pandemonium

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New Orleans Mayor Issues 'Desperate SOS' By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press

Writer

4 minutes ago

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS - Fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and

rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New

Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. " This is a desperate SOS, " the mayor

said.

 

 

 

Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of storm victims

increasingly hungry, desperate and tired of waiting for buses to take them out.

 

" We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help, " the Rev. Issac Clark,

68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the

open and he and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given

nothing — no food, no water, no medicine.

 

The plea from Mayor Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to help

restore order and put a stop to the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have

gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city

under water.

 

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to

await buses were growing angry and restless in what appeared to be a potentially

explosive situation. In hopes of defusing it, the mayor gave them permission to

march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they

can find.

 

In a statement to CNN, he said: " This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out

of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need

buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we're

running out of supplies. "

 

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the

government is sending in 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting and

other lawlessness in New Orleans. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the

city, he said.

 

But across the flooded-out city, the rescuers themselves came under attack from

storm victims.

 

" 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.' "

 

Some Federal Emergency Management rescue operations were suspended in areas

where gunfire has broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in

Washington. " In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be

in danger, we have pulled back, " he said.

 

A National Guard military policeman was shot in the leg as the two scuffled for

the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.

 

" These are good people. These are just scared people, " Demmo said.

 

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without

food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of

storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did

not come.

 

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, " 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed

at the woman in the wheelchair. " I buried my dog. " He added: " You can do

everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. 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.

 

" They've been teasing us with buses for four days, " Edwards said.

 

People chanted, " Help, help! " as reporters and photographers walked through. The

crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and

covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of

the convention center and 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 Guardsmen

stood.

 

Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a

National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. After a traffic

jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot

broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up.

 

The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived

early Thursday at their new temporary home — another sports arena, the Houston

Astrodome, 350 miles away.

 

But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the

Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military

helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it was too

dangerous for his pilots.

 

The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses,

continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt.

Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a

military helicopter was fired on.

 

Terry Ebbert, head of the city's emergency operations, warned that the slow

evacuation at the Superdome had become an " incredibly explosive situation, " and

he bitterly complained that FEMA was not offering enough help.

 

" This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace, " he said. " FEMA has

been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive

amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New

Orleans. "

 

In Texas, the governor's office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional

25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though

exactly where has not been determined.

 

In Washington, the White House said President Bush will tour the devastated

Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George

H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising

campaign for victims.

 

The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.

 

" I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an

emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the

gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud, "

Bush said. " And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought

to be working together. "

 

On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the

magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said:

" Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands. " The death toll has already reached

at least 126 in Mississippi.

 

If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster

in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire,

which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also

be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston,

Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

 

Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become

uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of

nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before

Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.

 

The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is

functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for

at least a month or two.

 

" We need an effort of 9-11 proportions, " former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial,

now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's " Today " show. " So many of the

people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are

people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were

of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them

out of there. "

 

" A great American city is fighting for its life, " he added. " We must rebuild New

Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism. "

 

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said rescued people begged him

to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on

which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.

 

When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a

woman whose father had been rescued and told her: " Your daddy's alive, and he

said to tell you he loves you. "

 

" She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,' " he said.

 

___

 

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Robert Tanner, Allen G.

Breed, Cain Burdeau, Jay Reeves and Brett Martel contributed to this report.

 

 

 

are you a mod or are you a skin or are you a punk or are you just faking?

[Guest guest]

Interesting imagery where he says they are out there like pure animals... I doubt anybody there would think of that in the future and become vegan? It's hell for anybody...fraggle <EBbrewpunx wrote:

New Orleans Mayor Issues 'Desperate SOS' By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes agoNEW ORLEANS - Fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. "This is a desperate SOS," the mayor said. Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of storm victims increasingly hungry, desperate and tired of waiting for buses to take them out."We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and he and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing — no food, no water, no medicine.The plea from Mayor Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen

poured in to help restore order and put a stop to the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city under water.About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses were growing angry and restless in what appeared to be a potentially explosive situation. In hopes of defusing it, the mayor gave them permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they can find.In a statement to CNN, he said: "This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we're running out of supplies."In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the government is sending in 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting

and other lawlessness in New Orleans. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city, he said.But across the flooded-out city, the rescuers themselves came under attack from storm victims."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.'"Some Federal Emergency Management rescue operations were suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington. "In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back," he said.A National Guard military policeman was shot in the leg as the two scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was

arrested."These are good people. These are just scared people," Demmo said.Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.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," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do

nothing for your own people. 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."They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. People chanted, "Help, help!" as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and 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 Guardsmen stood. Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up. The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home — another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away. But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it was too dangerous for his pilots. The military, which was overseeing the removal of the

able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military helicopter was fired on. Terry Ebbert, head of the city's emergency operations, warned that the slow evacuation at the Superdome had become an "incredibly explosive situation," and he bitterly complained that FEMA was not offering enough help. "This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace," he said. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans." In Texas, the governor's office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though exactly where has not been determined. In Washington, the White House said President Bush will tour the

devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims. The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness. "I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together." On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." The death toll has already reached at least 126 in Mississippi. If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States

since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds. The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two. "We need an effort of 9-11 proportions," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's "Today" show. "So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are people who

are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there.A great American city is fighting for its life," he added. "We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism." Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said rescued people begged him to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers. When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a woman whose father had been rescued and told her: "Your daddy's alive, and he said to tell you he loves you.She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,'" he said. ___ Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Robert Tanner, Allen G. Breed, Cain Burdeau, Jay Reeves and Brett Martel contributed to this

report.are you a mod or are you a skin or are you a punk or are you just faking?Jonnie

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[Guest guest]

was wondering

heh

 

just goes to show you how tenuous our "civilization" is

now can you understand why i'm always going on about peak oil and all that?

Anna Blaine Sep 1, 2005 3:08 PM Re: pandemonium

That was "I CAN'T believe this is happening in America." One of those little typos that changes the entire meaning of the post. Oops!

 

Love,

Anna

are you a mod or are you a skin or are you a punk or are you just faking?