New Orleans rocked by blasts, military move in

Despair is escalating on the streets as corpses rot on the flooded sidewalks, thousands are stranded without food or water and survivors plead for help.

Adding to the uncertainty was a series of large explosions in the city's railroad district early Friday, possibly from a rail car.

A police officer told CNN that authorities were trying to get a hazardous materials team to the area.

He said he believed "several cars blew up," but it was not known what they were carrying.

There were also reports that the city's riverfront was hit by a series of massive blasts -- believed to have involved a chemical factory. A large cloud of acrid, black smoke is drifting over New Orleans.

The disorder in the city spread despite a promise of 1,400 National Guard forces a day to stop the looting and increasing lawlessness, plans for a $10.5 billion recovery bill in Congress and a relief effort U.S. President George Bush called the biggest in the nation's history.

The House was to convene at noon Friday to send the bill to Bush's desk for his signature. The Senate gave the measure voice-vote approval late Thursday.

"This is a national disgrace," said New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert.

"We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."'

Bush has plans to visit the region but city officials are fuming over what they call a slow national response to the disaster.

"They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.

"Excuse my French - everybody in America - but I am pissed."

Houston's Astrodome reaches capacity

Meanwhile, officials said Houston's Astrodome was full after accepting more than 11,000 refugees from New Orleans.

"We've actually reached capacity for the safety and comfort of the people inside there," American Red Cross spokeswoman Dana Allen said shortly before midnight, adding people were "packed pretty tight" on the floor.

Instead of sending arriving buses to other shelters, officials decided early Friday to process refugees there and begin housing them, in the adjacent Reliant Center, where the Houston Texans play football. Other refugees are being taken to Huntsville, Texas, along with San Antonio and Dallas.

At least 20 buses were lined up outside the Astrodome early Friday as dozens of frustrated evacuees milled about outside. Some were handed bottles of cold water, their first in days.

"Before we left New Orleans they said everybody will be in the Astrodome," Patricia Profit, who stood outside one of the buses told The Associated Press.

"'Don't panic, don't worry, you'll still be with your family.' That's what they told us. Now we can't be with our family."

A few people at the Astrodome were arrested but Sheriff Tommy Thomas could not provide a confirmed count.

He said some men were arrested for going into the female showers, while others were arrested for fighting over cots.

"These bunks are going to be territorial. Somebody gets up and then somebody's going to take their bunk," Thomas said.

Police also confiscated 30 guns, most of which were voluntarily surrendered.

Organizers have spent the past two days setting up cots that covered the Astrodome's cement floor.

Hot meals, cold water, and showers are being offered for the bedraggled refugees who were housed in unsanitary conditions in New Orleans' Superdome.

"Virtually every few steps there is a new story of misery. There are little children, babies, everywhere -- some of them in diapers playing playing on concrete floors just trying to pass the time," CTV's Graham Richardson told Canada AM, reporting from Houston.

"You get the overwhelming sense from everyone here that they're doing the best they can, but they're just kind of making it up as they go along."

Tensions escalate at convention centre

Meanwhile at the Ernest Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, thousands of increasingly frustrated people waited for help amid corpses, feces and fetid garbage, stifling heat with little food and water.

Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown told CNN that federal officials were unaware of the crowds at the convention centre until Thursday, despite the fact that city officials had been advising people for days to gather there.

"We just learned about that today, and so I have directed that we have all available resources to get to that convention centre to make sure that they have the food and water, the medical care that they need," he said.

Brown also said his agency was attempting to work "under conditions of urban warfare."

As refugees, some with newborns, others with ailing, elderly relatives, become increasingly impatient for help, tensions are escalating.

There have been reports of rapes and angry mobs preying on individuals but some witnesses at the scene denied such allegations.

Shortly after disturbing images from the convention centre were broadcast, Nagin sent out a statement that he called a "desperate SOS," advising those gathered there to find relief in a neighbouring parish.

"The convention centre is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15- to 20,000 people," said Nagin.

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