With pandemonium and violence exploding all around them, thousands of hurricane survivors desperate for food, water and escape from this ruined city pressed against thin lines of armed soldiers trying to hold them back Thursday as people began falling dead while waiting their turn to get out.
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin issued a “desperate SOS” for help from state and federal authorities in securing the increasingly lawless city. Shots were fired at rescue helicopters, briefly delaying the evacuation effort. The police chief said refugees diverted to the Convention Center were being beaten and raped while angry mobs forced back the officers he sent in to try to stem the chaos.
Officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency insisted they were working as fast as they could to get food, water and National Guard troops into the city and the tens of thousands of storm refugees out three days after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the region and triggered devastating flooding.
President Bush prepared to visit the stricken city Friday, and Congress had convened and was moving quickly to approve $10.5 billion in emergency aid for hurricane victims along the Gulf Coast.
But the head of New Orleans’ emergency operations, watching the slow exodus from the Superdome on Thursday morning, decried FEMA’s response as inadequate.
“This is a national disgrace,” said Terry Ebbert. “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.”
Tens of thousands of desperate and ailing survivors waited downtown in and around the Superdome and the Convention Center for promised buses that never showed up in enough numbers to take all of them to the Houston Astrodome, about 350 miles away. Texas also was expecting to take thousands of evacuees in San Antonio and Dallas.
“I’m weak right now because I haven’t eaten in three to four days,” said Alvin Lewis, 69, a longtime New Orleans resident who has diabetes and was waiting outside the downtown post office as buses kept passing him by. “I’m worried I may not make it.”
Victims died waiting while the living stepped over them to get to scarce supplies of food and water.
“I didn’t think about it because I’ve already seen too much. I was numb,” said Leon Hamilton, 37, a real estate lawyer from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, describing the two bodies he saw next to a loading dock at the Convention Center where survivors had found some food. Hamilton and his wife were visiting the fabled city to celebrate their anniversary and ended up trapped by the hurricane.
One woman, lying on a canvas cot, was having convulsions. Medics doused her with water and slapped her, trying to bring her around. A National Guardsman poured water on a baby he held while water also was poured on her mother.
No estimate on rescues
Officials could not estimate how many people were rescued from the city Thursday via buses, helicopters and heavy Army trucks. But as fast they were loaded up and taken out, new victims seemed to appear to take their place.
Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the Superdome when the evacuation efforts began. By Thursday afternoon the crowd in and around the Superdome had swelled to about 30,000. Pollard said people poured into the fetid stadium, already declared a health hazard because of the lack of electricity, water or sanitation, because they believe it is the best place to get a ride out of town.
Nagin has estimated that more than 100,000 of New Orleans’ 480,000 residents were trapped inside the city by Monday’s hurricane and the flooding that followed Tuesday when two major levees protecting the below-sea-level city were breached.
Experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still were struggling Thursday to plug those holes after earlier efforts to drop giant sandbags proved insufficient. But much of the damage already has been done: The water levels between Lake Pontchartrain on one side of the levees and downtown on the other are now equalized, officials said. They intend to leave the broken levees open for the moment in hopes that some of the water inside the city eventually will drain back into the lake.
Aid filters into Mississippi
In neighboring Mississippi, food and emergency relief was slowly starting to arrive in coastal towns that were hit hardest by Katrina on Monday, though aid had yet to be delivered to the victims.
But inside New Orleans, violence was the story. Unrest, which had been growing all week as looters rampaged with little challenge from outmanned police, surged Thursday as desperation among the storm victims grew. There were several reports of gun-toting residents firing on rescue helicopters, forcing them to temporarily suspend their flights.
“Hospitals are trying to evacuate,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan 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.'”
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.
Rapes, beatings reported
At the Convention Center, which was pressed into service as a temporary way station for an estimated 20,000 storm victims awaiting buses to pick them up, mayhem reportedly raged.
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.”
A military helicopter tried to land at the Convention Center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back away. Troopers then tossed supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
People cried out for help any way they could. One man tried to get the word out via an Internet blog run by the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
“My co-worker’s brother is one of seven doctors who have been left behind at Charity Hospital,” the man wrote at midday. “… He is in a panic–the doctors have barricaded themselves on the seventh floor because armed gunmen are outside threatening them and demanding access to the roof so they can be rescued first. He is desperate. Someone needs to help these people NOW!”
Officials said they had so far dispatched 2,800 National Guard troops into the city to help restore order, with another 12,000 on the way within days.
Governor seeks more help
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she had requested another 40,000 troops to help secure affected areas in the state and aid in search and rescue. Some National Guard troops will be sent to cities that suddenly have doubled in size because more than 1 million people have fled southern Louisiana.
Blanco announced late Thursday that 300 heavily armed National Guard troops from Arkansas, “fresh back from Iraq,” had arrived and were being deployed immediately to downtown New Orleans.
“They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded,” she said grimly. “I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary. And I expect they will.”
They can’t arrive soon enough, Nagin said.
“This is a desperate SOS,” Nagin told CNN earlier in the day. “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.”
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mjmartinez@tribune.com
hwitt@tribune.com
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Where to donate for hurricane relief
– American Red Cross, 800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English, 800-257-7575 Spanish
– Operation Blessing, 800-436-6348
– America’s Second Harvest, 800-344-8070
– Adventist Community Services, 800-381-7171
– Catholic Charities USA, 800-919-9338
– Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, 800-848-5818
– Church World Service, 800-297-1516
– Convoy of Hope, 417-823-8998
– Lutheran Disaster Response, 800-638-3522
– McCormick Tribune Foundation, Hurricane Katrina Relief Campaign, 800-508-2848
– Mennonite Disaster Service, 717-859-2210
– Nazarene Disaster Response, 888-256-5886
– Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, 800-872-3283
– Salvation Army, 800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769)
– Southern Baptist Convention — Disaster Relief, 800-462-8657, ext. 6440
– United Methodist Committee on Relief, 800-554-8583
–Associated Press
