Mayor issues SOS as chaos tightens its grip

[lightstalker]

Julian Borger in Baton Rouge
Friday September 2, 2005
The Guardian


he mayor of New Orleans issued "a desperate SOS" yesterday as the effort to evacuate thousands of people still trapped in the flooded city was hindered by mob violence and gunfire.
The appeal came as angry crowds clashed with police, and the city's police chief warned that storm victims were being raped and beaten on the streets.

National guardsmen were moving into New Orleans in armoured vehicles to re-establish order and help the evacuation. But reports from the city described desperate scenes in the Superdome stadium and the city convention centre, where tens of thousands were awaiting evacuation, with fights breaking out, rubbish catching fire and dead bodies left uncollected.


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According to the police chief, Eddie Compass, an angry mob drove back 88 officers who were sent to restore order.
"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," he said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

Hurricane Katrina, which struck America's Gulf coast on Monday, and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans, is believed by officials to have taken thousands of lives. It was clear yesterday the crisis was still not under control.

Aid officials said helicopter missions to evacuate patients from New Orleans hospitals had been suspended because some helicopters had come under fire, possibly from armed civilians angry they were not being rescued. According to a New Orleans report, a police station had come under attack on Wednesday night, and some policemen were leaving their posts yesterday afternoon.

President George Bush called for "zero tolerance" towards criminals and promised the federal government was doing everything possible to speed the rescue. But his administration was criticised by officials in Louisiana for not responding fast enough.

Buses began ferrying stranded people from the New Orleans Superdome to another stadium on dry land, the Astrodome in Houston. But the city's mayor, Ray Nagin, predicted there would not be enough buses to rescue people in the convention centre

"This is a desperate SOS," Mr Nagin said on CNN TV. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention centre and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention centre is unsanitary and unsafe and we're running out of supplies."

Anger was also mounting at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which coordinates the national response to natural disasters.

Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans's emergency operations, complained that Fema was not offering enough help.

"This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace," he said. "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 New Orleans."

Officials said that 50,000 part-time national guard troops and military personnel would be committed to the relief effort. But the Pentagon resisted any suggestion that national guard troops from Louisiana should be pulled out of Iraq ahead of schedule.

Much of the unrest appeared to be driven by desperation as trapped survivors searched for food and water. Mr Bush made no distinction between those looters and the criminals stealing electronic goods.

"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,," Mr Bush told ABC television. "If people need water and food, we're going to do everything we can to get them water and food. But it's very important for the citizens to take personal responsibility and assume kind of a civic sense of responsibility."

Unrest broke out in the Superdome, where more than 20,000 people have been awaiting evacuation. Conditions have been deteriorating after part of the roof was blown off and the toilets blocked. Fights broke out and rubbish caught fire. In a scuffle, a police officer was shot in the leg.

Last night CNN reported that a New Orleans hospital had stopped evacuations after coming under sniper fire.

A spokesman for the homeland security department, Russ Knocke, said: "In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back."

"Hospitals are trying to evacuate," coastguard lieutenant commander Cheri Ben-Iesan said. "At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them."

The president is due to make a tour today of the devastation from Louisiana to Mississippi and Alabama.

Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capital, doubled in population overnight from 250,000 to over 500,000 as refugees poured in, according to a local councillor, Mike Walker.

"It's a new Baton Rouge," he said. "The unemployment rate in Baton Rouge is not very high. Now thousands of unemployed people are coming here. They are just being dropped off where they get off. They have no job, no cash."

It was also reported last night that the musician and New Orleans resident Fats Domino, 77, was missing following the hurricane.

[svizzerams]

NPR just reported that a "shoot to kill" order has been issued against looters / violent extremist in NO.

[Buzzsaw]

OK, I'm really pissed off. Granted, no evacuation of this scale has ever been attempted, but why is it taking so long? People's lives are at risk. Get some freaking buses in there.

[lightstalker]

Lets say (hypothetically) that New York got levelled with a cat 5 hurricane..Do you think it would take this long to send in Aid and reinforcements?

[seektravelinfo]

Lets say (hypothetically) that New York got levelled with a cat 5 hurricane..Do you think it would take this long to send in Aid and reinforcements?

No.

[SRR]

Lets say (hypothetically) that New York got levelled with a cat 5 hurricane..Do you think it would take this long to send in Aid and reinforcements?

I don't think they'd bring aid at all. I think they'd wall the city off, transport all of the USA's dangerous criminals there, and force everyone to wear their hair like they did in 1981.....

Kurt would rule supreme:

[goat balls]

No not at all there Lightstalker.

I'm sure that they could somehow levitate 40 or 50 thousand troopers and millions of tons of supplies into New York. After all, when there are no roads and barge traffic is blocked, beam me up scotty will get all the gear in there immediately.

You know like they do on Star Trek?

They would obviously use some type of magic that's just not available down in New Orleans.

WWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

[svizzerams]

Lets say (hypothetically) that New York got levelled with a cat 5 hurricane..Do you think it would take this long to send in Aid and reinforcements?

No.

Seems like I recall people weren't too impressed with response times and communication in NYC either. At least there was intact infrastructue in close proximity.

In another post there was the bit about the 700 people from a hotel near the Superdome put at the "head of the line" for evacuation. That won't do much for class/race relations.

I was thinking of a scenario like this in Seattle - a city somewhat isolated by the fact that to get into it requires crossing bridges...looking at the number of bridges and highways that appeared to be floating and are now looking like fallen dominos lying in water in the gulf coast region, I can imagine that Seattle would be tough to evacuate and enter after such a disaster. I'm not making excuses for poor planning etc - but I'm trying to imagine the logistics of dealing with something of this magnitude.

[Kurt]

If NYC got hit with a level 5 hurricane things would bog down as well.

On 9/11 for a while the firemen were the only ones able to work on the recovery effort and private boats had to shuttle people to New Jersey.

But North of 14th street in Manhattan things were pretty normal and the only infrastructure that suffered was phone service and some television reception.

[Penta]

Except that access doesn't seem to be that difficult. One English reporter I saw yesterday (I forget which, I've seen so many: but a respectable reporter from, I think, the BBC) said he had absolutely no difficulty getting in. He'd driven in an ordinary car or SUV, it had taken him 2 hours (from Baton Rouge, I think), and he'd seen no checkpoints or other obstacles, and there he was standing in the middle of New Orleans. He said he'd talked to several people locally who had people ready and willing to drive in and get them, but they'd been told it was impossible. And of course, not only did this mean many people could have been taken out earlier, people champing at the bit to bring in food and water could have done so as well.

Another report I saw said that when they started loading people on to buses (from Astrodome, I assume), which were going to all sorts of different places, not just Houston, they were not told where they were going, or given any choice at all, related to where they had friends or relatives willing to put them up. So people with friends in A, where the next bus was going, were taken hundreds of miles away to B. Similarly, people who had family in Baton Rouge were not allowed to get off there even though the bus went right through it. Being sensible about this would have taken only minimal organisation, but when they finally got the evacuation going they seem to have done it in a totally bone-headed (and authoritarian) way, with no apparent realisation that these were people, not cattle, they were dealing with -- and highly distressed, angry and traumatised people at that.

[Bronco]

I was thinking about Dunkirk,andn how the British called upon everybody who anything at all that would float to come help rescue their troops from the shores of the enemy.
I don't know how many troops were actually rescued, but why don't the rescue groups press any boats, helecopters, float planes, swamp buggies and busses into service?
I can't help but feel that if we used absolutely everything we had we could get those people out of there.

[RYP]

Paging Moses...paging Moses.... oh he is on vacation.


It is interesting how the media is obsessed with New Orleans and not the other states. Could it be because their are hotels there?? Hmmmmm