With thousands feared drowned in what could be America's deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans' leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city — perhaps for months.
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Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.
Nagin also called for an all-out evacuation of the city's remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
With most of the city under water, Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of remaining people and practically abandon the below-sea-level city.
Nagin said there will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months." And he said people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
If the mayor's death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which have 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.
An exodus from the Superdome began Wednesday as the first of nearly 25,000 refugees left the miserable surroundings of the football stadium to be transported in a caravan of buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. The conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.
In Mississippi, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have brought to the morgue already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well above 100.
Tempers were beginning to flare. Police said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg, Miss.
President Bush flew over New Orleans and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."
"We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history," Bush said later in a televised address from the White House, which most victims could not see because power remains out to 1 million Gulf Coast residents.
The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in U.S. history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the "golden 72 hours" rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.
As fires burned from broken natural-gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters frantically dropping baskets to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145-mph fury Monday. Atop one apartment building, two children held up a giant sign scrawled with the words: "Help us!"
Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.
Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched the looting. But Nagin later said the looting had gotten so bad that stopping the thieves became the top priority for the police department.
"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 — the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east — pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings.
On some of the few roads that were still open, 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.
Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm's way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.
"We have to," Nagin said. "It's not living conditions."
He also expressed concern about people staying in the water: "People walking in that water with those dead bodies, it can get in your pores, you don't have to drink it."
In addition to the 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.
The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.
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 spilling into New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling. But the danger was far from over.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone as early as Wednesday night 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.
In Washington, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from the federal petroleum reserves after Katrina knocked out 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's output. But because of the disruptions and damage to the refineries, gasoline prices surged above $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.
The death toll has reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone. But the full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days — in part, because some areas in both coastal Mississippi and New Orleans are still unreachable, but also because authorities' first priority has been the living.
In Mississippi, for example, ambulances roamed through the passable streets of devastated places such as Biloxi, Gulfport, Waveland and Bay St. Louis, in some cases speeding past corpses in hopes of saving people trapped in flooded and crumbled buildings.
State officials said Nagin's guess of thousands dead seemed plausible.
Lt. Kevin Cowan of the state Office of Emergency Preparedness said it is too soon to say with any accuracy how many died. But he noted that since thousands of people had been rescued from roofs and attics, it could be assumed that there were lots of others who were not saved.
"You have a limited number of resources, for an unknown number of evacuees. It's already been several days. You've had reports there are casualties. You all can do the math," he said.
On the flooded streets of New Orleans, dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out.
One of those rescued was 40-year-old Kevin Montgomery, who spent three days shuttling between the attic of a one-story home and a canopy he built on the roof.
Every once in a while, Montgomery would see a body float by. But he cannot swim and had to fight the urge to wade in and tie them down.
"It was terrible," he said. "All I could do was pass them by and hope that God takes care of the rest of that."
Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G. Breed, Cain Burdeau and Jay Reeves contributed to this report.
NEW ORLEANS — A mounting humanitarian crisis gripped this city Wednesday, two days after Hurricane Katrina blasted ashore, with police battling to halt looting, rescuers continuing to pluck survivors from rooftops and the mayor predicting hundreds or "most likely thousands" among the uncounted dead.
Floodwaters coursing through the city appeared to crest Wednesday, with 90 percent of the city's homes under water, officials said. Crews began repairs on gaping breaches in the city's lake and river levees, but progress was slow. And bus caravans prepared to carry 25,000 exhausted Louisiana Superdome refugees to shelter in Texas. Federal officials dispatched National Guard convoys and U.S. warships to the ravaged Gulf coast to aid in rescues and stem widespread looting.
The immense scale of the disaster and the pressing burden of new emergencies continued to threaten thousands of the dispossessed in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where survivors still scavenged for food and shelter and risked dehydration while waiting for rooftop rescues.
The fraying conditions of life in the flood zones could be measured in the sighs and short tempers of frustrated public officials. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin found fleeting hope in the decision by Texas officials to house thousands of flood refugees in the Houston Astrodome. But he turned grim as he predicted hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths from the storm and three days of flooding.
"Do the math," Nagin said. "We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water." The numbers, he said, were "minimum, hundreds. Most likely thousands."
City officials turned to setting up a temporary morgue and said they would soon begin a methodical search for the dead, presumably drowned in their houses, trapped in bedrooms and attics, and carried by flood currents. A New Orleans television station reported that one woman waded through floodwaters, floating her husband's body downstream to Charity Hospital on a door frame.
Over another long day, rescuers concentrated on the living. Helicopters darted over Chalmette Medical Center in inundated St. Bernard Parish, trying to evacuate more than 300 patients, medical staff and refugees who clambered to the hospital roof for safety. Other hospitals throughout the city were on the verge of shutting down as stores of generator fuel dwindled.
"The situation is grave," said Donald Smithburg, chief executive of the Louisiana State University Hospital System.
Two LSU hospitals in New Orleans "are desperately short of raw materials," Smithburg said. "We have no power, no water, no toilets, and we don't have fuel to operate our generators. ... We're simply out of juice. Now it boils down to transporting the rawest materials, fuel, so we can buy another few hours or another day."
In an effort to plug leaks in the city's levees, Army engineers made final preparations to drop massive sandbags by helicopter over the porous dikes and float barges in from the lakeside carrying massive concrete highway barriers that will be wedged against the gaps. Engineers said they planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 20,000-pound bags of sand and stone as early as Wednesday night into the 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall along the ruptured 17th Street Canal.
But public officials were furious after days of delay. Nagin blistered Army Corps of Engineers officials on television for their inaction, and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco scowled in irritation.
"I'm extremely upset about it," she said. Walter Baumy, a chief Army engineer, contended the Corps was struggling with river beds clogged with loose barges, boats and debris and could not find contractors able to maneuver heavy equipment into the flood zone. And Blanco acknowledged that officials were also struggling with faulty communication. After a disheartening aerial tour of the flooded city, Blanco said she was able to reach White House officials on a satellite phone but could not connect with Army and other officials in nearby Baton Rouge.
"Part of our problem is we're not getting information delivered quickly enough," she said.
Four amphibious warships dispatched by President Bush were steaming toward New Orleans with stores of provisions, medical supplies and equipment to aid in rescue efforts, medical treatment and even shelter for thousands of homeless residents. "Our first priority is to save lives," said Bush, who returned to Washington early from vacation at his Texas ranch. "We're assisting local officials in New Orleans in evacuating any remaining citizens from the affected area."
The armada sent to the Gulf coast included the Bataan, which will conduct rescue missions; four other amphibious ships to direct disaster response and the Comfort, a hospital ship. More than 10,000 National Guardsmen from other states were also being deployed, Bush said. Convoys of 400 trucks were converging on the flood zone with 5 million meals, 10,000 tarpaulins, 3 million pounds of ice and 144 portable generators. "And we're just starting," Bush added.
But in a controversial move, the Pentagon also authorized Adm. Timothy Whitaker, commander of the Northern Command, to lay plans for deploying active-duty troops -- a move that could only be ordered by the president under the rarely-used federal Insurrection Act.
Looters moved freely through New Orleans' shuttered shopping districts on Wednesday, wading through floodwaters with mounds of clothing, jewels and stolen guns. On the few spits of remaining dry land, there were carjackings. One furious city resident gave up his pickup truck to a machete-wielding assailant. Looters also swarmed through stores in the Mississippi coastal town of Gulfport where Hurricane Katrina demolished the city police station.
"It looks like Hiroshima," Mississippi's weary Gov. Haley Barbour said after touring Harrison County's ruined beach cities.
More than 60,000 homeless were reportedly adrift inside New Orleans. Across the numbed Gulf states, more than 900,000 made do without electric power, food, water or functioning toilets. They slept out in the sun on the interstate above the Louisiana Superdome, where a bus caravan pulled in Wednesday afternoon to drive the stadium's 25,000 homeless refugees to Houston and northern Louisiana.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said many refugees from the Superdome would be housed temporarily in Houston's Astrodome, which no longer is used for major sporting events, until other housing could be found. And their children, Perry said, would be welcomed into Texas schools. "We're going to get through this together as one American family," Perry said.
Thousands of lost people with nowhere to go began trudging in desperation west along Interstate 10. Many came from the poorest neighborhoods of east New Orleans, streaming out of several housing projects and the submerged Ninth Ward. They had no food or water, no clear destination in mind, but the water's harsh realm and the forced evacuations of public officials gave them no choice. They walked.
"It's very hot. There is no shade. We need to get provisions to them," Mayor Nagin said Wednesday night. "They have zero."
Many of the milling refugees were turned away when they tried to force their way into the Superdome. But with its domed roof tattered by Katrina's winds and its toilets overflowing, the old stadium was being abandoned. "We cannot accommodate anyone else in the Superdome," Nagin said.
Nagin said the remaining evacuees in the Superdome would be evacuated starting Thursday morning. He said he hoped the operation would take a day. Refugees would be bused to six locations, including Lafayette and Houston.
Looting continued Wednesday. Nagin acknowledged that there are an insufficient number of officers to stop it.
"We are going to try to contain the looting," he said. "But we know that we are not going to be able to stop it."
source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-katrina1sep01,0,6535670,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines 31aug2005
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