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New Orleans - awash in corpses
NEW Orleans turned much of its attention to gathering and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in thousands of corpses. ”It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine,” the US homeland security chief warned.
As authorities struggled to keep order yesterday, police shot eight people, killing five or six, after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors travelling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.
Air and boat crews searched flooded neighbourhoods for survivors, and federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave for their own safety.
To expedite the rescues, the Coast Guard requested through the media that anyone stranded hang out brightly coloured or white linens or something else to draw attention. But with the electricity out though much of the city, it was not known if the message was being received.
With large-scale evacuations completed at the Superdome and Convention Centre shelters, the death toll was not known. But bodies were everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics.
“I think it’s evident it’s in the thousands,” Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said yesterday, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week. The US Public Health Service said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
In the first official count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had verified 59 deaths – 10 of them at the Superdome.
“We need to prepare the country for what’s coming,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. “We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood. ... It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine.”
Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said they did not want to evacuate.
“That is not a reasonable alternative,” he said. “We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The flooded places, when they’re de-watered, are not going to be sanitary.”
Evacuations continued late yesterday as Coast Guard helicopters picked up refugees from a dry stretch of Interstate 10 where they had been dropped off by rescue boats.
One of the last groups taken out Sunday was a family of six that included three-year-old twins. The Coast Guard planned to resume evacuation flights this morning.
Late yesterday a civilian helicopter crashed near the Danziger Bridge, but the two people on board escaped with only cuts and scrapes, according to Mark Smith of the state office of emergency preparedness.
In yesterday’s confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal were travelling across the bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured, authorities said.
In addition to the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty about their families, New Orleans’ police have had to deal with suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died on Saturday, according to Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.
“I’ve got some firefighters and police officers that have been pretty much traumatised,” Mayor Ray Nagin said. “And we’ve already had a couple of suicides, so I am cycling them out as we speak. ... They need physical and psychological evaluations.”
The strain was apparent in other ways. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, dropped his head and cried on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, ‘Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?’ And he said, ‘And yeah, Momma, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday’ - and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night,” Broussard said.
“Nobody’s coming to get her, nobody’s coming to get her. The secretary’s promise, everybody’s promise. They’ve had press conferences – I’m sick of the press conferences. For God’s sakes, shut up and send us somebody.”
Hundreds of thousands of people already have been evacuated, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and other states. The first group of refugees who will take shelter in Arizona arrived yesterday in Phoenix. With more than 230,000 already in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to begin preparations to airlift some of them to other states that have offered help.
Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labour Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: ”It’s New Orleans, man. We’re going to celebrate.”
In New Orleans’ Garden District, a woman’s body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street – a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic.
By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, “Here lies Vera. God help us.”
Air and boat crews searched flooded neighbourhoods for survivors, and federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave for their own safety.
To expedite the rescues, the Coast Guard requested through the media that anyone stranded hang out brightly coloured or white linens or something else to draw attention. But with the electricity out though much of the city, it was not known if the message was being received.
With large-scale evacuations completed at the Superdome and Convention Centre shelters, the death toll was not known. But bodies were everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics.
“I think it’s evident it’s in the thousands,” Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said yesterday, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week. The US Public Health Service said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
In the first official count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had verified 59 deaths – 10 of them at the Superdome.
“We need to prepare the country for what’s coming,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday. “We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood. ... It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine.”
Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said they did not want to evacuate.
“That is not a reasonable alternative,” he said. “We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The flooded places, when they’re de-watered, are not going to be sanitary.”
Evacuations continued late yesterday as Coast Guard helicopters picked up refugees from a dry stretch of Interstate 10 where they had been dropped off by rescue boats.
One of the last groups taken out Sunday was a family of six that included three-year-old twins. The Coast Guard planned to resume evacuation flights this morning.
Late yesterday a civilian helicopter crashed near the Danziger Bridge, but the two people on board escaped with only cuts and scrapes, according to Mark Smith of the state office of emergency preparedness.
In yesterday’s confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal were travelling across the bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured, authorities said.
In addition to the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty about their families, New Orleans’ police have had to deal with suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died on Saturday, according to Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.
“I’ve got some firefighters and police officers that have been pretty much traumatised,” Mayor Ray Nagin said. “And we’ve already had a couple of suicides, so I am cycling them out as we speak. ... They need physical and psychological evaluations.”
The strain was apparent in other ways. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, dropped his head and cried on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, ‘Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?’ And he said, ‘And yeah, Momma, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday’ - and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night,” Broussard said.
“Nobody’s coming to get her, nobody’s coming to get her. The secretary’s promise, everybody’s promise. They’ve had press conferences – I’m sick of the press conferences. For God’s sakes, shut up and send us somebody.”
Hundreds of thousands of people already have been evacuated, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and other states. The first group of refugees who will take shelter in Arizona arrived yesterday in Phoenix. With more than 230,000 already in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to begin preparations to airlift some of them to other states that have offered help.
Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labour Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: ”It’s New Orleans, man. We’re going to celebrate.”
In New Orleans’ Garden District, a woman’s body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street – a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic.
By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, “Here lies Vera. God help us.”
For more information:
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/07...
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Police shot dead at least five people who apparently opened fire on contractors on a city bridge, in a clear demonstration of the resolve to deal with the lawlessness that has beset New Orleans.
In belated recognition of the depth of the crisis, Washington swallowed its pride and asked for blankets, food and water trucks from the EU and Nato, and beds and medical supplies from Canada.
As relief workers, national guardsmen and soldiers went door to door looking for bodies, the US health secretary, Michael Leavitt, confirmed the worst fears over the death toll, saying it was "evident it's in the thousands".
Federal officials said the next threat was of an epidemic caused by floodwater contaminated by dead bodies, sewage and toxic waste.
The first case of dysentery was reported yesterday, and a relief shelter was closed following fears of disease in Mississippi, where rescue workers were also looking for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In New Orleans, the tumult and anguish of the past week were replaced by a haunting calm, as the last survivors were lifted out by helicopter.
The streets were deserted apart from the soldiers, and the cats and dogs rooting through rubbish. In districts where the national guard and police were not out in force, there was still a sense of nervousness. One spray-painted sign on a building warned: "Drunks with guns - you loot, we shoot."
Local officials warned that law enforcement officers and their armed deputies were "highly strung" and anyone thinking of entering to loot might not make it out alive. Warren Riley, the deputy police chief, said that officers shot eight people, killing five or six of them, after the gunmen fired on a group of contractors working for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The contractors were shot at on their way to repair the breached 17th Street canal dyke, a spokesman said.
By an official count, more than 42,000 people had been evacuated from the city over the weekend although an occasional dazed survivor emerged from a house yesterday for the first time since the hurricane hit struck on Monday. Zachary Edwards, who was waiting to be evacuated with his family, and planned to go to Chicago, said: "It was hell, that's the only way I can describe it. We ain't talked to nobody in six days."
Mr Edwards was one of the the tens of thousands of evacuees who have recognised that they may never be able to return to their homes or can no longer risk the possibility of another hurricane. The homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said that stragglers would also have to be evacuated despite protests from some wanting to stay. "That is not a reasonable alternative," he said.
He told Fox News: "We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in New Orleans ... while we de-water and clean this city. When we remove the water from New Orleans, we're going to uncover people who died hiding in houses, who got caught by the flood, people whose remains will be found in the street. There'll be pollution. It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine."
The mass evacuation has imposed a severe burden on neighbouring states. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, which has accepted more than 220,000 people - around 1% of its total population - called it the biggest influx of refugees in the history of the US.
Evacuees have also been moved, by train, bus and air, to Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Arizona and South Carolina. Many refugees have vowed to start new lives in cities far away rather than wait for months for New Orleans to become habitable again.
After five days of hesitation, the national guard and troops were staging what amounted to an invasion of the abandoned city with 4,000 soldiers searching house-to-house for survivors and another 7,200 airborne combat troops and marines on the way.
Lieutenant General Russel Honore, the commander of relief operations and in effect the New Orleans military governor, yesterday briefed the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers.
Mr Rumsfeld visited a field hospital but according to Reuters "walked right by a dozen refugees lying on stretchers just feet away from him, most of them extremely sick or handicapped".
As they pressed ahead with the relief effort, administration officials denied allegations that they had dithered for four days before intervening decisively, by which time many thousands of poor, mostly black New Orleans residents had suffered torment with some dying.
Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson parish, south of New Orleans, cried as he told the story of a colleague who had reassured his trapped mother every day that help was on the way and she would be rescued. On Friday night, with no help in sight, the elderly woman drowned.
"We have been abandoned by our own country," Mr Broussard told NBC's Meet the Press programme. "It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."
As the political storm gained momentum, the White House reacted. Federal officials blamed the Louisiana state government of Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, for waiting too long to call for outside help.
Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, toured her home state, Alabama. She had been criticised for watching the Broadway musical Spamalot as New Orleans flooded. On returning to Washington, she denied the delay in sending help had anything to do with most of the stranded survivors being black. "I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African-Americans," she said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562789,00.html
Tuesday September 6, 2005
The devastation set to be revealed by Hurricane Katrina's receding floodwaters will shock America, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin predicted today as military engineers plugged one of the biggest gaps in the city's levee system.
"It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," he said, estimating that it would take three weeks to drain the water, several more to clear up the debris and a further two months to reconnect electricity in the urban area.
But there were also signs of cautious optimism as the US army corps of engineers started to pump water out of the flooded city. "I've gone from anger to despair to seeing us turn the corner," he said.
Yesterday the army corps strengthened the damaged levee along the 17th Street canal in the west of the city using metal sheets, before stopping the gap by dropping dozens of 1,200kg sandbags onto the 135 metre breach from helicopters.
Another 90 metre break in the London Street canal was also closed up, but some engineers estimated that pumping out all the water could still take up to 80 days.
Much of New Orleans lies below the level of the Mississippi river to the south and lake Pontchartrain to the north. The levee system of steel, earth and concrete embankments has been used for nearly 300 years to protect the urban area.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said that 80% of the city was flooded after Hurricane Katrina broke open several critical levees last week.
Floodwaters rose to six metres in parts, while the pressure of flooding knocked out several of the pumps which normally draw seeping water from the streets.
The army corps said that the biggest pump, which can remove up to 285 cubic metres of water per second, was also turned on yesterday.
But it was only operating at three cubic metres per second and was slowly being ramped up to full power. Officials fear that moving too quickly could put too much pressure on intact parts of the levee system, causing fresh flooding.
More than a million people have deserted the affected areas in New Orleans and 10,000 are feared dead. So far, however, there have been only 59 confirmed deaths in Louisiana state and more than 100 in neighbouring Mississippi.
Once the floodwaters are drained, emergency teams expect to find toxic waste, rotting matter and dead bodies, and officials spent yesterday scouring the streets to remove the last remaining survivors before the grimmer tasks of the operation begin.
"There are no jobs. There are no homes to go to, no hotels to go to, there is absolutely nothing here," deputy police chief Warren Riley said. "We advise people that this city has been destroyed, it has completely been destroyed."
Swollen bodies floated in the streets and authorities are worried there may be thousands more dead inside New Orleans homes.
In the suburb of Jefferson Parish, traffic queues formed as residents were allowed back for 12 hours yesterday to assess the damage from the storm.
Many were already thinking of moving away. "I like the northern states," 25-year-old Javetta Jackson told the Guardian. "I like the seasons. I've always wanted to live in Baltimore so maybe we'll go there. It's an opportunity, isn't it?"
The Jefferson Parish president, Aaron Broussard, told CBS news that government scalps would have to be taken for what had happened.
"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy needs to stand trial before congress today," he said. "Take whatever idiot they have at the top, give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
At least 240,000 people from Louisiana had been evacuated into neighbouring Texas, where Governor Rick Perry said the state could handle no more and asked remaining evacuees to be airlifted to other states.
In Houston, former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush senior met evacuees taking shelter in the city's Astrodome and set up an emergency fund for the displaced. Around 4,000 of those sheltering in the Astrodome were due to be moved today to two cruise ships in Galveston, Texas, but this plan was later cancelled as victims protested that another relocation would be too much too soon.
Asked about widespread criticism of his son's slow response to the crisis, Mr Bush replied: "What do I think as a father? I don't like it ... (but) it goes with the territory."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1563650,00.html