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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NYTr] Too Late, Governor Order Everyone to Leave New Orleans
Date: 31 Aug 2005 11:30:12 -0500
From: nytr@olm.blythe-systems.com


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
[The time to get everyone out of the city was 2 days before the storm hit.
Now, it's a bit late, with thousands stuck in the dark, airless Superdome,
bodies floating in the drink, unknown numbers of hospitalized and elderly
trapped in nursing homes and hospitals without power.

Even discounting the scandalous inattention of the Federal Government, one
has to wonder what is wrong with the governors and other local officials
who did nothing to prepare or publicize the complete inadequacy of the
civil defense preparedness of their cities and towns.  Why weren't they'
screaming to the press about the lack of maintenance of the levees, the
loss of budget money, etc.?  Everyone was just hoping they'd be lucky,
didn't want to rock the boat by criticizing a vengeful administration 
that couldn't care less about domestic needs -- there are profits to be
made in Iraq by KBR and Halliburton. Why ask them to do any work in the
southern states of the US?

Well, their luck has run out and the boats they didn't want to rock are 
all swamped.-NYTr]

AP - Aug 31, 2005
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HURRICANE_KATRINA?SITE=OHRAV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-08-31-09-58-17

Aug 31, 9:58 AM EDT

Governor: Everyone Must Leave New Orleans

By BRETT MARTEL
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The governor of Louisiana says everyone needs to 
leave New Orleans due to flooding from Hurricane Katrina. "We've sent 
buses in. We will be either loading them by boat, helicopter, anything 
that is necessary," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. Army engineers struggled 
without success to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant 
sandbags, and the governor said Wednesday the situation was worsening 
and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city.

"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said 
on ABC's "Good Morning America." "The National Guard has been dropping 
sandbags into it, but it's like dropping it into a black hole."

As the waters continued to rise in New Orleans, four Navy ships raced 
toward the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, 
and Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the 
devastated region. The Red Cross reported it had about 40,000 people in 
200 shelters across the area in one of the biggest urban disasters the 
nation has ever seen.

The death toll from Hurricane Katrina reached at least 110 in 
Mississippi alone, while Louisiana put aside the counting of the dead to 
concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on 
rooftops and in attics.

	

	

A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full 
fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets on Tuesday, 
swamping an estimated 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level 
city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New 
Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.

"We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Mayor Ray 
Nagin said on ABC's "Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's 
concerning me is have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time 
the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue."

Blanco said she wanted the Superdome - which had become a shelter of 
last resort for about 20,000 people - evacuated within two days, along 
with other gathering points for storm refugees. The situation inside the 
dank and sweltering Superdome was becoming desperate: The water was 
rising, the air conditioning was out, toilets were broken, and tempers 
were rising.

At the same time, sections of Interstate 10, the only major freeway 
leading into New Orleans from the east, lay shattered, dozens of huge 
slabs of concrete floating in the floodwaters. I-10 is the only route 
for commercial trucking across southern Louisiana.

The sweltering city of 480,000 people - an estimated 80 percent of whom 
obeyed orders to evacuate as Katrina closed in over the weekend - also 
had no drinkable water, the electricity could be out for weeks, and 
looters were ransacking stores around town.

"The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people 
in shelters," the governor said. "It's becoming untenable. There's no 
power. It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, 
just basic essentials."

She gave no details on exactly where the refugees would be taken. But in 
Houston, Rusty Cornelius, a county emergency official, said at least 
25,000 of them would travel in a bus convoy to Houston starting 
Wednesday and would be sheltered at the 40-year-old Astrodome, which is 
no longer used for professional sporting events.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people 
on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called 
floating dormitories - boats the agency uses to house its own employees.

To repair one of the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, officials 
late Tuesday dropped 3,000-pound sandbags from helicopters and hauled 
dozens of 15-foot concrete barriers into the breach. Maj. Gen. Don Riley 
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said officials also had a more 
audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole.

Riley said it could take close to a month to get the water out of the 
city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the 
water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security 
chief, Terry Ebbert.

A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi 
revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while 
waiting for rescue boats.

"I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years 
ago," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction 
by air Tuesday.

All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood 
refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu 
said 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed 
shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the 
truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, 
with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.

"Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through 
the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in 
New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, 
flashing lights. It was complete chaos."

Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting 
authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed 
personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head 
by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said.

A giant new Wal-Mart in New Orleans was looted, and the entire gun 
collection was taken, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported. "There are 
gangs of armed men in the city moving around the city," said Ebbert, the 
city's homeland security chief. Also, looters tried to break into 
Children's Hospital, the governor's office said.

On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel 
gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, 
Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and 
ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting took place in 
full view of police and National Guardsmen.

Blanco acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that 
officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but 
first and foremost is search and rescue," she said.

Officials said it was simply too early to estimate a death toll. One 
Mississippi county alone said it had suffered at least 100 deaths, and 
officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot 
higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, 
home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials 
said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.

Several of the dead in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment 
building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Hurricane 
Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds Monday. Louisiana 
officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of 
the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.

Blanco asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.

"That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord 
that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; 
we will survive; we will rebuild."

Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents 
remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. 
Officials said it could be weeks, if not months, before most evacuees 
will be able to return.

Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the 
region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return 
to Washington to focus on the storm damage.

Also, the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from federal 
petroleum reserves to help refiners whose supply was disrupted by 
Katrina. The announcement helped push oil prices lower.

Katrina, which was downgraded to a tropical depression, packed winds 
around 30 mph as it moved through the Ohio Valley early Wednesday, with 
the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes.

The remnants of Katrina spawned bands of storms and tornadoes across 
Georgia that caused at least two deaths, multiple injuries and leveled 
dozens of buildings. A tornado damaged 13 homes near Marshall, Va.

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G. Breed, 
Adam Nossiter and Jay Reeves contributed to this report.

) 2005 The Associated Press.

       
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