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Subject: [NYTr] Local Officials Blast FEMA for "National Disgrace"
Date: 1 Sep 2005 14:55:41 -0500
From: nytr@olm.blythe-systems.com


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
MSNBC - Sep 1, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/

Cries for help spread across New Orleans

Local official blames FEMA for national disgrace, mayor issues SOS

NBC, MSNBC and news services

NEW ORLEANS - Thousands of desperate, stranded residents begged for help
Thursday as conditions deteriorated here, with heavy rain compounding a
tense situation that led to fights, fires and fears for the safety of
emergency responders.

Officials said thousands more National Guardsmen were being sent to the
city, and Congress planned a special session Thursday night to approve
emergency aid. But across the city, residents complained that aid was not
arriving and a local official blamed the Federal Emergency Management
Agency.

This is a national disgrace, said Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans
emergency operations. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no
command and control, Ebbert said. We can send massive amounts of aid to
tsunami victims but we cant bail out the city of New Orleans." "We have got
a mayor who has been pushing and asking but were not getting supplies.He
said the evacuation was almost entirely a Louisiana operation. This is not
a FEMA operation. I havent seen a single FEMA guy. This is a desperate
SOS, Mayor Ray Nagin said in a statement made available to CNN. Right now
we are out of resources at the convention center and dont anticipate enough
buses.  Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we are
running out of supplies for 15,000 to 25,000 people.

Outside the center, people complained that they were evacuated, taken to the
convention hall by bus, dropped off and given nothing.

We are out here like pure animals. We dont have help, said the Rev. Isaac
Clark, 68.

People there, some holding crying babies or elderly barely able to stand up,
shouted for help as TV news crews passed by.

Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals with 360 patients called The
Associated Press pleading for rescue, saying they were nearly out of food
and power and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape
looters.

We have been trying to call the mayors office, we have been trying to call
the governors office. ... We have tried to use any inside pressure we can. 
We are turning to you. Please help us, said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of
trauma surgery at Charity Hospital.

Other parts of the city saw similar desperation. We need help, Polly
Boudreaux, clerk of the St. Bernard Parish Council, told WAFB-TV in a phone
interview in which she broke down crying.

We're just been absolutely devastated, she said, and many residents still
need to be rescued.

Little outside aid has reached the parish, she added. We are not seeing
it.

While most stranded residents were orderly, police warned reporters to be
careful given the desperation.

We were told don't drink or eat in public as it could lead to a mob
situation, NBC's Michelle Hofland said. We were told that by sundown to
get out of here.

Federal rescue workers were pulled back from some areas of the city where
gunfire was heard or reported, a Department of Homeland Security official
told NBC News.

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.

Police Capt. Ernie Demmo said a National Guard military policeman was shot
in the leg as the two scuffled for the MPs rifle. The man was arrested.

These are good people. These are just scared people, Demmo said.

Superdome airlift suspended

The situation at the Superdome, where thousands of people were being
evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, also deteriorated. Paramedics
were alarmed by the sight of people with guns.

A crowd broke through a line of National Guardsmen and were stopped by 19
heavily armed state policemen, all in Kevlar vests.

State police Officer K.W. Miller told a reporter, You better move to the
back. This is ready to break. Weve been here since 6 a.m. and this is
getting worse and worse.

Theres so many people there. Its a desperate situation with no air
conditioning and no water, added Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Pete
Schneider.

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.

An air ambulance service official said helicopter transfers of the sick and
injured were suspended after report of a helicopter being fired on
overnight.

Able-bodied evacuees were still being moved by bus to Houston's Astrodome,
the National Guard said, correcting a Guard official who said that operation
was on hold as well.

Texas on Thursday announced that it would house 25,000 more evacuees in San
Antonio.

We need a thousand National Guard

The Superdome helicopter operation was suspended until they gain control of
the Superdome, said Richard Zuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was
handling the evacuation of sick and injured people.

He said the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police
officers to gain control. Thats not enough, Zuschlag. We need a
thousand.

Medics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of
people with guns at the Superdome, he added.

Zuschlag said shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome
before daybreak, but a National Guard officer said he had a report of just
one shot being fired at the helicopter.

Zuschlag added that when another evacuation helicopter tried to land at a
hospital in the outlying town of Kenner overnight, the pilot reported that
100 people were on the landing pad, and some of them had guns.

He was frightened and would not land, Zuschlag said.

Bush to visit Friday

President Bush will tour the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast region on
Friday and has asked former Presidents Clinton and Bush to lead a private
fund-raising campaign to help victims recover, the White House said
Thursday.

An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were
ordered into the Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief
operations. The new units brought the number of troops dedicated to the
effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the largest military response to
a natural disaster.

Looting has also been a problem in Mississippi.

The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most
people, brings out the worst in some people, said Mississippi Gov. Haley
Barbour on NBCs Today show Thursday. Were trying to deal with looters
as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, meanwhile, said one problem is
that we have an ongoing flood situation even as were in the middle of
recovering from the hurricane.

Were in a position where there are additional people we have to look for,
he told Today. Were hoping to get the most people out as we can in the
next 12 hours and 24 hours, but were going to continue to search until
were sure weve got everybody safe.

New Orleans police focus on looters In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin on
Wednesday night ordered the city's 1,500 police officers to leave their
search-and-rescue mission and focus on stopping the looting.

Looters and armed gangs are starting to get closer to heavily populated
areas  hotels, hospitals and were going to stop it right now, Nagin said.

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food,
blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets  even guns. The driver of a nursing-home
bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Police were asking residents to give up any firearms before they evacuated
neighborhoods because officers desperately needed the firepower: Some
officers who had been stranded on the roof of a hotel said they were shot
at.

Nagin called for an all-out evacuation of the citys remaining residents.
Asked how many people died, he said: Minimum, hundreds. Most likely,
thousands.

Struggle to plug the breached levees 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 mayors 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 nations deadliest hurricane
since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and
12,000 people.

In Mississippi, meantime, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in
hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have been brought to the morgue
already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well
above 100.

Tempers were beginning to flare in the aftermath of the storm. Police said a
man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg,
Miss.

Full magnitude unclear

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.

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 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.

[The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.]

) 2005 MSNBC.com
       
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