Rescue operations in this ruined city finally turned a corner Saturday, five agonizing days after Hurricane Katrina struck its fatal blow, as newly arrived U.S. military troops quickly evacuated thousands of exhausted storm refugees from the Superdome, the convention center and other beleaguered downtown sites.
Just a handful of civilians could be seen wandering empty streets Saturday evening that only a day before had been teeming with thousands of suffering refugees–and uncounted corpses. Buses that for days had been in short supply stood empty and idling, waiting for more passengers to take to rescue shelters in Houston, Dallas and points beyond.
Having cleared the scenes of downtown misery that had tormented a helpless nation all week–officials said 25,000 people had been evacuated from downtown since Friday–thousands of National Guard troops, Coast Guard rescuers, local police and state workers fanned out in trucks and small boats across the rest of the city, probing neighborhoods isolated by the massive floods that had yet to be reached.
What the rescuers sometimes found, however, were pockets of determined survivors who preferred to stay put in their flooded and battered homes despite the staggering hardships and danger. In block after block of the city’s tightknit 7th Ward, rescuers recorded the names and addresses of the residents and left pallets of food and water behind to help them survive.
“It happens over and over and over again,” said Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Sgt. Billy Gomillion. “The bad thing is, we ask them to leave and they say no. It’s heartbreaking to us, because we know what we’re going to find … .” His voice trailed off, but his meaning was clear: Gomillion expected to come back later and find some of those same people dead.
Elsewhere, though, there was progress on many fronts.
Medical personnel successfully airlifted hundreds of critically ill patients from a triage unit set up inside a Delta Air Lines terminal at the New Orleans International Airport, and fewer than 200 patients remained, officials said.
By late Friday, all major hospitals in New Orleans had been evacuated, said Richard Zuschlag, chief executive officer of Acadian Ambulance Service, the largest private ambulance company in Louisiana.
“We’ve made mistakes, the state has made mistakes, the federal government has made mistakes,” Zuschlag said. “But we’re all working together now and everyone is in sync.”
Soldiers patrolled much of downtown New Orleans, at last stemming days of rampant crime and looting. The American Red Cross got a system up and running to match more than a million people made homeless by the storm with friends and missing loved ones.
Phone trucks roll in
By day’s end, there was even a harbinger of an eventual return to some kind of normality: a parade of repair trucks from major phone companies snaked along historic St. Charles Avenue toward the city’s Garden District.
President Bush, making a somber appearance in the White House Rose Garden on Saturday morning only hours after returning from a daylong trip to the three worst afflicted Gulf Coast states, ordered 7,200 additional active-duty soldiers and Marines into the region to help with relief efforts.
Ten thousand more National Guard troops were being sent as well, raising the number of Guard personnel in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to about 40,000.
“Many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, and that is unacceptable,” Bush said. “We will not rest until we get this right and the job is done.”
Some rescue officials on the ground in New Orleans predicted that the first crucial phase of major rescue operations might be completed as soon as Sunday.
Despite the day’s successes, however, the crippled region still faced profound and urgent problems.
Fires burned untended and out of control across New Orleans, including one blaze that consumed a downtown Saks Fifth Avenue store.
Officials started preparing huge temporary morgues to accommodate the thousands of bodies they expect to find once they finish rescuing the living and can turn their attention to retrieving the dead. The bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating around the ruined city, crumpled in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
Worse, the dying was continuing, as the weakest, the sickest and the oldest victims continued to succumb, some even after they had been evacuated to safety.
Touring the airport triage center, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician, said “a lot more than eight to 10 people are dying a day.” Two New Orleans police officers shot and killed themselves, one Friday and one Saturday, according to Capt. Marlo Defillo, a police spokesman. “They’re all taxed,” he said. “But we’re still going strong.”
Across the nation, ripple effects spread in the form of gas shortages and spiking prices during a holiday weekend that traditionally is one of the biggest driving periods of the year.
There was scarcely any gasoline to be found in Baton Rouge, the nearest major city to New Orleans, on Saturday. Gasoline stations in many states experienced panic buying or simply ran out of fuel. Refiners and wholesalers rationed supplies.
Elsewhere across the stricken coast, relief efforts also intensified but still fell far short of meeting the needs of thousands of homeless people. Agencies trying to assist hurricane victims were hampered by fuel shortages. A day after the president stood in Biloxi and promised help, no government agency was there to erect tents for the homeless, and many officials criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying it seemed to focus on New Orleans at the expense of other areas.
Donovan Scruggs, the director of community development for Ocean Springs, just east of Biloxi, told Knight Ridder Newspapers that his city still didn’t have a FEMA contact.
At least in New Orleans, however, the rescue operation was looking better-coordinated.
At 8:30 a.m. Saturday, the eight-member crew of a hulking U.S. Navy H-53 helicopter–known for this mission as Hurricane 15–eased up along the Mississippi River and into the Convention Center’s bus parking lot, the first of the evacuation copters to arrive.
Throughout the day, Navy, Marine, Army and Coast Guard helicopters formed a virtual flying chain of human deliverance.
“We stood in a line all night,” said Gloria Louis, who, with her daughters, ages 10 and 13, was among the first survivors flown out of the convention center. “Everyone’s been saying, `They’re going to come and get us.’ I just don’t trust, so we came over here and got in line.”
`This is the biggest day’
“We were prepared, but not for what has happened here,” said Brig. Gen. Gary Jones of the Louisiana Army National Guard, the commander of the New Orleans joint hurricane task force. “We’re moving a lot today. This is the biggest day.”
All the evacuees were taken to the airport, where they were offloaded onto luggage carts and driven to the terminal to wait in more lines, these for flights to Dallas and San Antonio.
Meanwhile, volunteers were converging on New Orleans from across the country to help.
About 20 emergency workers from the Chicago Ambulance Alliance left Saturday in a nine-vehicle caravan to relieve some of the exhausted emergency workers in Louisiana.
“Every time we stop for a sandwich or gas, people come to us and say, `You are going to New Orleans? God Bless you,'” said Carl Vandenberg, one of the emergency workers.
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