``I don't treat my dog like that,'' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as
he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. ``I buried my dog.'' He
added: ``You can do everything for other countries but you can't do
nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but
you can't get them down here.''
YOU ARE GOING TO NEED THEM HERE YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES WHEN THE SECOND
CIVIL WAR STARTS. ***** YOU.
Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter
Thursday September 1, 2005 4:31 PM
AP Photo LADP152
By ADAM NOSSITER
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and
stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on
Tuesday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help
restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.
``We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help,'' the Rev.
Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center,
complaining that he and others were evacuated, taken to the convention
hall by bus, dropped off and given nothing.
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to
the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.
Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the
stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over
the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door - a seething sea of tense,
unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where
heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.
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 additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were
ordered into the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to shore up security,
rescue and relief operations in Katrina's wake as looting, shootings,
gunfire, carjackings and other lawlessness spread.
That brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than
28,000, in what may be the biggest military response to a natural
disaster in U.S. history.
``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 NBC's ``Today'' show. ``We're trying to deal with
looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.''
The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the hot and
stinking Louisiana Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new
temporary home - another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles
away.
But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from
the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a
military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said
it had become too dangerous for his pilots.
The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by
buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said
National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider.
The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military
aircraft was fired on.
Fury rose among many of those evacuated. Outside the Convention Center,
the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical
care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees
had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not
come.
At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate
people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a
food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice
and whatever else they could find.
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.
``I don't treat my dog like that,'' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as
he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. ``I buried my dog.'' He
added: ``You can do everything for other countries but you can't do
nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but
you can't get them down here.''
Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses
were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the
floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty
diapers, old bottles and garbage.
``They've been teasing us with buses for four days,'' Edwards said.
People chanted, ``Help, help'' as reporters and photographers walked
through.
John Murray, 52, said: ``It's like they're punishing us.''
In Washington, the White House said President Bush will tour the
hurricane 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.
The president urged a crackdown on the looting and other lawlessness
that have spread through New Orleans.
``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.''
On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet
of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New
Orleans, he said: ``Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.'' The
death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.
If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural
disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to
6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane
since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and
12,000 people.
Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had
become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind
after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out
over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph
winds.
The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is
functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their
homes for at least a month or two.
``We need an effort of 9-11 proportions,'' former New Orleans Mayor
Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's ``Today''
show. ``So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate
for whatever reason. They are people who are African-American mostly
but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic
means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there.''
``A great American city is fighting for its life,'' he added. ``We must
rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and
multiculturalism.''
With New Orleans sinking deeper into desperation, Nagin ordered
virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts
Wednesday and stop the increasingly brazen thieves.
``They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas - hotels,
hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now,'' Nagin said.
In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked
authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning
hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and
medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.
The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks
near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped
catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of
the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of
sewage, gasoline and garbage.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook
helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500-foot
gap in the failed floodwall.
But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and
dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's
waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
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