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| Officials struggling to reverse growing sense of anarchy |
| 2005-09-02 |
| National Guard troops moved in force into this storm-ravaged city today as state and local officials struggled to reverse a growing sense of anarchy sparked by reports of armed looters, bodies floating untended in stagnant floodwaters, and food and water supplies dwindling for thousands of trapped and desperate residents. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana said that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath would be in the "thousands," based on reports that she was receiving from officials throughout the state, The Associated Press said. In a televised news briefing, she said that 12,000 National Guard troops were to arrive in the area in the next several days, as well as police officers and sheriff's deputies from as far away as Michigan. They will be given arrest and other law enforcement powers, she said, and "looting and other lawlessness will not be tolerated." She also said had instructed them to "strictly enforce Louisiana laws and to use necessary force." The governor said she had requested 40,000 National Guard troops, "but if we hit the 40,000 mark and still feel like we need more, we will get them," she said. With grim televised scenes showing corpses in the streets and at the city's teeming convention center and groups of people throughout the area still waiting desperately for the most basic assistance, Mayor C. Ray Nagin issued a dire cry for help. "This is a desperate S.O.S.," he said. "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 are running out of supplies for 15 to 20,000 people." Joseph W. Matthews, a deputy fire chief who is the director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness for the city of New Orleans, described harrowing conditions both inside and outside the city's Superdome and its convention center, facilities that had been intended to shelter victims of the storm and floods but where many people were finding themselves again victimized - by a lack of provisions, by an absence of basic services and by violence. "Some people there have not eaten or drunk water for three or four days, which is inexcusable," Mr. Matthews said. "We need additional troops, food, water. And we need personnel, law enforcement. This has turned into a situation where the city is being run by the thugs." The police superintendent, Eddie Compass, estimated that perhaps 100 armed people were inside the convention center and that he was considering a plan to restore order there with a force of perhaps 500 police officers and national guardsmen. Mr. Compass said that some stranded tourists who had sought shelter at the convention center instead found trouble. "The tourists are walking around there and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon," he said. Numerous people in distress complained to journalists that they felt abandoned by a government that seemed to manage to deliver timely supplies to disaster victims overseas but that somehow was unable to do the same in a major American city. At the White House, President Bush, who has come under attack by some Democrats who accuse him of not acting quickly enough to address the situation, said he was asking former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to head a relief effort, as they did several months ago for the Asian tsunami. "We're dealing with one of the largest relief efforts in our nation's history, and the federal government's got an important role to play," President Bush said. "Our first priority, of course, is to save lives." Congress is expected to expedite a $10 billion aid package, but House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, sparked a small furor when he seemed to suggest in an interview with The Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill., that rebuilding New Orleans might be too daunting a task. A spokesman later said that the speaker had not meant that the city should be abandoned or relocated. Crowds of people who had sought shelter at the Superdome sports facility began leaving this morning by bus, purloined vehicles or any other way they could find, and overwhelmed rescue officials said that they were working to find more shelters to receive them, in any state or any city that would provide them. Thousands of more waited for the opportunity to follow. This morning, the evacuation of the Superdome was briefly interrupted when what sounded like a gunshot rang out from the crowd, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard said. Cautioning that the report was unconfirmed, Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of Louisiana National Guard said that nothing had hit the supposed target, a Chinook helicopter that was aiding in the evacuation at the time, and that no one had been reported injured. "It did not shut down the process," he said of the report of gunfire. In Houston, about 3,000 evacuees from New Orleans arrived at the Astrodome this morning, including 14 people who came in a catering truck that they admitted they had stolen for the journey. The group of 14 had been on the road for 10 hours, said Kentrell Diaz, 21, one of those in the truck. They were told that they could get breakfast inside, but that they would not be allowed to stay there. Mr. Diaz said that he and other members of his traveling party had lived in New Orleans East and had swum to safety after floodwaters reached the second floor of their apartment building. Another member of the bread truck party, Gloria Collins, 26, clutched her 6-month old son, Nakee Collins. She acknowledged that the truck she arrived on had been stolen. "The police stopped us and said, 'I know it's not yours,' but he let us go," she said. "There were people shooting to protect their own boats. It's a survival thing." Gloria Roemer, a spokeswoman for Judge Robert Eckels, the director of Harris County's office of homeland security in Texas, said that while the original admission policy had been to accept only those people leaving the Superdome in New Orleans, the Red Cross, which is directing the effort at the Astrodome, had now decided to accept any storm refugee. While the relocation process began in an orderly manner, it soon devolved into something else as thousands of hungry and frustrated refugees, with no clear idea of what their future held, began to arrive. Refugees clamored for clean T-shirts as they were handed out, mobbing volunteers from the American Red Cross, which is running the facility. Rumors of showers for everyone in the dome proved to be premature. Restrooms overflowed with feces on the ground floor; refugees lined up to use telephones with the hope of finding missing loved ones in New Orleans. Some of those who arrived began pasting Post-It notes on walls in hope of finding missing relatives; others stood holding signs with names of people they were seeking. Others appeared too shell-shocked to begin a search for loved ones. Nelkita Sims, 27, a 911 operator for the New Orleans Police Department, arrived in Houston with seven adult family members and three children, including her 1-year-old daughter, Tkai. She described a surreal flight from her workplace, first to two abandoned hotels, a Hilton and a Sheraton, where she reunited with her family, then to Fort Polk in Louisiana, where they were turned away by military officials, then finally to Houston. "There's no place for 911 in New Orleans anymore, think about that," Ms. Sims said. "I saw the looting in front of my eyes. I think my future is here now." Another Astrodome arrival, Joe Joseph, 38, talked about the job in a wire mesh factory and the pickup truck he had acquired just two months before the storm struck. "I have no idea where to go from here; yesterday I felt flush, today I got nothing," he said. "Where am I going to get a job like that again?" Elsewhere in Houston, refugees turned away at the Astrodome packed into hotels and church shelters. At one shelter run by St. Peter Claver Church in the Settgest neighborhood, more than 300 people squeezed into one room. About 18 children in the group were bused to local schools on Thursday morning. "The hurricane did what terrorists couldn't do," said Rawlin B. Enette, the priest at the church. "It destroyed an American city." In New Orleans, those who did not make it to the Superdome tried to find shelter in any structure that was still standing. Outside, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores for food, clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often in full view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of carjackings, apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were reported, as were a number of shootings. People left without a shelter didn't know whether it was safer in the streets or in abandoned buildings. Daryl Hubbard, one of nine people who took refuge in the BellSouth building in New Orleans on Sunday, spoke to MSNBC by telephone this morning. "We don't know which way to leave if we tried to," he said. "We don't know if we're walking into a worse situation than we're in now." Mr. Hubbard said there was a man in the building with asthma who was complaining about his chest tightening up. Mr. Hubbard's wife takes at least three or four different types of medication daily, which was taken by mistake on Wednesday by Coast Guard officials when they took two elderly people out of the building. "They told us they were coming back and no one's been back," he said. "What we really need is to get out. Red Cross dropped water and stuff. We're getting to the end of that, we only have a few bottle left with a couple of things of food." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |