thousands dead...?

August 31, 2005

where's the national guard?

oh yeah..iraq.....

Mayor: Katrina May Have Killed Thousands By BRETT MARTEL, Associated Press

Writer

27 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina probably killed thousands of people in New

Orleans, the mayor said Wednesday â€” an estimate that, if accurate, would make

the storm the nation's deadliest natural disaster since at least the 1906 San

Francisco earthquake.

" We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water, " and other

people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: " Minimum,

hundreds. Most likely, thousands. "

The frightening estimate came as Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans'

breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, while authorities

drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of people left in the Big Easy

and all but abandon the flooded-out city. Many of the evacuees â€” including

thousands now staying in the Superdome â€” will be moved to the Astrodome in

Houston, 350 miles away.

There will be a " total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be

functional for two or three months, " Nagin said. And he said people will not be

allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans, a city of

nearly half a million people. He said 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and-rescue

operations in U.S. history, sending four Navy ships to the Gulf Coast with

drinking water and other emergency supplies, along with the hospital ship USNS

Comfort, search helicopters and elite SEAL water-rescue teams. American Red

Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region in the

agency's biggest-ever relief operation.

Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on Monday just east of New Orleans with

howling, 145-mile wind. The death toll has reached at least 110 in Mississippi

alone. But the full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days;

Louisiana has been putting aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on

rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics.

If the mayor's estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the nation's deadliest

hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and

12,000 people. The death toll in the San Francisco earthquake and the resulting

fire has been put at anywhere from about 500 to 6,000.

A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two

levees broke and spilled water into the streets Tuesday, swamping an estimated

80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles

of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.

With the streets awash and looters brazenly cleaning out stores, authorities

planned to move at least 25,000 of the New Orleans' storm refugees to the

Astrodome in a vast, two-day convoy of some 475 buses.

Many of the city's storm refugees â€” 15,000 to 20,000 people â€” were in the

Superdome, which had become hot and stuffy, with broken toilets and nowhere for

anyone to bathe. " It can no longer operate as a shelter of last resort, " the

mayor said.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the situation was desperate and there was no choice

but to clear out.

" The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people in

shelters, " the governor said. " It's becoming untenable. There's no power. It's

getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic

essentials. "

Around midday, officials with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers said the

water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalized, and water

had stopped rising in New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling, at least in

some places. But the danger was far from over.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook

helicopters to drop 20,000-pound sandbags Wednesday into the 500-foot gap in the

failed floodwall. But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags

and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways

were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

Officials said they were also looking at a more audacious plan: finding a barge

to plug the 500-foot hole.

" The challenge is an engineering nightmare, " the governor said on ABC's " Good

Morning America. "

As the sense of desperation deepened in New Orleans, hundreds of people wandered

up and down Interstate 10, pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they

could find to carry their belongings. Dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles

away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out of flooded

neighborhoods.

On some of the few roads that were still passable, people waved at passing cars

with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have

spent the night on a crippled highway.

In one east New Orleans neighborhood, refugees were loaded onto the backs of

moving vans like cattle, and in one case emergency workers with a sledgehammer

and an ax broke open the back of a mail truck and used it to ferry sick and

elderly residents.

Police officers were asking residents to give up any guns they had before they

boarded buses and trucks because police desperately needed the firepower: Some

officers who had been stranded on the roof of a motel said they were being shot

at overnight.

The sweltering city of 480,000 people â€” an estimated 80 percent of whom obeyed

orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend â€” had no drinkable

water, the electricity could be out for weeks, and looters were ransacking

stores around town.

Sections of Interstate 10, the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from

the east, lay shattered, dozens of huge slabs of concrete floating in the

floodwaters. I-10 is the only route for commercial trucking across southern

Louisiana.

In addition to the Houston Astrodome solution, the Federal Emergency

Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent

cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories â€” boats the

agency uses to house its own employees.

A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed

people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for

rescue boats.

" I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago, " said

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction by air Tuesday.

All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood

refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 3,000

people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into

helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in

wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who

didn't make it.

" Oh my God, it was hell, " said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the

ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans'

low-lying Ninth Ward. " We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was

complete chaos. "

Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to

send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the

city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to

recover, authorities said.

A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun collection

was taken, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. " There are gangs of armed men

in the city moving around the city, " said Ebbert, the city's homeland security

chief.

The governor acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that

officials had to focus on survivors. " We don't like looters one bit, but first

and foremost is search and rescue, " she said.

In Washington, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from federal

petroleum reserves to help refiners whose supply was disrupted by Katrina. The

announcement helped push oil prices lower.

___

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G. Breed, Adam

Nossiter and Jay Reeves contributed to this report.

a blinding flash

hotter than the sun

dead bodies lie across the path

the radiation colors the air

finishing one by one

September 1, 2005

There are plenty of national guard troops available here, that's totally not it. W could have even stopped by on his way back from Cali. Nooo.. you just got the wrong demographics in need. sad, sick & true.