Superdome exodus on hold after shots
Looting worse, more National Guard arrive; storm deaths may be thousands
NBC News
Chaotic scenes Thursday as crowds try to evacuate the New Orleans Superdome. FREE VIDEO
Updated: 8:51 a.m. ET Sept. 1, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - National Guard troops in armored vehicles poured into New Orleans on Thursday to curb the growing lawlessness that included shots fired at a helicopter airlifting people out of the Superdome and carjackings of buses helping with evacuations.
The operation to bus more than 20,000 people to the Houston Astrodome was suspended “until they gain control of the Superdome,” said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome.
He said that military would not fly out of the Superdome either because of the gunfire and that the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control.
“That’s not enough,” Zeuschlag. “We need a thousand.”
He said medics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of people with guns at the Superdome.
Shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak, he said, adding that when another evacuation helicopter tried to land at a hospital in the outlying town of Kenner overnight, the pilot reported that 100 people were on the landing pad, and some of them had guns.
“He was frightened and would not land,” Zeuschlag said.
Reinforcements called in
An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were ordered into the Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief operations. The new units brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the largest military response to a natural disaster.
Looting has also been a problem in Mississippi.
“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 Thursday. “We’re trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.”
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, meanwhile, said one problem is that “we have an ongoing flood situation even as we’re in the middle of recovering from the hurricane.”
“We’re in a position where there are additional people we have to look for,” he told “Today.” “We’re hoping to get the most people out as we can in the next 12 hours and 24 hours, but we’re going to continue to search until we’re sure we’ve got everybody safe.”
New Orleans police focus on looters
In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin on Wednesday night ordered the city's 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission and focus on stopping the looting.
Looters and armed gangs “are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals and we’re going to stop it right now,” Nagin said.
Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets — even guns. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.
Police were asking residents to give up any firearms before they evacuated neighborhoods because officers desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a hotel said they were shot at.
Nagin called for an all-out evacuation of the city’s remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: “Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.”
Struggle to plug the breached levees
With most of the city under water, Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans’ breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of remaining people and practically abandon the below-sea-level city.
Nagin said there will be a “total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months.” And he said people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
If the mayor’s death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which have 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.
A slow exodus from the Superdome began Wednesday as the first refugees left the miserable surroundings of the football stadium and were transported in buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away.
Conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.
In Mississippi, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have been brought to the morgue already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well above 100.
Tempers were beginning to flare in the aftermath of the storm. Police said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg, Miss. |
