news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050901/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_katrina_52
AP New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes By ALLEN G BREED, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 1, 7:15 PM ET NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survi vors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken.
New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "nati onal disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach t he increasingly lawless city. About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans conven tion center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the build ing, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob. "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are g etting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction an d they are getting preyed upon." A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several time s to drop off food and water. 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 center, Nagin gave t he refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't ant icipate enough buses," Nagin said in a statement. At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a mak eshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways . The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical c are, and with no sign of law enforcement. An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babie s 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 wr apped in a sheet. "I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he p ointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "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." The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine an d feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage. "They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They'r e telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't s how up." Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the c onvention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. Later , a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center a nd led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd .. " "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. " At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by b us to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seethin g 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 nea r-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did sh ow 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 t he MP's rifle, police Capt. Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four d ays without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An am bulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome sus pended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter. "If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," sa id refugee John Phillip.
He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans." FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gu nfire has broken out. A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty t o try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of l ooting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings and not all the crimes were driven by greed. When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. 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. Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protect s this below-sea-level city. Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pound ed 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 equipme nt roll to the area by midnight. The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal t he gap.
President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims. "I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law duri ng an emergency such as this whether it be looting, or price gouging a t the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insuran ce fraud," Bush said. Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained tha t when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the conven tion center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them aw ay. "They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. Give us s ome vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"
The informati on contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewr itten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associ ated Press.
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