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<DIV><B>From:</B> <A title=kevin@kevinfreels.com
href="mailto:kevin@kevinfreels.com">kevinfreels.com</A></DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, September 01, 2005 6:30 PM</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> Is it my imagination or is someone bumbling this entire rescue effort
in New Orleans? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yes, bumbling. I was thinking the same thing
a couple of days ago, and things have only gotten worse:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12537476.htm">http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12537476.htm</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>New Orleans in
Anarchy With Fights, Rapes<BR>By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press
Writer<BR><BR>40 minutes ago<BR><BR>NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans descended into
anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires
broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry
them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been
forsaken. "This is a desperate SOS," mayor Ray Nagin said.<BR><BR>"We are out
here like pure animals," the Rev. Issac Clark said outside the New Orleans
Convention Center, where he and other evacuees had been waiting for buses for
days amid the filth and the dead.<BR><BR>"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of
here alive," said tourist Larry Mitzel of Saskatoon, Canada, 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."<BR><BR>Four days
after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted
potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted,
despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans
for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort
President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.<BR><BR>New Orleans' top
emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and
questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless
city.<BR><BR>About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans
convention center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days
amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88
officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven
back by an angry mob.<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR>A military helicopter tried
to land at the convention center 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.<BR><BR>In hopes
of defusing the situation at the convention center, 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.<BR><BR>"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right
now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough
buses."<BR><BR>At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention
center, 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.<BR><BR>An old man in a chaise lounge
lay dead in a grassy median 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.<BR><BR>"I don't treat my dog
like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the
wheelchair.<BR><BR>"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do
nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military,
but you can't get them down here."<BR><BR>The street outside the center, above
the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers,
old bottles and garbage.<BR><BR>"They've been teasing us with buses for four
days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day,
and then they don't show up."<BR><BR>Every so often, an armored state police
vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in
riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the
National Guard.<BR><BR>At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We
want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention
center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd
..."<BR><BR>"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark
said.<BR><BR>"We've got people dying out here _ two babies have died, a woman
died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no
water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped
us."<BR><BR>Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police
officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell _ it's every man for
himself.'"<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>Some of those among the mostly poor 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.<BR><BR>"If they're just taking us anywhere,
just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be
worse than what we've been through."<BR><BR>By Thursday 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.<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR>FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in
areas where gunfire has broken out.<BR><BR>A day after Nagin took 1,500 police
officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets,
there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings _
and not all the crimes were driven by greed.<BR><BR>When some hospitals try to
airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people
just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better
come get my family.'"<BR><BR>Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people
were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who
would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and
explained that he needs pads for incontinence.<BR><BR>"I'm a Christian. I feel
bad going in there," he said.<BR><BR>Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes
and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is
personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high
with."<BR><BR>While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts
continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that
protects this below-sea-level city.<BR><BR>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. He said contractors had completed building a rock road to
let heavy equipment roll to the area by midnight.<BR><BR>The next step called
for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.<BR><BR>In
Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region
on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and
former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for
victims.<BR><BR>The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.<BR><BR>"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."<BR><BR>Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood
merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the
kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard
chased them away.<BR><BR>"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that
kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their
help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of
here!"<BR><BR>____<BR><BR>Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett
Martel, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this
report.</FONT><BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>