain three times that there is a difference between the usual mosquito population from the bayou and the waters that include raw sewage and rotting corpses. Can't quite grasp how the latter would be a little more dangerous and those flying insects might not stay it the area that isn't flooded. Like where warm blooded creatures are?
>>>We don't get to waste money on DDT. It's banned remember. Just another case where the guvment knew best. (hint, i'm being sarcastic)>>>
Damn! Left the "d" off the "waste". I knew we banned DDT, but went and posted as if I have flown back in time or something. Sorry. ;o)
>>>Maybe they're on septic tanks, not city sewer? Maybe they dug latrines or outhouses?>>>
I doubt they have septic tanks in the city of NO. Digging latrines isn't the most sanitary either.
I hate to break it to you, but at least in St. Bernard Parish, police are now shooting people's animals right in front of them, if the people will not evacuate.
Also, there has been issued a 3 day limit for the rescue orgs to get any that are strays, at the end of those 3 days, well now it's 2 days, the PD are going to start shooting...
Just think of the exquisite suburb full of large, beautiful homes that southern Louisiana is about to become.
[...little sarcasm and irony there.]
Give us the former employees of New Orleans. Make their bosses stay there.
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