FEMA instructed flood victims to seek safe refuge within the New Orleans Convention Center. However, when it came time to send MREs, water and medical supplies to emergency shelters, they failed to include the convention center. Thus, the 10,000 refugees counting on emergency assistance were left with nothing. Many dehydrated withing the convention center. Some died. It was a travesty of humanity.
Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.
Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people.
FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need.
cnn.com
During one of his first televised news conferences Wednesday, when violence and chaos were spreading in New Orleans and bodies were beginning to be seen floating in the water, Brown laughed and joked as he took reporters' questions.
At points last week, he described security in New Orleans as "pretty darn good." He said he had received no reports of "unrest," nor any information about uncollected corpses. And on Thursday night, he told CNN the agency had just learned that thousands of people had huddled at the New Orleans Convention Center, even though the city had directed them to go there, and journalists had been reporting their plight.
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