Superdome evacuation on hold

Buses taking Hurricane Katrina victims far from the squalor of the Superdome stopped rolling early Saturday. At least 2,000 people remained in the stadium and could be there until Sunday, according to the Texas Air National Guard.

Guard members said they were told only that the buses had stopped coming and to shut down the area where the vehicles were being loaded.

"We were rolling," Capt. Jean Clark said. "If the buses had kept coming, we would have this whole place cleaned out already or pretty close to it."

Those left behind early Saturday were orderly, sitting down after hearing news that evacuations were temporarily stalled.

Guard members reported that the massive evacuation operation for the most part had gone smoothly Friday, coming after days of uncertainty, violence and despair.

Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when evacuation efforts began. That number swelled as people poured into the Superdome because they believed it was the best place to get a ride out of town.

He estimated Saturday morning that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were left at the Superdome. But it remained a mystery why the buses stopped coming to pick up refugees and shuttle them away.

Tina Miller, 47, had no shoes and cried with relief and exhaustion as she left the Superdome and walked toward a bus. "I never thought I'd make it. Oh, God, I thought I'd die in there. I've never been through anything this awful."

The arena's second-story concourse looked like a dump, with more than a foot of trash except in the occasional area where people were working to keep things as tidy as possible.

Bathrooms had no lights, making people afraid to enter, and the stench from backed-up toilets inside killed any inclination toward bravery.

"When we have to go to the bathroom we just get a box. That's all you can do now," said Sandra Jones of eastern New Orleans.

Her newborn baby was running a fever, and all the small children in her area had rashes, she said.

"This was the worst night of my life. We were really scared. We're getting no help. I know the military police are trying. But they're outnumbered," Jones said.

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line, much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out.

Mayor Ray Nagin has used the hotel as a base since it sits across the street from city hall, and there were reports the hotel was cleared with priority to make room for police, firefighters and other officials.

Conditions in the Superdome remained unbearable even as the crowd shrank after buses ferried thousands to Houston a day earlier. Much of the medical staff that had been working in the "special needs" arena had been evacuated.

Dr. Kenneth Stephens Sr., head of the medical operations, said he was told they would be moved to help in other medical areas.

Those who wanted food were waiting in line for hours to get it, said Becky Larue, of Des Moines, Iowa.

Larue and her husband arrived in the area last week for a vacation but their hotel soon told them they had to leave and directed them to the Superdome. No directions were provided, she said.

"I'm really scared. I think people are going into a survival mode. I look for people to start injuring themselves just to get out of here," she said.

Larue said she was down to her last blood pressure pill and had no idea of when they'll get out or where to get help.

James LeFlere, 56, was trying to remain optimistic.

"They're going to get us out of here. It's just hard to hang on at this point," he said.

Janice Singleton, a worker at the Superdome, said she got stuck in the stadium when the storm hit. She said she was robbed of everything she had with her, including her shoes.

"They tore that dome apart," she said sadly. "They tore it down. They taking everything out of there they can take."

Then she said, "I don't want to go to no Astrodome. I've been domed almost to death."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/03/katrina/main814625.shtml

Evacuations from the Superdome have resumed.

Officials had turned their attention to the New Orleans Convention Center overnight, stopping the buses running from the Superdome.

The Texas Air Force National Guard estimates between 2,000 and 5,000 people still remained at the Superdome at mid-morning.

The crowd was orderly early this morning after being told that evacuations were temporarily stalled. Those remaining at the Superdome sat down to wait.

The scene also was calm today as the remaining evacuees patiently waited in five lines for their place on a bus.

Earlier, guard members said they were told only that the buses had stopped coming and to shut down the area where the vehicles were being loaded.

"We were rolling," Capt. Jean Clark said. "If the buses had kept coming, we would have this whole place cleaned out already or pretty close to it."

Guard members reported that the massive evacuation operation for the most part had gone smoothly Friday, coming after days of uncertainty, violence and despair.

Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when evacuation efforts began. That number swelled as people poured into the Superdome because they believed it was the best place to get a ride out of town.

He estimated Saturday morning that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were left at the Superdome. But it remained a mystery why the buses stopped coming to pick up refugees and shuttle them away.

Tina Miller, 47, had no shoes and cried with relief and exhaustion as she left the Superdome and walked toward a bus. "I never thought I'd make it. Oh, God, I thought I'd die in there. I've never been through anything this awful."

The arena's second-story concourse looked like a dump, with more than a foot of trash except in the occasional area where people were working to keep things as tidy as possible.

Bathrooms had no lights, making people afraid to enter, and the stench from backed-up toilets inside killed any inclination toward bravery.

"When we have to go to the bathroom we just get a box. That's all you can do now," said Sandra Jones of eastern New Orleans.

Her newborn baby was running a fever, and all the small children in her area had rashes, she said.

"This was the worst night of my life. We were really scared. We're getting no help. I know the military police are trying. But they're outnumbered," Jones said.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/03/katrina/main814625_page2.shtml

Buses had evacuated most people from the frightening confines of the Superdome by early morning. At the equally squalid convention center, thousands of people began pushing and dragging their belongings up the street to more than a dozen air-conditioned buses, the mood more numb than jubilant.

More than 50,000 people had been trapped for days at the two filthy, sweltering buildings, suffering from a lack of food, water or medical attention. Help came too late for a number of them – dead bodies were a common sight, in wheelchairs, wrapped in blankets or just abandoned.

At Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, thousands of people remained in a triage center, many of them dying for lack of medical care."The hallways are filled, the floors are filled. There are thousands of people there," said Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who was at the airport. "A lot more than eight to 10 people are dying a day. It's a distribution problem. The doctors are doing a great job, the nurses are doing a great job."

Since the cavalry arrived in New Orleans on Friday, more than 25,000 residents have been evacuated, Mike Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said at a briefing Saturday morning in Baton Rouge.

Both the number of people left in the city and the death toll remained unknown, because people continued showing up at evacuation sites and dead bodies were still being counted, Brown said.

"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were there," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said at the briefing.

At the convention center, Yolanda Sanders stood at a barricade clutching her cocker spaniel, Toto. She had been waiting to be evacuated for five days.

"I had faith that they'd come. I feel good that I know I can get to my family," she said. Sanders didn't know yet where they were taking her, but "anyplace is better than here. People are dying over there."

Helicopters were removing the sickest people from the center, and two of the city's most troubled hospitals were evacuated Friday after desperate doctors spent days making tough choices about which patients got dwindling supplies of food, water and medicines.

"We're just trying to ease their pain, give them a little bit of dignity and get them out of here," said Lt. Col. Connie McNabb.

A Saks Fifth Avenue store billowed smoke Saturday, as did rows of warehouses on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where corrugated roofs buckled and tiny explosions erupted. Gunfire – almost two dozen shots – broke out in the French Quarter overnight.

As the warehouse district burned, Ron Seitzer, 61, washed his dirty laundry in the even dirtier waters of the Mississippi River and said he didn't know how much longer he could stay without water or power, surrounded by looters.

"I've never even had a nightmare or a beautiful dream about this," he said as he watched the warehouses burn. "People are just not themselves."

On Friday, President Bush took an aerial tour of the city and answered complaints about a sluggish government response by saying, "We're going to make it right." Flatbed trucks carried huge crates, pallets and bags of relief supplies, including Meals Ready to Eat. Soldiers sat in the backs of open-top trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.

In what looked like a scene from a Third World country, some outside the convention center threw their arms heavenward and others hollered profanities as camouflage-green vehicles and supply trucks finally rolled through axle-deep floodwaters into what remained of New Orleans.

National Guard Lt. Col. Jerry Crooks said troops had served more than 70,000 meals outside the convention center and had 130,000 more on hand. Watching the caravan, Leschia Radford sang the praises of a higher power.

"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here!" Radford shrieked. But on Saturday, hope was overtaken by frustration as people continued to wait. A dead man lay on sidewalk under a blanket with a stream of blood running down the pavement toward the gutter. People said he died violently.

"We're hurting out here, man. We got to get help. All we want is someone to feel our pain, that's all," said Tasheka Johnson, 24.

About a dozen people who headed down the street to look for food and water said they were turned back by a soldier who pulled a gun.

"We had to get something to eat. What are they doing pulling a gun?" said Richard Johnson, 28.

The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid angry complaints from local officials that the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine as the city was overtaken by looting, rape and arson.

"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows."

The president took a land and air tour of hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Friday, and admitted of the relief effort: "The results are not enough." Congress passed a $10.5 billion disaster aid package, and Bush quickly signed the measure.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the military presence helped calm a jittery city.

"We are seeing a show of force. It's putting confidence back in our hearts and in the minds of our people," Blanco said. "We're going to make it through."

Guard members carrying rifles also arrived at the Louisiana Superdome, where bedraggled people – many of them trapped there since the weekend – stretched around the perimeter of the building. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, commander of the National Guard, said 7,000 Guard members would be in the city by Saturday.

All the victims in the Superdome were supposed to have been evacuated by dawn Saturday, but shortly after midnight, the buses stopped rolling. Between 2,000 and 5,000 people still in the stadium could be there until Sunday, according to the Texas Air National Guard.

Within minutes of the soldiers' arrival at the convention center, they set up six food and water lines. The crowd was for the most part orderly and grateful.

Diane Sylvester, 49, was the first person through the line. "Something is better than nothing," she said of her two bottles of water and pork rib meal. "I feel great to see the military here. I know I'm saved."

With Houston's Astrodome already full with 15,000 storm refugees, that city opened two more centers to accommodate an additional 10,000. Dallas and San Antonio also had agreed to take refugees.

One group of Katrina's victims lurched from one tragedy to another: A bus carrying evacuees from the Superdome overturned on a Louisiana highway, killing at least one person and injuring many others.

At the broken levee along Lake Pontchartrain that swamped nearly 80 percent of New Orleans, helicopters dropped 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into place to seal off the waters. Engineers also were developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of gravity and pumping and would drain the water out of the city, a process that could take weeks.

Thousands of people faced the prospect of spending another night outside of a New Orleans convention center, as a stream of buses worked to move out the 30,000 evacuees who have been stranded there for days amid mounds of trash and human waste.

Authorities with the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday that 4,000 people had been bused from the Ernest Morial Convention Center.

A huge convoy of buses and military vehicles brought food, water and medical supplies to the convention center Friday afternoon.

The evacuees headed to the staging area in an orderly fashion, when the buses returned Saturday morning, leaving behind the mountains of trash.

Elsewhere in the city, a helicopter hovered above power lines in one flooded neighborhood, dropping food and water to survivors. One man waved in thanks after wading into the contaminated, waist-deep water to get some supplies.

Authorities said that they have evacuated some 42,000 people from the city by bus, air and Amtrak trains. They also said that three Carnival cruise ships were on their way to the area to serve as temporary housing. Most of the evacuees have been moved to shelters in Texas.

Heavily armed law enforcement units were patrolling the city to restore order after reports of gangs prowling the city, looting, raping and killing at will.

A New Orleans police sergeant said Friday that he'd seen bodies riddled with bullet holes.

The Louisiana State Patrol said that there were no confirmed reports of violence overnight. (CNN's Bill Schneider on the question: Who's in control?)

A fire at the Shops at Canal Place, at the foot of Canal Street near the Aquarium of the Americas, started "under suspicious circumstances" since the building has no electricity or gas, firefighters told CNN.

The firefighters battled the blaze throughout the day aided by four water tankers that had been sent to New Orleans from Mississippi. Earlier, people could be seen leaving the building carrying shopping bags filled with merchandise.

Fifty-foot flames also engulfed an industrial district along the Mississippi River and threatened to spread from warehouse to warehouse.

Although much of the city is covered with foul water, there is no water pressure. An attempt to bring water tankers and fireboats into the area was unsuccessful.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.impact/index.html