To our members in the South

This is awful. I’m kind of at a loss for words.

New Orleans is in a state of anarchy, they’re shooting at rescue helicopters

This is one big clusterfuck. They should have done more and invested more money on building stronger leeves they said on BBC. A woman interviewed on BBC said there’s not only loothing and gunfights, but also raping of babies and women

Here’s the latest

By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer
44 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Storm victims were raped and beaten, fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. "This is a desperate SOS," the mayor said.

Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of storm victims increasingly hungry, desperate and tired of waiting for buses to take them out.

"We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and the and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing — no food, no water, no medicine.

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.

"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."

In hopes of defusing the unrest 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 can find. But the bedlam at the convention center appeared to make leaving difficult.

A military heliocpter 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.

National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order and put a stop to the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city under water.

In a statement to CNN, Nagin said: "This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don’t anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we’re running our of supplies."

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the government is sending in 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting and other lawlessness in New Orleans. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city, he said.

But across the flooded-out city, the rescuers themselves came under attack from storm victims.

"Hospitals are trying to evacuate," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center. "At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.’"

Some Federal Emergency Management rescue operations were suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington. "In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back," he said.

A National Guard 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.

"These are good people. These are just scared people," Demmo said.

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 people 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 with 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."

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. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

John Murray, 52, said: "It’s like they’re punishing us."

The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos as well.

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.

At the front of the line, heavily armed policemen and guardsmen stood watch and handed out water as tense and exhausted crowds struggled onto buses. At the back end of the line, people jammed against police barricades in the rain. Luggage, bags of clothes, pillows, blankets were strewn in the puddles.

Many people had dogs and they cannot take them on the bus. A police officer took one from a little boy, who cried until he vomited. "Snowball, snowball," he cried. The policeman told a reporter he didn’t know what would happen to the dog.

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. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up.

Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said authorities are working on establishing a temporary jail to hold people accused of looting and other crimes. "These individuals will not take control of the city of New Orleans," he said.

The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the 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 was 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 helicopter was fired on.

Terry Ebbert, head of the city’s emergency operations, warned that the slow evacuation at the Superdome had become an "incredibly explosive situation," and he bitterly 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 the city of New Orleans."

In Texas, the governor’s office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though exactly where has not been determined.

In Washington, the White House said President Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father 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."

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 126 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.

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.

"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."

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said rescued people begged him to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.

When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a woman whose father had been rescued and told her: "Your daddy’s alive, and he said to tell you he loves you."

"She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,’" he said.

___

Associated Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Robert Tanner, Allen G. Breed, Cain Burdeau, Jay Reeves and Brett Martel contributed to this report.

Source

Members of thunders keep us in your prayers. I live 150 miles from the cost here in Mississippi it is not nothing in comparison here to the cost but my small town home is full of refuges from the hurricane. I have friends that there homes are half destroyed; the power has been out in the county seance early Monday and the still expect it to be several days till it’s on. We are out of gas, bottled watter, and ice.Trees are down every where;and some of the rodes are still impassable. But One thing is certain we are glade to be here.

There are people from the cost that know there homes are gone, there jobs are gone ,and can’t find family members. They are going around town looking for work because they are out of a job and running out of money but they can’t go home because there is nothing left. We are all trying to help them but we need your prayers. There is a lot that has to be done.

They can’t move quite as fast through water and can’t move as many in the air. The highway out of town going west is jammed and traffic is moving very slow, from what I have read over the past couple hours. It’s not like they can just drive in and drive out. There is a huge concentration of people in one or two places and a narrow path to get them out.

I hope all of our members and their families survived and are safe.

Man, I live in louisiana and the devestation is unbelievable. People are in desperate need of help. Most of us escaped the storm but the poorest of the poor had to stay, All of the surrounding towns are overflowing and most of the gas stations are sold out.

This is the worst condition I have ever seen our state in. It does seem like the gov’t is waiting forever to send help.

Samus, Carpenter and all who live in the south, especially the damaged areas.

People are doing what they can, as fast as they can right now. I do feel very sad for those who had to stay. I wish there had been someway of getting them all out. Also understand that the most critical have to be moved first, and its really freaking hard when people are shooting at the helicopters who are trying to get them out. Can the folks shooting fly a choper, probably not.

It does take some time to work the logistics of an operation this size. Please be patient, I understand that is very hard to do when you have no food, no water to drink, and unsafe living conditions. And for those who are pissed at the president, what do you want him to do? He has ordered in national guard to hopefully restore and maintain some semblence of order, he has ordered the guard to help evacuate people. I agree that the gas prices are getting out of hand, but even then, if the refineries are down, what the hell do you expect? We are all in this together.

I’m sure that if any of us think we can do a better job than what is being done, President Bush would be glad to hear from you. I know that I couldn’t come up with a better, faster plan than what is being developed. Its hard yes, but please hang in there. Brighter, happier days are ahead.

My prayers have been with the people down south before the hurricane even hit, they are more feverent now.

Something that just occurred to me is that there are 10,000 drug addicts in the New Orleans area that have no access to drugs, and many of them are armed. Not a good combination.

Why are the pumps in New Orleans not five foot above the highest flood stage ever recorded on the Mississippi River?

They hit the drug stores already, first night.

As far as I know, they don’t sell crack at CVS.

Hey some times you have to rough it Mr. Dick.

At the Superdome there are police with guns—they could make sure the food was distributed properly. New Orleans is a national disgrace. We need to get those people out now.

They either wouldn’t function at all that high or their efficiency would be greatly reduced. Pumps can’t be located very high above the water source. They push water, not suck it.

According to this blog from a guy in New Orleans the real military is finally arriving. About time.

Driveshaft anyone?

No catfights please. One of the major problems as far as why it is taking so long to mobilize troops is because most of us are over here in Iraq. I am attached to the 155th Mississippi National Guard. The whole brigade is here along with most of the Louisiana National Guard and some of the Arkansas National Guard. If we had been there, we would have been put on alert the day before the storm hit. You are so right, the logistics side is a nightmare. It took damn near a month to get us over here and that was with a prior plan in place. I watch the tv and I feel for the people. I wouldn’t go there either if someone was shooting at me, at least not unless I could shoot back. Why do you think so many people stayed back? Some thought they could ride the storm out and had good intentions. However, there were so many that stayed back just to take whatever they could from other people’s homes. Just my 2 cents.