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AJ
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« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2005, 05:43:41 PM » |
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Dear saints keep praying for these people...
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 4:58 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flood-stricken New Orleans slipped toward anarchy Thursday.
“This is a desperate SOS,” the mayor said.
While a mass evacuation got under way at the city's Superdome, where thousands of restless people were waiting for help, there was desperation and mounting anger at a separate refuge, the city's convention center, where storm victims grew increasingly hungry and thirsty and pleaded for relief.
Officials said thousands more National Guardsmen were being sent to the city, and Congress planned a special session Thursday night to approve emergency aid. But across the city, residents complained that aid was not arriving and a local official blamed the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“This is a national disgrace,” said Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans’ emergency operations. “FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control,” Ebbert said. “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans."
"We have got a mayor who has been pushing and asking but we’re not getting supplies,” he said. He said the evacuation was almost entirely a Louisiana operation. “This is not a FEMA operation. I haven’t seen a single FEMA guy.”
Mayor Ray Nagin, in issuing his dire plea in a statement to CNN, said: “Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don’t anticipate enough buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we are running out of supplies for 15,000 to 25,000 people.”
Dead bodies outside center
Outside the center, people complained that they were evacuated, taken to the convention hall by bus, dropped off and given nothing.
At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry people broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
“I don’t treat my dog like that,” Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “I buried my dog.”
“You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people," he said. "You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
“We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” said the Rev. Isaac Clark, 68.
People there, some holding crying babies or elderly barely able to stand up, shouted for help as TV news crews passed by.
A sea of pain
On the front steps of the convention center, one woman, screaming, led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.
John Murray, 52, said: “It’s like they’re punishing us.”
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos as well.
Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door — a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guard troops stood.
At the front of the line, heavily armed policemen and guardsmen stood watch and handed out water as tense and exhausted crowds struggled onto buses. At the back end of the line, people jammed against police barricades in the rain. Luggage, bags of clothes, pillows, blankets were strewn in the puddles.
Many people had dogs and they cannot take them on the bus. A police officer took one from a little boy, who cried until he vomited. “Snowball, snowball,” he cried. The policeman told a reporter he didn’t know what would happen to the dog.
Other parts of the city saw similar desperation. “We need help,” Polly Boudreaux, clerk of the St. Bernard Parish Council, told WAFB-TV in a phone interview in which she broke down crying.
“We're just been absolutely devastated,” she said, and many residents still need to be rescued.
Little outside aid has reached the parish, she added. “We are not seeing it.”
Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals with 360 patients called The Associated Press pleading for rescue, saying they were nearly out of food and power and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape looters.
“We have been trying to call the mayor’s office, we have been trying to call the governor’s office. ... We have tried to use any inside pressure we can. We are turning to you. Please help us,” said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital.
Mob fears, gunshots
While most stranded residents were orderly, police warned reporters to be careful given the desperation.
“We were told don't drink or eat in public as it could lead to a mob situation,” NBC's Michelle Hofland said. “We were told that by sundown to get out of here.”
Federal rescue workers were pulled back from some areas of the city where gunfire was heard or reported, a Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News.
“Hospitals are trying to evacuate,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center. “At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, “You better come get my family.”
Police Capt. Ernie Demmo said a National Guard military policeman was shot in the leg as the two scuffled for the MP’s rifle. The man was arrested.
“These are good people. These are just scared people,” Demmo said.
God bless
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