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| New Orleans descends into full anarchy |
| 2005-09-01 |
| Storm victims were raped and beaten, 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 the and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing — no food, no water, no medicine. About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob. "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon." In hopes of defusing the unrest at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they can find. But the bedlam at the convention center appeared to make leaving difficult. A military heliocpter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away. 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. In a statement to CNN, Nagin 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 our 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 he and a man 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. 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. 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. Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said authorities are working on establishing a temporary jail to hold people accused of looting and other crimes. "These individuals will not take control of the city of New Orleans," he said. 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 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. 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. "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. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #16 Darrel we're talking about people in the convention center safe area preying on other people coming to the convention center safe area. We are not talking about people holed up in their hotel room with a tub of water. That convention center safe area cannot be jam packed with jerks. There has to be normal people in there. Odds are there was a rape and it was stopped, and its being overreported right now because the Mayor mentioned it. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2005-09-01 22:11 |
| #15 It took us two days to really shut down the looting in LA in '92 and that was in a city with all of its infrastructure intact. The reality is that most of the looting is taking place in flooded areas. What are you going to do? Put soldiers and cops in hip waders? Everyone with a car and with a shred of sense left the city already or at least is at the Superdome. The people remaining are crooks, ghouls, and sickos (aside from shut ins). Most of them are probably from the housing projects. This will not get fixed until the levy is fixed and the pumps get started up. The fact that NO's administration is among the most corrupt in the nation isn't helping, but it will remain impossible to close decisively with the looters until the city is dried out. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-09-01 22:06 |
| #14 no looter prisoners. Justice on the spot |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-01 21:09 |
| #13 Re #6 (Steve White): Having once spent three days after a hurricane with little to eat and mainly a little water from a less-than-pristine bathtub to drink, I can assure you that most people still in the area have much bigger issues than volunteering. It's easy to sit here and say what should be done, but imagine trying to figure that out if you're depressed, exhausted, hungry, thirsty, AND have little or no access to the outside world. No TV, no phone -- not even knowledge of what the situation is a mile away. I think we need to be a bit more forgiving. Most survivors are doing the best they can under the circumstances. The media is covering the flash points and ignoring most of the rest. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2005-09-01 21:07 |
| #12 A plan: Declare martial law under federal authority, shut the useless mayor and the befuddled governor out of the loop entirely. Chopper in troops to secure a number of strategically located evacuation pickup points. Bring in military engineers to restore sanitation and provide water at those points. After that, ferry the evacuees out to the airports to whatever transport planes can be scrounged up to take them to fully secure shelters and housing areas further inland. At the same time, another force of helicopters will sweep the flooded areas in a grid pattern, to pick up anyone who is still stranded. Marines and sailors in small boats will also sweep the flooded areas for evacuees and to begin the systematic recovery of the dead. National Guard troops and regulars, if necessary, will do the same on foot. Major assault ships like the ones heading to New Orleans have sizable mortuary facilities, though this is not heavily advertised for obvious reasons. More troops will secure clean water distribution points once these have been set up by engineers. Delta and Marine snipers will be deployed to put a stop to armed hooligans taking potshots at relief efforts. Looters, profiteers, and roving gangs will be arrested or shot. The arrestees should be taken to an internment facility at the edge of the flooded areas, the same kind of temporary pen we know how to set up for prisoners of war. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-09-01 21:06 |
| #11 The most serious crisis I had to handle as mayor was a freak ice storm that shut down our power for 3 days. This was a big deal in our neck of the woods, where it uusally snows a little about every fourth year. We kept the water supply going with an emergency generator (our little water plant had built-in provision for this). The chief of police, city secretary, myself, and a few other spare hands went around knocking on doors to make sure people had water, heat, and food. We brought them to the local high school and city hall if they did not. We also took note of anyone who had special needs, like medical oxygen, and made sure that this was provided. We moved them to the local clinic if this could not be done at home without electricity. There were no cell phones in those days, but we had CB radio and the police could communicate with the state authorities over their radios. We asked radio operators to alert their neighbors that they could summon help in a hurry if needed. It was a pretty miserable three days and I think I earned my 50$ a month salary at least that time, but nobody died and nobody went hungry. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-09-01 20:56 |
| #10 "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." Mayor, I thank you for the jazz and music. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2005-09-01 20:26 |
| #9 Nagin is useless and has been from day one. Emergency planning and the actual execution of those plans begin at local level. It is up to the mayor to request the proper assistance from higher authorities and to know where it is needed. From police and fire protection to the supply and sanitation situation at the Super Dome, the New Orleans city government has been AWOL from the start. State authorities should suspend the city charter, dismiss Nagin and his crew of hand-wringing nitwits, and place all resources under the Governor. If she can't handle it, the Feds should take over. I have been a mayor. I know that direct control is a very drastic step, akin to martial law, but the possibility of total failure at the local level is the reason we have "higher authority" in the first place. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-09-01 20:06 |
| #8 Before we follow the media into the abyss, let's keep in mind that this is the same media that has turned the whole of Iraq into a supposed hell. In fact, the majority of Iraqi provinces are not in conflict. Additionally, the MSM will play up the thugs hoodlums while feats of compassion get little or no ink. If you have never experienced being flooded out of your home and neighborhood in 96 F degree temperatures, with no known source of food, water, etc. then try it sometime before feasting on the red meat the MSM puts out. The axiom that 5 perc of any sizable population is fruit-loops applies in N.O. and surrounds. But for the MSM, that 5 perc get 99 perc of the coverage. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-09-01 19:57 |
| #7 Jeez Steve! You oppressin', man |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-01 19:52 |
| #6 Has anyone suggested that the good people who are stuck there should somehow 1) organize themselves and 2) help out? Corpses in the open? Put on a pair of rubber gloves and recover them. At least get them out of the water. People need evacuation from rooftops? Get out and help? People need help at the Superdome? Help out. Volunteer to drive a bus or a truck. Help organize local security. Help some of the old folks who can't help themselves. For crying out loud, we're Americans. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-09-01 19:37 |
| #5 You need to learn to shoot because you are on your own. Standard issue here is 1 pistol per occupant of resident and one shotgun per resident of house. overabundance of ammo for same in portable and water tight storage. The other thing I take away is shoot male welfare rats and punks on sight if they come around during a disaster. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet O´ Doom 2005-09-01 19:06 |
| #4 The lesson I'm taking from this is: 1. You're on your own, kid. 2. I need to learn how to shoot. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-01 18:52 |
| #3 Jesus. One lesson I am taking away from this is Don't have anything to do with 'official' 'emergency' 'shelters' and 'procedures' during a disaster. (Can't leave the superdome until the "authorities" tell you) (Can't take your pet with you as you evacuate on the official bus) christ. |
| Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2005-09-01 18:47 |
| #2 I've never heard of cops being beaten back by the mob after a Pistons game. More recounting of this idiocy here: http://neworleans.metblogs.com/archives/2005/09/i_may_pop_a_blo.phtml Has anyone seen the Bugtis in Pakistan during this disaster? |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-09-01 18:27 |
| #1 Sounds like Detroit after a Pistons game. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-09-01 18:18 |