SwiftVets.com

[Ohio Voter]

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=66086358&p=66x8666x

New Orleans: Death, menace, fear, rape - anarchy
02/09/2005 - 06:42:26

New Orleans descended into anarchy as corpses lay abandoned in the streets, fights and fires broke out, police officers turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.

“They have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded,” Gov. Kathleen Blanco said yesterday of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq.

“These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”

Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the fear, anger and violence mounted yesterday.

“I’m not sure I’m going to get out of here alive,” said Canadian tourist Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. “I’m scared of riots. I’m scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire.”

The chaos deepened despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10bn (€8bn) recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President George Bush called the biggest in US history.

New Orleans’ top emergency management official called that effort a “national disgrace” and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention centre grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

“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.”

Col. Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police, said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers – many of whom from flooded areas – turning in their badges.

“They indicated that they had lost everything and didn’t feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives,” Whitehorn said.

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention centre several times to drop off food and water.

But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention centre, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city’s unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.

“This is a desperate SOS,” Nagin said in a statement. ”Right now we are out of resources at the convention centre and don’t anticipate enough buses.”

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention centre, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

Every so often, an armoured state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention centre with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Michigan, said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was: ”’Go to hell – it’s every man for himself.”’

“This is just insanity,” she said. “We have no food, no water … all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave.”

At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.

After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.

One 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.

Some of those in the crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe.

An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.

By yesterday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.

As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans’ emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“This is not a FEMA operation. I haven’t seen a single FEMA guy,” he said. He added: “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans.”

While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilise, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.

In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region today and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.

The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.

“I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this – whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,” Bush said. “And I’ve made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.”