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Lawyer: Officers used 'reasonable' force

12:22 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
what a bech a pig's i'm sorry that's sick .poor oid man no gun just no good white
cups this is so sick david my heart go to his love one's and him my god
The lawyer for three police officers arrested and suspended from the force after a taped
incident on Bourbon Street says the men have been ‘tried and convicted’ by the media and that
the facts will show that ‘reasonable’ force was used. He said ‘politics’ was the reason that Mayor
Nagin and other city officials had quickly condemned the actions.
Lance Schilling and Robert Evangelist were charged in connection with the taped encounter with
64-year-old Robert Davis and officer S.M. Smith was charged in connection with a physical
confrontation with an Associated Press producer.
The tape appears to show several blows being delivered to Davis that caused his head to slam
against a wall. He is then brought to the ground, while apparently resisting, and additional blows were delivered.
Attorney Frank DeSalvo said the bloody mess that was on the ground and the blood streaming
from Davis’ face came as a result of his face hitting the ground as a federal agent wrestled
him to the floor, though the video seems to show Davis falling on his back as he is brought to the ground.
According to DeSalvo, Davis was stumbling on Bourbon Street and fell into a police horse
when officers came to his aid. They arrested him for public intoxication, though admit no
breath or blood test was given. Davis contends he hasn’t had alcohol in 25 years.
DeSalvo said tests to prove inebriation are rarely given in cases of public drunkenness.
DeSalvo added that nothing out of the ordinary would have occurred if Davis had not
resisted. He said that one of Davis’ hands were cuffed but that the attempt to cuff the
other necessitated the blows seen on the video. He contends that none of the blows
struck Mr. Davis in the head.
None of the officers present were allowed to answer questions, though PANO Chief
David Benelli said he was upset that the officers had been “tried and convicted”
in public prior to a complete investigation.
Man shown on tape being punched by police pleads 'not guilty' in court
10:54 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
A 64-year-old retired teacher accused of being drunk and resisting arrest, and
whose beating by city police was caught on videotape, pleaded not guilty Wednesday
and insists that he has not had a drink in 25 years.
A lawyer for Robert Davis said charges of public intoxication, resisting arrest, battery
on a police officer and public intimidation were groundless and that they should be dropped.
"They've got nothing," attorney Joseph Bruno said earlier this week.
At a short hearing Wednesday, Davis pleaded not guilty, was released on bond and
had trial set for Jan. 18 -- a week after the start of the scheduled trial for the
officers accused of beating him.
Bruno also has said that his client plans to file a civil suit against the city.
Davis says he had not been drinking before he was beaten by two police officers,
a weekend confrontation taped by an Associated Press Television News crew.
Those officers and a third accused of grabbing and shoving an APTN producer
have pleaded not guilty to battery charges.
The beating has put another unwanted spotlight on the city's beleaguered police
force following Hurricane Katrina. The Justice Department also has opened a
civil rights investigation stemming from the incident.
Davis said earlier this week that he had wandered into the French Quarter in search
of cigarettes before the confrontation.
"I didn't do anything," said Davis, who said he had approached a mounted police
officer to ask about the city's curfew.
Another officer on foot "interfered and I said he shouldn't," Davis said. As he
crossed the street, Davis said, he was hit and eventually thrown to the pavement.
Police, however, argue differently and the officers' lawyer, Frank DeSalvo,
said they arrested a stumbling Davis to protect him from himself.
Davis and his lawyer said no blood or breath tests for drunkenness were
administered following Davis' arrest. New Orleans police said they typically do
not test people arrested for public intoxication. Spokesman Marlon Defillo said
judges traditionally rely on an officer's expertise.
Davis said he had returned to New Orleans from Atlanta to inspect properties owned
by family members. He said he was no longer sure he'll return permanently to the
city he has called home for 28 years.
"That's up in the air. The chaos that's here -- I don't know," he said Monday.
Davis and police officials have said they did not believe race was a factor.
Davis is black; the three city police officers on the tape are white.
"I don't have time to be vindictive, but the good Lord is going to take care of
everything," Davis said Tuesday on CNN's "NewsNight with Aaron Brown."
MAYOR AUTRY DEFENDS TRIP
TO GULF COAST
MAYOR AUTRY DEFENDS TRIP TO GULF COAST 
LINK'S TO WELCOME TO FRESNO CA WEB SITE RIGHT HERE
http://www.big8atitsbestnews.com/welcometofresnoca.htm
LIKE TO CITY OF FRESNO.CA. WEB SITE RIGHT HERE
http://www.ci.fresno.ca.us/
September 15, 2005 time is 9:58am
Fresno Mayor Alan Autry says he's not backing down from his plan
to travel to the Gulf Coast to bring Hurricane Katrina evacuees to Fresno.
There are already more than 100 in Fresno County now, and county leaders say there will
be a real pinch if the mayor's trip leads to an influx of evacuees.
Autry says it's not a recruiting trip, but he does want more hurricane victims to come to Fresno.
"Going there proactively, to me, makes a lot of sense," said Autry.
Autry isn't backing off his plans, even if county leaders say it's a bad idea.
Autry says he'll pay for his trip to Texas and Louisiana, "I don't want to get into some
kind of tit for tat with our supervisors or councilmen. I respect them and I believe down
the line, their conscience will catch up with their politics."
Fresno County Administrator Bart Bohn says it's not about conscience or politics. He says
the county's social services are already spread thin.
In Fresno County, 213,000 people are on MediCal, 113,000 get food stamps and 65,000 are
in CalWorks, a welfare to work program.
Bohn says those people could be forced to compete with hurricane victims for limited help,
"If we were to have a surge of evacuees to arrive, it would mean diverting our workforce
from handling those people they're already working with to handling the new arrivals. And that's
the major concern of the Board of Supervisors, that we don't disadvantage those we're
already working with."
Autry insists they can find a way to help everyone and he's still committed to helping 400
victims, even if it means going to the hurricane zone to find them.
If hundreds of hurricane victims arrive at one time, the county administrator says it could
cost the county $100,000 to $200,000.
More costs could now be reimbursed by the federal government, because President Bush
extended the state of emergency to California on Wednesday.
Grandmom fired for missing work during
Katrina to care for child
10:30 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
KANSAS CITY, MO -- When forced to decide between caring for her 18-month-old
granddaughter while the toddler's parents were stranded in New Orleans or showing
up for her job, Barbara Roberts chose to be a grandma. For that, she was fired.
Roberts, 54, had driven 200 miles from her home in Mount Vernon to Columbia on
Aug. 27, the Saturday before Hurricane Katrina came ashore, to care for granddaughter
Trisana for a couple of days. Her daughter, Tina Roberts, and son-in-law,
Chris Hardin, were in New Orleans.
It was supposed to be a weekend business trip for the couple, and Roberts,
who had used up her allotted time off in her assembly line job at Positronic
Industries, had planned to be back to work on Monday. Her daughter had even
arranged for another baby sitter to spend Sunday night with Trisana so
Roberts could get home in time.
But when her son-in-law tried to schedule the flight home on the afternoon of
Aug. 27, he was told all flights had been canceled because of the approaching hurricane.
"There was a Category 5 hurricane with a bull's-eye on our butts, so we called
Barb and said we didn't know when we would be coming home," said Hardin,
a professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. "We truly
didn't know what would happen down there."
With no other relatives in the area to take care of the child, Roberts said
she had no choice but to call work on Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit,
and tell her boss that she would be missing a few days.
"There was no decision to make -- it was already made," Roberts said. "My
daughter could have died down there. This was family. You don't walk out on a
child -- especially my grandbaby."
Hardin and his wife spent several days locked down in a hotel -- safe from the
chaos that befell most of New Orleans after the levees broke -- and finally made it
back to Columbia on Thursday, Sept. 1. Shaken up, they asked Roberts to stay one more day.
She says she was told on the phone that she was going to be fired. And on Sept. 6, she was.
"All I know for sure is that I had missed so many hours, and then this came up,"
Roberts said. "Usually you have a certain amount of vacation time, and I had used
it up. You're also allowed so many unpaid days off, and I'd used them up, too.
Fact is, I missed the allotted time and I got fired."
In response to questions about Roberts' termination, Positronic Industries
President John Gentry said the company had made cash donations to relief
efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims, but he declined to talk about Roberts.
The company manufactures electrical connectors.
Hardin said his mother-in-law's firing was "absolutely unethical."
"People speak of family values, and I don't see what's a more central family
value than a grandmother stepping up in this sort of situation," he said.
"I sit here trying to imagine what kind of world it would be if grandmothers
didn't make that decision."
EPA: New Orleans air not overly polluted
05:53 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — The putrid air rising from New Orleans' slowly receding floodwaters
was found Wednesday not to be overly polluted, encouraging news for a mayor weighing
the reopening of the French Quarter and other dry parts of the city.
Mayor Ray Nagin had said a clean bill of health for the air would allow the tourist-friendly
French Quarter and central business district to reopen as early as Monday. And while the
Environmental Protection Agency still found the floodwaters contained dangerous levels
of sewage-related bacteria, the air pollutants were determined to be at acceptable levels.
Nagin said he expects about 180,000 people to return to the city within a week or two,
when power and sewer systems are restored. Some retailers should be operating by then,
as well as two hospitals.
"Once they come back, we'll have the critical services for them to at least live a semi-normal life,
" he said Wednesday on CNN's "Larry King Live."
In the future, the mayor said, he wants a plan for the city to be in full control of disaster
evacuations, instead of relying on help from the federal government.
"I'm not going to plan on the cavalry coming," he said. "Unless they can give me some
incredible comfort that this has been fixed, I am not going to be in this position again."
As the grim cleanup continued, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco took responsibility
Wednesday for failures and missteps by the state government in the immediate aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. She pledged to remake New Orleans better than before the storm.
"To anyone who even suggests that this great city should not be rebuilt, hear this and
hear it well: We will rebuild," she said, addressing a meeting of state lawmakers in Baton Rouge.
Meyer reports the nursing home where 34 were found dead was not battered by the hurricane itself.
About 40 to 50 percent of the city was still flooded, down from 80 percent after
Katrina hit, as 53 permanent and temporary pumps worked to siphon off 8 billion gallons a day.
On the hard-hit east side, block after block of once-flooded neighborhoods gave
way to a slimy, putrid muck, ruined cars, snapped utility poles and collapsed houses.
Virtually all homes bore marks indicating they had been searched for victims.
None in sight during a pass through neighborhoods had an additional numeral
that would indicate bodies.
The body count in Louisiana alone climbed to 474 on Wednesday, and it was
expected to rise further as state and federal officials went about the tedious
task of collecting bodies and then using DNA to identify them.
"It's going to take months, maybe years," said Dr. Louis Cataldi, the coroner
for Baton Rouge Parish. "This is not going away."
Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal hurricane response,
outlined the procedures for body collection, including readings of ecumenical
prayers and ceremonial washing of bodies in accordance with various religious traditions.
"This is a very, very sensitive process," Allen said. "We are mindful of the dignity
that needs to be accorded to these remains."
The state attorney general's office said all of its investigators have been pulled
from other tasks to work on the Medicaid Fraud Unit, the team whose work led to
Tuesday's negligent homicide charges against the husband-and-wife owners of a
Chalmette nursing home where 34 elderly residents drowned in floodwaters.
Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said the office
has been besieged with allegations of neglect that may have led to injuries or
deaths at nursing homes and hospitals.
But Louisiana District Attorneys Association President Peter Adams said he would
be surprised if such incidents were widespread. "What we've mainly seen in heroism," he said.
In Washington, Senate Republicans scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to
establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to
investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to the hurricane.
Separately, a Senate committee opened a hearing on the disaster, with the panel's
Republican chairwoman saying that changes instituted after Sept. 11 in the
government's emergency-preparedness failed their first major test during Katrina.
With billions of dollars to boost disaster preparedness at all levels of government,
"we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy," said
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "Instead, we witnessed what appeared to be a
sluggish initial response."
President Bush prepared to travel to the state Thursday to deliver a prime-
time televised speech to the nation.
Louisiana Transportation officials estimated Wednesday that about 1.2 million
people were evacuated from the metro New Orleans area in the two days leading
up to Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall, many of those people still scattered in other states.
A day after Nagin said the city is essentially broke, New Orleans' already beleagured
school system announced it would also need federal assistance to keep paying its
teachers. The last paychecks were being made available at Western Union locations
to 7,000 employees spread across the nation, but after that $13 million is doled out,
the system will be out of money.
"The cash situation is dire," said William Roberti, with Alvarez & Marsal, a
restructuring firm that has been working with New Orleans' public schools.
Across a shattered city, the most obvious sign of progress came in the form of flickering
lights. About 168,000 customers were still without power in the New Orleans area,
mostly in places still flooded, but that number had gone down 10,000 in a day.
"I can tell you the numbers are going to go by slowly because we've reached the
flooded areas," said Morgan Stewart, a spokesman for Entergy Corp.
The Hibernia Corp., Louisiana's oldest bank whose landmark building was once
the city's tallest, turned on its lights at sunset Wednesday. The bank is well-known
for the colors that light up the building's cupola during the holidays.
Guard returns from Iraq to Katrina;
destruction all too familiar
10:36 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
ST. ROSE -- Of those streaming back to clean and fix homes in this riverside suburb of
New Orleans, few have come as far as Army Sgt. Jackie Gantt.
Gantt was stuck in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina raked his hometown, scattering the
trees on his street like bowling pins and lathering his backroom floor in brown muck.
He watched the storm on TV from Baghdad, able to do nothing as his family fled.
An Army medic with the Louisiana National Guard, Gantt made it home this week
aboard the first plane of Guardsmen arriving in Louisiana. When the soldiers landed,
they shook hands with Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who apologized about the state of the state.
On Tuesday, the last of Gantt's battalion is expected to return home aboard two
charter flights from Kuwait. The remaining Louisiana Guardsmen in Iraq, all part
of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, aren't expected to return until the end of September.
At least 80 percent of Gantt's home unit, the New Orleans-based 1st Battalion of
the 141st Field Artillery Regiment, is thought to have lost their homes.
Overall, the Louisiana Guard saw 35 troops killed and more than 200
wounded during its 10 months in Iraq.
Gantt's family, staying in a motel in Port Arthur, Texas, picked him up at the airport,
and together they ventured home to see what Katrina had left them.
"As we got closer I started to get scared," said Gantt, a tall and talkative soldier
with graying hair and mustache.
He worried that he, his wife and five other family members might not be able to move
back into their one-story home that sits just two blocks from the Mississippi River.
Along River Road, billboards and telephone poles had blown down. Trees were split
and festooned with nests of power lines. Sheets of corrugated tin that once covered
grain elevators were twisted like bow ties.
Gantt, 39, told his 12-year-old daughter Nicole that New Orleans reminded him of
Iraq: piles of garbage, blasted-out and looted shops, locked-and-loaded troops
rolling past in armored convoys.
But there was one major difference.
"I don't have to worry about mortars or rockets coming in," Gantt said.
Last week, a shower of insurgents' mortar rounds and 106-millimeter rockets
screamed down on the Guardsmen in Baghdad as they
made their final preparations to return home.
Gantt's heart now thumped as the family rolled up in front of the squat brick home.
He stepped out of the car and strolled the yard. Other than a punctured carport
and a downed fence and limbs, there was no major damage.
"We're good so far," Gantt told his family.
The family lugged their suitcases inside and looked around. The backroom floor
was covered in brown water and there was a leak in the living room ceiling. Nothing
that would keep them from moving back in. The family began tidying up. At last, the
uncertainty was gone. Gantt said he felt the first waves of relief since the storm hit
while he was thousands of miles away.
"There's nothing like seeing things for yourself," he said. "I had no idea what to expect."
As his kids took showers and got ready for bed, Gantt stepped into the backyard to
think about how far he'd come. A few days ago, he was sleeping in a billowing tent
in the Kuwaiti desert. Two days before that, in a trailer in west Baghdad.
"I said to myself, 'This is pretty bad but I'm happy I can stand here and not worry
about getting shot in a drive-by or someone dropping a mortar on me,"' Gantt said.
"Of the hundred that flew back with me, I'm one of the lucky ones. I still have a home."
Gantt later traded his desert camouflage uniform for a T-shirt and flip flops and
drove to his insurance agent's office with a sheaf of papers. He figures
Katrina cost him $10,000 in damage.
Down a neighboring street, U.S. troops and prisoners in orange jumpsuits
handed out cases of military ready-to-eat meals. An Army Black Hawk rumbled overhead.
"This really is like being back in Baghdad," he said, laughing.
New Orleans mayor says French
Quarter will reopen soon
11:10 AM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
Mayor Ray Nagin announced Thursday that large parts of the city will reopen early next week,
and the French Quarter the week after that. "The city of New Orleans will start to breathe
again," he said.
The announcement came amid progress in restoring power and water service and the day
after the release of government tests showing that the floodwaters still contain dangerous
bacteria and industrials chemicals, but that the air is safe to breathe.
The first section to reopen to residents will be Algiers, across the Mississippi River from
the French Quarter, on Monday, the mayor said. The city's Uptown section, which includes
Tulane University and the Garden District, will be reopened in stages next Wednesday and
next Friday, he said. The French Quarter will follow on Monday, Sept. 26.
"The French Quarter is high and dry, and we feel as though it has good electricity capabilities,"
the mayor said, "but since it's so historic, we want to double- and triple-check before we fire
up all electricity in there to make sure that because every building is so close that if a fire
breaks out, we won't lose a significant amount of what we cherish in this city."
The reopened areas of the city represent 182,000 residents out of a city of nearly half a million.
"We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting into their normal
mode of operations, and the rhythm that makes this city so unique," the mayor said.
He added: "It's a good day in New Orleans. The sun is shining ....
We're going to bring this city back."
More Than 50 Katrina Evacuees
Have Died In Texas
POSTED: 12:27 pm CDT September 14, 2005
if you may need help are no some one that need's help please go to
this web site for helpful links and phone number's
HOUSTON -- Medical examiners said at least 53 Hurricane Katrina evacuees from the
ew Orleans area have died since coming to Texas.
In Harris County, which includes Houston, most of the 35 deaths were from natural
causes, including several heart attacks and complications from cancer. Two refugees
killed themselves since an estimated 240,000 Gulf Coast residents fled to
Texas because of the Aug. 29 storm.
There was one dead fetus, and ages of the adult dead ranged from 20 to 104. Many were
elderly living in hospitals, hospice centers and nursing homes.
A 71-year-old man from New Orleans died inside the mass shelter at the Astrodome,
and a 90-year-old woman died in the stadium parking lot.
The Dallas County medical examiner's office reports 13 deaths as of Wednesday,
all of them natural. Officials say all were elderly and staying in nursing homes and hospitals.
In the Houston area, two apparent suicides were reported. A 44-year-old man from
Metairie killed himself in a Humble hotel Sept. 4. On Saturday, a 25-year-old male
from Marrero took his life in a Pasadena apartment.
As of Tuesday, Austin had reported two deaths, and there was one each in San Antonio,
Fort Worth and Smith County, which includes Tyler.
if you may need help are no some one that need's help please go to
this web site for helpful links and phone number's
- Louisiana Katrina Relief Hotline: (866) 334-8305
- Mississippi Katrina Relief Hotline: (866) 230-8903
- Alabama Katrina Relief Hotline: (877) 273-5018
- Need To Talk? Call: 1-800-273-TALK (1 - 800 - 273 - 8255 )
- Locate A Shelter: 1-800-409-4828
- Louisiana State Department of Social Services: 1-888-LA-HELPU
- 1 - 888 - 524 - 3578
- Disaster Relief: GovBenefits.gov
- National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: MissingChildren.org
- Missing Pets: PetFinder.org
- Pet Rescue: 1-800-HUMANE-1 ( 1 - 800 - 486 - 2631 )
- Report Price Gouging: 1-800-488-2770
Displaced Loyola Students Stabbed
In Boston, Police Say
POSTED: 12:43 pm CDT September 14, 2005
BOSTON -- Two college students displaced by Hurricane Katrina are recovering
after being stabbed in Boston.
The students from Loyola University in New Orleans are attending classes at Boston
College. Police and BC officials say they were attacked after an argument with five men
at about 1:30 a.m. outside a convenience store in the Cleveland Circle neighborhood.
Nineteen-year-old Joseph Vairo was taken to Beth Israel Hospital, where he is listed in
serious condition. A 20-year-old student who was not identified was
treated at the hospital and released.
Police say there have been no arrests in the case.
Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said Vairo is originally from Holden;
the other student is from Oakland, Calif.
They are among 150 students from Loyola and Tulane University who are
temporarily attending the school.
Blanco Delays Elections In Orleans
And Jefferson Parishes
POSTED: 3:14 pm CDT September 14, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- In an executive order issued Wednesday, Gov. Kathleen Blanco
delayed upcoming elections in Jefferson and Orleans parishes that were
scheduled for October and November.
The governor did not give an immediate rescheduling date.
A day earlier, Secretary of State Al Ater formally recommended that Blanco delay
voting in local races for the school board, Kenner city council and a judgeship in
Jefferson Parish and special proposition elections in Orleans Parish. The elections
were scheduled for Oct. 15 and Nov. 12.
State law requires the secretary of state to certify to the governor when a state of
emergency exists that would affect elections. The governor must issue an executive
order formally delaying the elections.
Evacuees In Dallas Being Moved
POSTED: 3:48 pm CDT September 14, 2005
DALLAS -- Evacuees at the Dallas Convention Center are being moved
into Reunion Arena to consolidate operations.
Red Cross spokeswoman Anita Foster said the evacuees will be moved over
the next couple of days, and they plan to have all evacuees out of the Convention
Center shelter and into Reunion by the weekend.
Wednesday, about 683 people were still at the Convention Center, and 170 at Reunion.
Meanwhile, many of those remaining in the shelters are working on plans to get into housing.
Call Center To Assist With
Children's Records
POSTED: 7:40 am CDT September 15, 2005
AUSTIN, Tx. -- Thousands of hurricane-displaced students have enrolled in Texas
schools and officials want to make sure their immunization records are available.
The Texas Department of State Health Services has opened a temporary call center.
The goal is to assist school and medical personnel, plus parents, in getting copies of
immunization records for the displaced children.
DSHS has obtained direct access to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals
statewide immunization registry.
Similar efforts will be made to secure registries in Alabama and Mississippi, which
also had evacuations.
There's no charge for the service.
For information, call: (800) 252-9152.
Phone Service Improving Across Region
POSTED: 7:28 am CDT September 15, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Those irritating busy signals and congested network messages
on your telephone soon may be a thing of the past. After more than two weeks of sporadic
service because of Hurricane Katrina, telephone lines in southeastern Louisiana are
slowly returning to normal.
Phone companies are repairing storm-damaged networks. They also are adjusting their
systems to contend with population shifts.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana Public Service Commission has asked wireless phone companies
in the state to give customers free service for September and October because wireless
phones have become the only means of communication for many evacuees.
Whether they will remains a question.
Despite the overall improvement in phone service, officials said about 150,000 BellSouth
phone lines remain dead, mostly in the parishes of Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and Saint Bernard.
Only Operating Mall On Mississippi Coast
Sees Occupancy Rate Increase
POSTED: 8:21 am CDT September 15, 2005
GAUTIER, Miss. -- Singing River Mall in Gautier, Miss., has nearly double its occupancy
rate after Hurricane Katrina left other shopping areas and businesses in ruins.
Singing River is now the only operating mall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Mall operators
have signed new leases with Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, ALION Science and Technology
Corporation and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Mall manager Tina Dubose said five to 10 more businesses are currently going through the
leasing process. She confirmed that several of these undisclosed stores were previously
located in Biloxi's Edgewater Mall, which was severely damaged Aug. 29 by Katrina's massive storm surge.
Dubose says other businesses are waiting on liability insurance before signing contracts.
Singing River Mall received minimal damage.
Storm Evacuees Seek Help In Orlando
POSTED: 8:57 am CDT September 15, 2005
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Many of the evacuees who came to Orlando following Hurricane Katrina took
advantage of a deal worked out with the Red Cross that allowed them to stay in Central Florida for
two weeks at no charge, but time is running out.
That's where the faith community and churches like New Covenant Baptist of Orlando are
stepping up to the plate and offering some help.
The Williams family is one of the thousands who fled New Orleans for Florida. They've
been grateful to stay for free at an Orlando-area hotel, but soon they'll have to start paying,
and like so many evacuees, they need to find some affordable, transitional housing, but it's not easy.
"I've seen so many people before the storm living on the street in New Orleans, and I
wondered how they made it. Now, I know," evacuee Jessie Lumar said.
The Orlando Housing and Authority and the Urban League are working hard to help
evacuees find a place to live. They're even reaching out to Realtors to identify vacant
homes. According to the Urban League, one of the big challenges is that there is very
little affordable housing in the Orlando area and no vacancies in public housing.
Tax Assessors Try To Assess
Damage To Tax Rolls
POSTED: 9:53 am CDT September 15, 2005
COVINGTON, La. -- Tax assessors in hurricane-ravaged areas of the state will ask
the Legislature for changes in tax laws to give owners of ruined homes and businesses
adjustments on this year's property tax bills.
In Saint Tammany Parish, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 homes were heavily damaged
or destroyed. Tens of thousands more were destroyed or damaged across south Louisiana.
Saint Tammany Parish Assessor Patricia Schwarz Core said state tax laws do not allow
assessors to re-value properties damaged or destroyed by natural disasters after January
1 of the current calendar or property tax year. Those changes have to be made in the following year.
But Core and other area assessors want the Legislature to call a special session and
change the laws so home and business owners can be given relief in their 2005 property
tax bills scheduled to be mailed in December.
Core, like many residents, returned from Florida this week to find her home in Port Louis
west of Madisonville destroyed by Katrina.
Airport and waterfront to reopen
10:43 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
New Orleans awaited the reopening of the airport and the waterfront Tuesday for
the first time since Hurricane Katrina hit, and the coroner planned autopies on at least
44 patients found dead at a flooded-out hospital.
The new acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency pledged
to intensify efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands
of Katrina survivors now in shelters.
"We're going to get people out of the shelters. We're going to move on and get
them the help they need," R. David Paulison said in his first public comments
since he was named to replace Michael Brown. Brown resigned under fire over
the government's sluggish response to the disaster.
The exact number of bodies recovered Sunday from the 317-bed Memorial
Medical Center was unclear. A state official said the corpses of 45 patients
were found; a hospital administrator said there were 44, plus three on the grounds.
The discovery raised Louisiana's official death toll to nearly 280.
It was not immediately clear how the patients died.
Dave Goodson, an assistant administrator at Memorial Medical, said patients
died while waiting to be evacuated after Katrina struck, as temperatures inside
the hospital reached 106 degrees. He said the heat
probably contributed to some of the deaths.
Family members and nurses were "literally standing
over the patients, fanning them," he said.
Minyard says even though only about 300 bodies have been found in New Orleans
so far, Mayor Ray Nagin wasn't the only one who thought there
could be up to ten-thousand deaths in the city.
However, Steven Campanini, a spokesman for hospital owner Tenet
Healthcare Corp., said some of the patients had died and were in the morgue
before Katrina arrived, and none of the deaths resulted from lack of food, water
or electricity to power medical equipment.
Dr. Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner, said
autopsies will be performed on the bodies.
During an appearance Tuesday on NBC's "Today," he said he thought
the evacuation of the city was successful, considering how the death toll
so far was much lower than expected. However, he noted that searches continued.
"There just may be a lot of people who are still down in those deep waters,
and some of waters were 10, 12, 15 feet deep," Minyard said. "My biggest
fear is that we will find something down there that is
way out of proportion. Hopefully, it doesn't happen, but we worry."
Also Tuesday, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport was
scheduled to receive its first commercial flight since Katrina struck on Aug. 29.
The port of New Orleans expected its first cargo ship since the hurricane
late Tuesday and expected at least three more ships by the week's end,
said Gary LaGrange, port president and chief executive. The arriving
ship was carrying up to 500 containers of coffee and wood products
from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, LaGrange said.
A shipment of steel coils was leaving the port Tuesday bound for a Hyundai
auto plant in Greenville, Ala., he said.
"It's a historical moment. Two weeks ago the prognosis was six months,
so to pull it off so our customers have enough faith and confidence
in us is very heartwarming," LaGrange said.
Officials announced the discovery of the bodies at the hospital on Monday
as President Bush got his first up-close look at the destruction in New Orleans.
"My impression of New Orleans is this: that there is a recovery on the way,"
Bush said after riding through New Orleans in a truck with the governor and mayor.
The recovery was visible in spots Monday. Nearly two-thirds of southeastern
Louisiana's water treatment plants were up and running, and 41 of
New Orleans' 174 permanent pumps were operational. Officials expect
the still half-flooded city to be completely drained by Oct. 8.
Business owners were let back into New Orleans on Monday to assess
the damage and retrieve vital records and equipment.
John Baus, a lawyer and construction manager, filled his SUV with computer
servers, monitors, fax machines and crates of files. He said he planned to
make the best of the disaster, starting a new company to help residents
handle disaster claims and rebuilding projects.
"Everybody's been scattered to the four winds," said Baus, who
evacuated to Baton Rouge. "How are they going to take care of insurance
claims? Meet contractors? Get their houses restored the way they were?"
Some homes will require rebuilding. St. Bernard Parish President Henry
Rodriguez told displaced residents there is not a structure left standing in
Hopedale, southeast of New Orleans. Parish Councilman Craig Taffaro
said no one should expect to live in the parish again before next summer;
before Katrina, its population was 66,000.
Sgt. John Zeller, a California National Guard engineer, said it will be at
least three months before the New Orleans' public water system is fully
operational. Some homes have running water now, but it is mostly
untreated Mississippi River water - for anyone wanting a bath,
"It's like jumping in the river right now," he said.
Some of those displaced may end up in temporary housing provided
by FEMA, which expects to use trailer homes to create "temporary
cities," where some 200,000 hurricane victims - most of them in
Louisiana - could live for up to five years.
"This may not be quite on the scale of building the pyramids, but it's close,"
said Brad Fair, head of the FEMA's housing effort.
In other developments:
- Lawmakers in Washington proposed some tax changes Monday to help
storm victims, such as letting them tap retirement accounts without penalty
and encouraging donations of cash, food and school books.
- Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial called for a compensation
fund for the hurricane victims similar to the fund created for victims of
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Red Cross: 75,000 Katrina Survivors
Sheltered Sunday, 207,000 Overall
POSTED: 10:53 am CDT September 13, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- The Red Cross said it has housed more than 207,000 survivors
of Hurricane Katrina in 709 shelters across 24 states and the District of Columbia.
It said it has served more than 5.9 million meals to the hurricane's victims -- about
500,000 meals a day. As of Sunday, the Red Cross said it was housing nearly
75,000 in 445 shelters across 19 states and Washington, DC.
In all, the Red Cross has provided more than 1.9 million overnight stays. It
said nearly 74,000 Red Cross workers from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and
the Virgin Islands have responded to Katrina.
During this effort, the Red Cross has trained an additional 63,000 people in
specialized disaster relief skills, and has raised more than $578
million for the hurricane's victims.
Survivors can register for emergency financial assistance, 24 hours a day, by
calling toll-free (800) 975-7585 -- though the Red Cross notes that phone
lines may be overwhelmed.
Bush Takes Responsibility For Any
Failings In Hurricane Response
POSTED: 11:34 am CDT September 13, 2005
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush said Hurricane Katrina exposed "serious
problems in the response capability at all levels of government." He told reporters
that to the extent the federal government didn't "do its job right," he takes responsibility.
Bush, at a news conference with the visiting Iraqi president, said he wants to find
out if the nation is capable of dealing with another storm or a severe attack.
He said, "I want to know what went right and what went wrong."
Gov. Blanco Lashes Out At FEMA
POSTED: 1:13 pm CDT September 13, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at FEMA Tuesday for
moving too slowly in the recovery of bodies.
She said that the federal agency still has not signed a contract with a company
that specializes in body removal, Houston-based Kenyon International Emergency Services.
Speaking of deceased victims of Hurricane Katrina, Blanco said they
deserved more respect than they have received.
The governor said Kenyon has been working without a contract and has
threatened to stop working if it does not get a contract.
Blanco said the company does not have enough people without a contract.
Blanco said she was "angry and outraged" and that she had received promises
from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA,
and from FEMA officials but they had not followed through and signed the contract.
Senate Leaders Will Visit Gulf Coast Friday
POSTED: 11:27 am CDT September 13, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Several Senate leaders will head to the Gulf
Coast on Friday to tour damage done by Hurricane Katrina.
A spokeswoman for Majority Leader Bill Frist, said he will join seven
Democrats and six other Republicans on the trip. Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and members from the affected
areas are also expected to attend.
The group is scheduled to travel to New Orleans, Mobile, Ala. and Biloxi, Miss.
Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance
Committee, is one of the members scheduled to take the trip.
Baucus and Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, chairman of the Finance
Committee, proposed a tax aid package for hurricane victims Monday. Among
other assistance, the legislation would allow those affected by the hurricane to
tap their retirement accounts without penalty and give families
who house evacuees a personal tax exemption.
The bill is expected to be part of a larger relief package that Congress will consider.
New Orleans Port Expects Visitors
POSTED: 11:52 am CDT September 13, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- The head of the Port of New Orleans said Tuesday
offers "a historical moment."
He said a freighter loaded with coffee and wood products from South
and Central America, arrives Tuesday.
Port President Gary LaGrange said two weeks ago, officials thought hurricane
damage would keep the port down for a-half year. He said the quick turnaround
shows the city "is back in business." He adds, "From a commercial and
psychological standpoint, this is five stars."
He said another three ships are expected in this week.
The port is a gateway to a river system serving 33 states on the Mississippi or
its tributaries. About 100 dock workers have camped out on ships docked in the
port since the weekend, with up to 400 expected by the end of the week.
The port has no power for the incoming ship, so it will have to get an extension
cord from a maritime administration vessel.
Katrina Victims Finding
Relief in Fresno
Monday, September 12, 2005 TIME IS 11:45PM NOTE VIDEO TO THIS STORY ON KMPH DOWN HERE IN RED
LINKS TO FRESNO CA WEB SITE'S ON BIG 8 AT IT'S BEST NEWS WELCOME TO FRESNO CA IN RED TOO
WEB SITE TO THIS STORY KMPH FOX .26. OF FRESNO.CA. http://www.kmph.com/home/1843457.html
FOR WEB SITE LINK'S IN FRESNO .CA. LINK RIGHT HERE http://www.big8atitsbestnews.com/welcometofresnoca.htm
In the valley Katrina evacuees continue to trickle in and now local apartment complexes
are helping evacuee' get back on their feet. Some evacuees may be moving into their own place at the Windscape Apartments in
Northwest Fresno. It's one of five complexes in the city, so far, that are offering free
rent to Katrina evacuees who plan on starting their lives over in the valley. Vera slater, her husband, and their two kids left New Orleans with just their car and
each other. They ended up here in Fresno after some good friends
offered their home to them. One of the first things she'll decide is what apartment complex to move into. She has a
choice of at least five complexes that are offering free rent for up to three months. The idea is that in the next 45 to 60 days, they'll be getting aid. We just wanted to
help be there for them. Hale says she has 15 units ready for move in the next day, and no security deposit is required. It's the kind of help that'll give this family a boost in starting over, again.
This is the second time the Slaters have had to pick up the pieces from scratch...
The first time was after the Northridge earthquake. Despite their loss, and through the tears, she says, it's your attitude that turns
you from an evacuee into a survivor. Just persevere through it, you can do it, it may take time, it's not always
comfortable, but you could do it. If you, or someone you know, would like to take advantage of the free housing
being offered to hurricane evacuees, here's the information you need.
Contact Sandy Hale, she's with Manco Abbott which
owns several apartment complexes in Fresno. Her number is 559-256-4033. And she can help you find a place and give you more information on what's available.
She says the only thing you'll need is either a Red Cross voucher or FEMA
as number proof that you've registered for emergency aid.
45 Bodies Found at New Orleans Hospital
September 12, 2005
The bodies of 45 patients have been found at a
flooded-out hospital, a state health official said Monday amid otherwise
encouraging signs large and small that New Orleans is climbing back
two weeks after it was slammed by Hurricane Katrina.
The bodies were found Sunday at 317-bed Memorial Medical Center,
which was abandoned more than a week ago after it was surrounded by
floodwaters, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals.
The Louisiana death toll rose to 279, up from 197 on Sunday, Johannesen said.
Meanwhile, more than half of southeastern Louisiana's water treatment
plants were up and running again Monday, and business owners were issued
passes into the city to retrieve vital records or equipment as New Orleans
continued to stir back to life.
Also, President Bush got his first up-close look at the destruction in
New Orleans on Monday, taking a tour that took him through several flooded
neighborhoods. Occasionally, he had to duck to avoid low-hanging electrical wires and branches.
In Washington, Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown
announced he is resigning "in the best interest of the agency and best interest
of the president." Brown has been vilified for the government's sluggish response
to the tragedy. Last week, he was stripped of responsibility for overseeing the
cleanup and was abruptly recalled to Washington.
As for the discovery of the bodies at the hospital, Johannesen said he had no
further information, and Police Chief Eddie Compass declined to answer any
questions, including whether police received any calls for assistance from those
inside Memorial Medical Center after the hospital was evacuated.
"I can't say nothing," Compass said, referring questions to a spokeswoman
for Mayor C. Ray Nagin who did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Dr. Jeffrey Kochan, a Philadelphia radiologist volunteering in New Orleans, said
he spoke Sunday night with members of the team that recovered the bodies. He said
they told him they found 36 corpses floating on the first floor.
"That's what they were talking about last night," Kochan said. "These guys were
just venting. They need to talk. They're seeing things no human being should have to see."
To prevent looting, business owners wanting to enter the city's central business
district and take what they needed to run their companies were required by
police to obtain passes.
Traffic was heavy on the only major highway into the city that was still open, and
vehicles were backed up for about two miles at a National Guard
checkpoint across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.
Among the businessmen allowed back was Terry Cockerham, owner of Service
Glass, which installs windows at businesses downtown. He has been
working out of his house because his business was destroyed by looters and flooding.
"This is about the most work I've ever had," he said. "We'll work seven days a
week until we get this job finished. I don't want to get rich.
I just want to get everything back right."
There were also signs of life at businesses elsewhere in the city.
In the French Quarter, Nick Ditta was at Mango Mango, the bar he manages
on Bourbon Street, searching for time cards. "It's a mess man. There is no doubt
about it," Ditta said. "But our people are going to get paid. That's all I'm worried about."
During his visit to New Orleans, the president denied there was any racial
component to the way the government responded to the disaster, disputing assertions
that Washington was sluggish because so many of the victims were poor and black.
"The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort," Bush
said. He also rejected suggestions that the nation's military was stretched
too thinly with the war in Iraq to deal with the Gulf Coast devastation.
Though 50 percent of New Orleans remained flooded down from 80 percent
during the darkest days and teams continued to collect hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of corpses, there were clear signs of recovery: Over the weekend, trash collection
resumed, and the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport reopened
for cargo traffic. It planned to open to limited passenger service starting Tuesday.
A plane carrying equipment to rebuild New Orleans' mobile phone networks took
off from Sweden on Monday after waiting more than a week for a go-ahead from the
United States. The shipment included network equipment donated by the
Swedish cell phone giant LM Ericsson.
"Each day there's a little bit of an improvement," Coast Guard Vice Adm.
Thad W. Allen, commander of the New Orleans relief efforts, told NBC on
Sunday night. "And in the end run, maybe a week, two weeks from now,
someone's going to wake in the morning and have something they didn't
have the day before, and that's hope."
State officials said Monday that 16 of southeast Louisiana's 25 major wastewater
treatment plants were up and running again.
In the effort to drain the flooded area, 41 of 174 permanent pumps were in operation,
and officials expected an increase in temporary pumps within 24 hours.
As of late Sunday, water in many parts of the metropolitan area was going down at
least a foot a day, the Army Corps of Engineers said. Once the streets are dry,
crews can begin removing debris, checking buildings and other structures for
soundness, and restoring utilities.
Military cargo airplanes were set to begin spraying the area on Monday to kill
flies and mosquitoes. The standing water from Katrina is expected to worsen
Louisiana's already considerable mosquito problem. Before the storm hit, the
state had logged 78 cases of mosquito-borne West Nile virus and four deaths
from the disease this year.
Insurance experts doubled to at least $40 billion their estimate of insured losses
caused by Katrina a figure that would make it the world's costliest hurricane
ever. Risk Management Solutions Inc. of Newark, Calif., put the total
economic damage at more than $125 billion.
In the French Quarter, burnt-orange rubble from terra-cotta roof tiles sat
in neat piles for collection along the curb. Bourbon Street was cleaner than it
ever is during Mardi Gras. And Donald Jones, a 57-year-old lifelong resident,
said he was no longer armed when walking his street.
"The first five days I never went out of my house without my gun. Now I don't
carry it," Jones said over the weekend. "The only people I meet is military."
Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, commander of active-duty troops engaged in
hurricane relief, reiterated Sunday the number of dead would be "a heck of a
lot lower" than initial projections of perhaps 10,000.
Volunteers try to reunite missing
children with families
06:14 PM CDT on Monday, September 12, 2005
Sixteen-year-old Reshad Batiste got separated from his grandmother during the chaotic
evacuation of the Louisiana Superdome in the harrowing days after Hurricane Katrina hit.
For nearly a week, he lived in a Houston shelter not knowing what happened to
her. But that changed on Monday.
Batiste got a police escort to a Houston airport, where he boarded a plane for
Lexington, Ky., to see his grandmother.
"It was confusing that I lost my grandmother but when they told me she was
alive I was very, very excited," said Batiste, who said he stayed strong through
prayer. "Sometimes you just have to take the bitter with the sweet."
Batiste is one of more than 300 children reported as having been separated
from parents or guardians during Hurricane Katrina. The National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children has helped reunite at least 103 children with
their relatives, said Noel Schultz, one of the group's volunteers in Houston.
"They all went in different directions," Schultz said of families separated during
the storm. "I think the object was to get to safety as fast as possible
and then make the reunite later."
The organization has set up a Web site that shows the photos of children who
can't find their parents or guardians. The group is also working with police
departments in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere to identify parents and
children who are looking for each other.
Child Protective Services workers, with the help of Red Cross volunteers,
are caring for 48 unaccompanied children in shelters across the state, agency
spokesman Patrick Crimmins said. CPS has taken custody of 30 of them for
a variety of reasons, mainly because caseworkers decided their caregivers weren't
in a good enough condition to care for them.
For example, two children in Harris County were placed in foster care because
their mother was hospitalized, CPS spokeswoman Estella Olguin said. Two others
were removed from their mother's care because she was under the influence of drugs.
Among the unaccompanied children is a 2-year-old boy agency workers call
"David." Olguin said the boy was dropped off at the Louisiana Superdome
by his baby sitter, who provided a note explaining the child's father's name
was David Harold. The boy was later brought to Houston.
"We think his name is David, but we don't know," Olguin said. "He doesn't talk.
He is very clingy. He will not let go of whoever is holding him."
The boy has been placed in foster care until his relatives can be found.
The agency also is searching for relatives of 18-month-old Shakim Williams,
whose mother is teenager Melkim Williams, who may also be classified as a
missing child. A neighbor took in the toddler after she became separated from her mother.
"We are hoping that maybe the young mother ended up somewhere,"
Olguin said. "She might not even know how to access the missing kid's web site."
It is unclear how many other children may be staying with friends or neighbors
in other shelters or housing, Olguin said. She said it is important for anyone
caring for children who don't belong to them to register the children, so
their parents have a chance of finding them.
When families are reunited, it's gratifying, Schultz said. Among those his
group has helped is a mother of six, who waited and watched as each bus
arrived at Houston's Astrodome last week.
The woman told a volunteer how she became separated from her children and
soon a connection was made to six children who were living at a shelter 200 miles
away in Corpus Christi. A volunteer drove the children to Houston,
where they were reunited with their mom.
"That's why we are here," Schultz said.
Congressman says St. Bernard Parish is
"forgotten" in Katrina aftermath
06:35 PM CDT on Monday, September 12, 2005
U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon issued a statement today after President George
Bush visited St. Bernard parish. Melancon's district, including St. Bernard and
Plaquemines parishes, was particularly hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.
On September 4th of last week, the Congressman extended an invitation to President
Bush to tour affected parts of the district. "People in Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard
Parish and other affected area in Southeast Louisiana's 3rd District need to see that
the federal government has not forgotten them," he said then of the invitation. "We
need all the federal support we can get, and the only way to
understand that is to witness it first hand."
In reaction to today's visit, Melancon released the following statement:
"I am very pleased that the President was able to see first hand the situation in
St. Bernard Parish. When I invited him, it was with the hope that being on the
ground would help him understand just how serious the situation there is.
"I wish he had been able today to meet with residents and officials of St. Bernard
as I did. The thousands of displaced citizens who were at the State Capitol this
afternoon told the real story what's happening. I wish the President had been able
to hear their frustrations, but also their courage as they face the challenges of the
future. Their homes and businesses may be underwater but the community
of St. Bernard is alive and well.
"As this tragedy moves into the next phase of recovery and rebuilding, it is vital
that parishes like St. Bernard are not forgotten as they were in the early days of
the Katrina crisis. Rather, they deserve attention at the highest levels of government."
Feds trying to put aid in right pockets
With billions at stake, Congress
worries how FEMA can avert fraud
11:29 PM CDT on Monday, September 12, 2005
WASHINGTON – Fraud, waste, scams – and just plain shady deals.
As rescue and recovery turns to rebuilding and reconstruction along the Gulf
Coast devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the likelihood of abuse escalates with
the rapid infusion of federal funds, already exceeding $62 billion.
So much money will be going to so many people so fast that some fraud is inevitable,
said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, one of the congressional authorities on
homeland security.
"The challenge," he added, "is to keep it to a minimum."
There is particular concern on Capitol Hill that the relatively small Federal
Emergency Management Agency, mired in controversy over its initial ragged
response to the killer hurricane, cannot – or will not – provide adequate oversight.
FEMA Director Michael Brown, who was recalled to Washington from the
disaster area by his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, resigned Monday.
But FEMA remains the clearinghouse for much of the hurricane relief.
And it's been blistered by federal investigators for its handling of claims last year
in Miami-Dade County, Fla., after Hurricane Frances.
Nearly $31 million in spending was questioned by the homeland security inspector
general – and more than a dozen county residents were indicted on fraud charges.
Rent was given to those who did not need it, the audit found. Equipment was
purchased without proof of need. And several funerals were paid for in cases
not tied to the hurricane, which came ashore nearly 100 miles to the north
from where the deaths occurred.
"Given the complexity of what is occurring in the gulf, I can only imagine that
these types of mismanagements and inefficiencies are being exaggerated tenfold,"
said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., who called for Mr. Brown's resignation in January
after Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel newspaper detailed abuses in
FEMA's handling of storm funds.
The inspector general recommended a wholesale tightening of FEMA's
procedures for assessing claims and urged it to recoup some of the settlement
funds, though only small portions of the questionable claims.
FEMA did not respond to a reporter's request for explanations on how such
problems might now be averted.
In the wake of Katrina, which slammed the Gulf Coast two weeks ago, emergency
spending began at an eye-popping $500 million a day and quickly rose to $2 billion.
And while White House budget director Joshua Bolten says he does not foresee
sustained spending at that pace, there is no end in sight.
Various forecasts have placed the total costs of Katrina at well over $100 billion
and climbing exponentially. Should they approach $300 billion – at least a
probability considering the massive destruction and population relocations that
are just now being assessed – they would exceed the U.S. costs for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
So far, much of the attention has focused on the early, sluggish response to Katrina,
with much finger-pointing among local, state and federal officials. But many in
Congress recall cases of federal spending inefficiency following the 9-11 terrorist
attacks four years ago and in the rebuilding of Iraq as red flags for the latest hurricane relief.
To at least monitor the new spending, Congress, which rushed the spending bills to
President Bush's desk without committee hearings, has mandated in the last $51.8
billion appropriation a pair of new oversight mechanisms: weekly spending reports by
homeland security to the House and Senate appropriations committees and $15
million for more aggressive auditing by the department's inspector general.
If nothing else, Mr. Thornberry suggested, "There are a lot of people who are
going to be watching very, very closely how well they administer this money, in
terms of preventing fraud but also how effectively it is being used."
That's not enough, though, for Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis, the Republican who chairs
the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He supported the first $10.5 billion
emergency spending bill, but not the second for $51.8 billion.
"I am not opposed to spending the money to rebuild the economy and the public
infrastructure," he said. "But I am opposed to just throwing federal taxpayer dollars
at a problem because people are in a panic that we need to show that we are doing something."
The weekly reports and extra audit attention are good first steps in additional oversight,
he said. But there should be more, including wide-ranging committee hearings.
His own panel, he noted, had already held one hearing on Katrina's impact on gasoline
and other energy matters. And he stood ready to convene others.
"We have a system in place," he said. "We ought to use it."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wants to take another step or two
and establish an independent commission to oversee government
contracts related to Katrina relief.
Additionally, she urged tough congressional oversight to thwart price gouging in
the sale of gasoline – and natural gas and home heating oil, whose prices are
expected to soar this winter.
There was no indication on Capitol Hill, however, that such a commission was catching
on, particularly as Republicans, who control both the House and Senate, and
minority Democrats continued to wrangle over a GOP proposal for a special
joint committee to investigate the government response to Katrina.
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration
was well aware of the possibilities for fraud and would tolerate none of it.
Attorney General Al Gonzales had formed a Justice Department task force to
deal with reports of such crimes, Mr. McClellan said, and intended to
aggressively prosecute any perpetrators.
In addition to government benefit fraud similar to that in Florida after Hurricane
Frances, the Justice Department is interested in pursuing insurance fraud, charity
fraud and identity theft, which could easily escalate with documents
stolen from abandoned homes and businesses.
The task force will have national reach, the attorney general said, and will include
personnel from the FBI, the Federal Trade
Commission and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
And it will mount cooperative investigations with local
and state law enforcement agencies
St. Bernard Parish residents crowd
Capitol for town meeting
06:37 PM CDT on Monday, September 12, 2005
Thousands of St. Bernard Parish residents who journeyed to the state Capitol,
desperate for information about their homes, received only grim news Monday:
Every part of the parish was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Some homes were coated
with oil from a nearby refinery. And one official estimated no one would live in the
parish until at least summertime.
"When you go back to St. Bernard, the only memories you're going to have is what
you left with," Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez told a crowd in the
House chamber that lined the walls, filled up the balcony and spilled
down the stairs of the building.
State police estimated the crowd reached as many as 5,000 people, who filled
hallways of the Capitol, hoping to gather scraps of information about a parish
whose devastation was overshadowed by the flooding of New Orleans and the chaos that followed there.
"It's sort of like the stepchild and the forgotten parish," said Frances Smith,
a resident of Meraux, awaiting a briefing from parish officials.
Rodriguez was upfront about the status of the parish. To Shell Beach residents,
he told them a few buildings weathered the storm but may not be repairable. To
Hopedale residents, he said not one structure was standing.
"When you go back, you won't recognize it," he told all residents.
For homes that may have been repairable after the waters receded, an
oil spill at Murphy Oil in Meraux may have made them uninhabitable, officials warned.
Amid the questions and the descriptions of devastation, a bitterness tinged with
pride was obvious among both the residents and parish officials, who said they were
left to rescue their own as the floodwaters swallowed homes and businesses. State
Sen. Walter Boasso, whose business and home were submerged in the flooding,
noted Canadian help arrived before the U.S. Army did.
"Did we get neglected? Absolutely we got neglected," he said. "But did the local
people take up the slack? You're damn right we did. We didn't wait for anybody to show up."
"Good thing," a resident shouted back.
Bodies of the dead still were being collected Monday. Sheriff Jack Stephens said the
parish death toll stood at 56 but officials knew of at least 10 more locations where they
needed to recover bodies. He said the highest risk areas, where water covered
the roofs of houses, hadn't been searched yet.
Boasso said 30,000 homes were completely lost and he's heard estimates that
it would take at least four months to clean up the parish that is home to 68,000 residents.
"I'm told we're going to be able to go back in an organized fashion to our homes
and try and recover what we want," said Boasso, choking up.
He said the water should be drained by Tuesday, but officials said environmental
testing to determine whether the soil or air was contaminated must be completed
before residents would be allowed back into the parish to collect what belongings
they could. And Rodriguez said when people are allowed to briefly return,
they should bring rubber gloves, boots and masks.
No one should expect to live in the parish again until next summer, according
to Craig Taffaro, a parish councilman.
Despite estimates of a long recovery, officials said they hoped the community
would rebuild and that residents would return.
"You give us such hope. Please, please stay with us. We will come back
again," said Judy Darby Hoffmeister, a member of the parish council.
N.O. Tourism Official Predicts Return
Of Tourists In 6 Months
POSTED: 8:48 pm CDT September 12, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, La. -- The head of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors
Bureau predicts the tourists will start returning to the city in perhaps six months
time -- despite Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
J. Stephen Perry said most hotels, the French Quarter, and the city's Garden
District emerged from the disaster structurally sound.
Repairs are already underway -- and Perry said hotels plan to set aside 20 to 25
percent of their rooms for their workers as the recovery continues.
That will allow the hotels to house recovery workers first, and tourists later.
The plan is to pay for repairs from the revenues generated by paying guests.
Cleanup Continues, As Katrina's
Price Tag Keeps Going Up
POSTED: 2:13 pm CDT September 12, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- The hum of activity in southeastern Louisiana is growing.
State officials said 16 of the region's 25 major wastewater treatment plants are
up and running again, after being knocked out by Hurricane Katrina.
Officials also said they expect to get more temporary pumps into operation for
the continuing effort to drain out the floodwaters.
Still, they said only a fraction of the permanent pumps are in working order.
About 50 percent of New Orleans remains under water. But some people are
breathing sighs of relief. For the first time in days, one resident said he can leave
his house without his gun. He said the only people he meets on the streets now are military.
Meanwhile, a plane carrying equipment to rebuild the city's mobile phone networks
is en route from Sweden. The shipment includes equipment donated by the Swedish
cellphone giant LM Ericsson
Hurricane Katrina Victims Get
Utility Deposits Waived
POSTED: 2:42 pm CDT September 12, 2005
AUSTIN, Texas -- Hurricane Katrina evacuees who are moving to Texas and trying
to connect new telephone and electric service will have their deposits waived this
month. That's according to an order by the Public Utility Commission.
Some Texas utilities already had voluntarily waived deposit requirements and
eliminated installation fees.
The order is in effect through the end of September. It does not cover municipal
electric utilities or electric cooperatives because the commission does not have
authority over them. But the commission is encouraging deposit waivers for
those customers as well.
The action comes after Gov. Rick Perry issued a proclamation suspending
regulations that "may inhibit or prevent prompt response" to emergency
conditions created by Hurricane Katrina
Approximately 8,000 AIDS And HIV-
Infected Patients Displaced
POSTED: 3:01 pm CDT September 12, 2005
About 8,000 people with HIV and AIDS who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina
now face the massive challenge of trying to manage their disease without their
doctors, their clinics and their support systems.
Federal officials said they are doing their best to streamline care to HIV infected
patients, and several drug companies are offering free medication.
Meanwhile, providers in Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and
beyond report that displaced patients are showing up at their clinics and asking
for new prescriptions, quickly.
Hospitals Treat Patients
In New Orleans Area
POSTED: 7:06 pm CDT September 12, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Good news for patients in need of ongoing care.
Ochsner Clinic Foundation said patients who can't get home for months can
still be treated at its facility in Baton Rouge. And once they are able to return
home, their records can be sent electronically back to New Orleans.
The hospital said the records of the more than 300,000 patients it treats in
southeast Louisiana are safe. Ochsner said its clinics in Baton Rouge on the
north shore of Lake Pontchartrain are in full operation.
Two other hospitals -- East Jefferson General and West Jefferson Medical
Center -- are also operating in the New Orleans region.
FAQ: Answers From The Experts
POSTED: 7:09 pm CDT September 12, 2005
WDSU has received hundreds of e-mails from residents
with questions about everything from
when schools will reopen to where you can find your lost pet. Check out answers to
some of the most commonly asked questions below:
Where can I get medical attention in the New Orleans area? East
Jefferson General Hospital, West Jefferson Medical Center, Ochsner
Hospital New Orleans are the three hospitals open in the New Orleans metropolitan area.
- Ochsner New Orleans Clinics - OPEN
- Ochsner Jefferson Hwy: Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics, Cardiology. 10am-5pm daily.
- Ochsner Clinic Destrehan: Family Practice, Pediatrics
- Ochsner Clinic Kenner: Internal Medicine, Pediatrics
- Ochsner Clinic Lapalco: Family Practice, Internal Medicine
- Ochsner Clinic Metairie: Internal Medicine
- St. Anne's Hospital in Raceland: Cardiology
I'm a school employee. Where and how can I get paid?
Get paycheck information for New Orleans Public School employees
- by calling 877-771-5800. Other public school employees can call
- the La. State Dept. of Education at 1-877-453-2721.
How do I make tuition payments? Any parent who has a bank loan for
- tuition payments must call that bank and speak to the loan officer.
- You can call First Bank and Trust at 1-877-426-2498 and speak to Cindy Conde or Katie Tricon.
How can I find my lost pet?
Thousands of pets were taken to the Lamar Dixson Expo Center in Gonzales.
- To see if your pet is there, go to www.petfinder.com/disaster.
My loved one died. What should I do?
If you have a loved one who died in Jefferson Parish, please call the JP Forensic
- Center at 504-365-9108 to move the body to a funeral home.
How do I get food stamps?
For food stamp information, call: (888) LAHELPU (888 524-3578).
- Food stamps will be accepted nation-wide
I'm a business owner. Can I go see my business?
Jefferson Parish business owners can go to www.Jeffparish.net to
- get a permit to re-enter the parish.
Businesses can obtain an entry pass at the following locations from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.:
- Baton Rouge: 2525 Quail Drive or mobile office in Blue Bayou Parking Lot
- Jefferson: Fire Station at 3525 Jefferson Highway
- Marrero: Fire Station at 2248 Barataria Blvd.
I need an important record from the city. What can I do?
To get records in Orleans Parish, call the NOPD at (504) 599-5541
- between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Be next to a fax machine.
How do I clean up mold? Do I have to throw everything away?
To clean mold in your home, wash off hard surfaces with liquid bleach
- and water and dry completely. Absorbent materials like ceiling tiles
- and carpet may have to be replaced.
If you want to save photographs, important documents, or books that
- have been damaged by floodwaters, freeze them to temporarily stop
- mildew growth. Dry items by laying them on plastic or hang them on a laundry line.
State's Death Toll Raised To 197
News Encouraging In Parts Of City
NEW ORLEANS -- The death toll in New Orleans rose to 197 Sunday as the
search for bodies went on.
An unspecified number of remains were taken from Memorial Medical
Center in uptown New Orleans. The hospital closed over a week ago
after being surrounded by floodwaters.
Elsewhere in the city, the news was more encouraging. Some evacuees were
allowed to briefly return to their homes.
"We could drive all the way here with no problem," one man said.
Louis Armstrong International Airport was back in operation for cargo traffic.
Limited passenger service was expected to begin Tuesday.
Trash collection resumed over the weekend, and Monday, New Orleans'
main wastewater treatment plant is expected to go back online.
On 9/11 Anniversary, Muslim
Group Helps Katrina Survivors
POSTED: 6:25 pm CDT September 11, 2005
HOUSTON -- Hurricane victims got some help from Muslims on Sunday, the fourth
anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.
About 2,000 Muslims volunteered at the convention center in Houston.
Muslim leaders said it was coincidence that it was their turn to help on the
nniversary but welcomed it as an opportunity to help others, as required by their faith.
The chairman of the board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also said it's
another chance to show that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were carried out by Islamic
extremists who do not represent the true meaning of Islam.
Religious and community groups who volunteered to help at shelters picked through
a random drawing what day they would work.
New Yorkers In New Orleans
Remember Sept. 11.2001
POSTED: 10:52 am CDT September 11, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Firefighters paused Sunday in their recovery work for
Hurricane Katrina to observe the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks that killed their brethren in New York.
On the lawn of Our Lady of Holy Cross College in the New Orleans neighborhood
of Algiers, firefighters from New Orleans, New York and other cities
gathered around a makeshift memorial.
Four years ago, 343 New York firefighters were killed in the attacks that
destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
A bell from a nearby Algiers church, its steeple wiped out by Katrina, was
given to the New York firefighters.
In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened a ceremony at the site
of the attack today with a reference to the victims of Katrina.
Gov't Won't Stop Coverage
Of Body Recovery
POSTED: 5:48 pm CDT September 10, 2005
NEW YORK -- The Bush administration said it won't stand in the way of news
media reporting on the recovery of bodies. But it won't necessarily help, either.
CNN had filed suit against the Federal Emergency Management
Agency after two government officials said they didn't believe it was
right for the media to show pictures of Hurricane Katrina victims.
The government said it won't stand in the way of that coverage.
But photographers won't be allowed to join workers in boats or helicopters during the recovery.
CNN agreed to the government's stand and has put its lawsuit on hold.
Bush Scheduled To Return To New Orleans
President To Stay In Big Easy Overnight
POSTED: 11:45 am CDT September 11, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- President George W. Bush will return to New Orleans Sunday
afternoon for his second visit since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Big Easy.
Bush will spend the night, then head to Gulfport, Miss., which was also hard hit by the storm.
The president started his day marking the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In his radio address Saturday, Bush said America will summon the
same resolve to heal and rebuild as it recovers from the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina.
"Our greatest resource in such times is the compassionate character of the
American people, because even the most destructive storm cannot
weaken the heart and soul of our nation," the president said.
"America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it."
On Sunday, cadaver dogs and boatloads of forensic workers fanned
out across New Orleans to collect casualties of Katrina.
Police and military officials have been marking the location of bodie
with global positioning devices and painting on the outside of houses.
Recovery crews are volunteer medical professionals called in by the federal
government. They are processing bodies and taking them away in refrigerated trucks.
A field morgue has been set up in St. Gabriel, where a chain-link fence
and black plastic hides the operation from onlookers.
Bodies are being processed around the clock.
Meanwhile, cleanup is in high gear in New Orleans.
Around the city center, crews have begun clearing the mounds of trash
and other debris strewn by the hurricane and by fleeing residents.
Bulldozers pushed heaps of chairs, sleeping bags and other discarded items
into giant piles at the convention center yesterday. Dump trucks hauled away the debris.
Tow truck drivers have started picking up scores of abandoned cars littering the streets.
Other workers have unloaded food and supplies for employees
working in Bell South's downtown office.
At the Parc St. Charles hotel, workers went floor to floor cleaning up
and throwing out food that has spoiled and become contaminated.
New Orleans Airport Opens
To Limited Service
POSTED: 12:24 pm CDT September 11, 2005
KENNER, La. -- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport
has reopened for cargo traffic.
Airport officials said limited passenger service will begin Tuesday.
The airport will start back with about 30 departures and arrivals a day.
That's far short of the usual number of 174. For now,
all of the flights will be from domestic carriers.
Airport director Roy Williams said international flights are
blocked for now because of damage to the international concourse.
That concourse also is being used by civilians and military
involved in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
Landrieu Escalates Rhetoric Against
Bush, White House
President Prepares For Another Visit To State
POSTED: 2:17 pm CDT September 11, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana's senior U.S. senator on Sunday accused the White House
of a "full court press" to blame state and local officials for the slow response to Hurricane Katrina.
Democrat Mary Landrieu said officials at all levels eventually will share blame for the response.
But on CBS' "Face the Nation," Landrieu said that only the Bush
administration is pointing the finger.
On "Fox News Sunday," Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana
said he would give "the entire big government relief effort a failing grade, across the board."
Viter added that state and local governments also share in the blame.
The government's emergency managers came under fire from the lone
black senator, Democrat Barack Obama, who said they were clueless about
the inner-city in New Orleans when they failed to plan for the evacuation of poor people.
The White House sought to deflect criticism ahead of President George W. Bush's
third trip to the stricken Gulf Coast, saying blame could be assessed later.
"It's not the time for blame. It's the time for helping the people on the ground
that have been severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina," White House
spokesman Ken Lisaius said. "We'll continue to provide aid and
assistance to those who have been severely impacted."
Louisiana Official Seeks Local
Housing For Evacuees
POSTED: 3:38 pm CDT September 11, 2005
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Worried about possibly losing hurricane evacuees who already
have been given housing in other states, Louisiana officials called Sunday for quicke
r arrangements for temporary housing closer to home.
The first 10 families to get emergency housing in Louisiana moved in Saturday in Patterson.
James McIntyre, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
said 5,000 mobile homes are ready for use as soon as
legal details can be worked out with landowners.
He said there are also contracts with motels and other properties.
Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Preparedness,
said more than 58,000 people are in shelters in Louisiana and at least another
150,000 are in shelters out of state. And untold thousands are staying with friends and relatives.
Tennessee and Texas already are providing housing for Louisiana evacuees,
who are becoming assimilated into those communities and school systems.
Smith said Louisiana appreciates what those states are doing, but added, "these
people are people we may lose for good."
Fresno firm links relief effort
Equipment helps connect hurricane aid workers AND helping
evacuees contact family and friends
A LINK TO THERE WEB SITE RIGHT HERE http://www.getnia.com/products/index.html
Updated Saturday, September 11, 2005, 1:35 AM
A Fresno business is playing a crucial role in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort by
supplying communication systems to an international company charged with providing
temporary shelter and food for thousands of evacuees.
Network Innovation Associates received the call for help Sept. 2 from 4D2, a specialist
design and field division of Compass Group, an international food and multiservice support company.
4D2 had been asked to help with the hurricane relief effort, and communication in
the storm-ravaged area would be a necessity.
On Tuesday, Adam Nostrant, vice president and co-founder of Network Innovation,
and two company employees drove to Los Angeles where they had an inventory
of equipment. They prepared and shipped overnight three communication systems
— each consisting of a 1.2-meter diameter satellite dish, a satellite modem
and transceiver equipment — to Houston.
In Houston, 4D2 had a Lear jet waiting to transport the equipment into key evacuation
areas in the Gulf states affected by Katrina.
Less than 24 hours after being shipped, the equipment was installed and in use.
The requests keep coming.
On Friday, 12 mobile satellite systems were flown from Fresno to Houston, and then
into evacuation centers in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Nostrant, who has had very little sleep in the past few days, is glad to help.
"To be part of something so much bigger than we are makes you feel good," he said.
The communication networks are critical for those providing aid after telephone, computer
and cell phone access were practically wiped out by the hurricane.
Network Innovation Associates' systems can operate remotely, without land-lines or cell
towers because they rely on satellite technology.
The company takes equipment purchased from manufacturers and incorporates their
communication systems into the technology, Nostrant said.
"We are a glorified integrator ... our own, self-standing Internet service provider.
"They bring our equipment into the hurricane area and it communicates with a satellite
that is 22,000 miles up in the sky," he said. "You can communicate from a roof, a trailer,
a car ... e-mail, telephone or cellular phone."
The Fresno company's role in the relief effort is major, said a 4D2 official.
"What they are providing is crucial," said Gerhard Eygelaar, global information
technology manager for 4D2, who was in Houston on Friday. "We can't operate
without it. The [relief] sites are very remote."
Eygelaar said his company is contracted with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency and Chevron Corp. in the hurricane relief effort. It is charged with providing
emergency shelter and other aid.
4D2 requires communication in three major areas, he said: "For on-site construction
offices, client administration offices for FEMA and Chevron, and for
recreation centers in the temporary facilities."
Eygelaar said computer and Internet access is helping evacuees contact family and friends.
He said his company's staff in Houston must be able to contact relief sites in
Mississippi and Louisiana as well as 4D2 offices in Dubai, London and South Africa.
Nostrant said he has no idea how much money his company will be paid for its
services. So far, 4D2 has paid the company $3,000.
"What we are sending out today — 12 more systems — is about $60,000,"
Nostrant said. "Part of it the company is donating, part of it we will be reimbursed."
Declaring area safe is a risky proposition
Environmental experts warn of pressure to jump the gun
12:40 AM EDT on Saturday, September 10, 2005
While environmental workers risk disease and injury sampling the toxic waters covering
much of New Orleans, their bosses could eventually face a different challenge: resisting
pressure to declare the city safe too soon.
The urge for people to come home, and the need to restart the Crescent City's shipping,
industrial and tourism economy, is likely to bring demands for cleanup managers to play
down the hazards, former Environmental Protection Agency officials warned Friday.
It has happened before, they noted. After the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade
Center, the White House pressured the EPA to make its public statements about air quality
near the site more reassuring than the available evidence justified, the EPA's inspector
general reported in 2003.
In the case of New Orleans, the former officials said, giving a premature green light to repopulation
and redevelopment would be far riskier. Heavy metals and toxic chemicals from industrial plants,
and even asbestos from old school buildings, could pose dangers even after the city
dries out and seems safe, they said.
"The reality of this type of situation is that people are going to want to go home," said
Sylvia Lowrance, a 24-year EPA veteran who was acting enforcement chief when she
retired in 2002. "EPA will be under tremendous pressure ... to sound the all-clear
without caveat."
Eryn Witcher, press secretary for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, said concern
for public health would dictate the recovery from the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.
"Steve Johnson is a 25-year career scientist at the EPA," Ms. Witcher said. "He is
committed to doing the sampling and the testing and the cleanup and doing whatever
needs to be done."
Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator under the
Clinton administration, said the long-term effects from toxic substances possibly leaking
from industrial sites, gas tanks or damaged rail cars could include cancer, reproductive
or fetal-development problems and nervous-system damage.
None of those risks can be detected just by looking at a building or a neighborhood, she
said. Protecting public health will require a carefully planned testing program that could
take a year or more and could cost billions of dollars, she said.
"We can't be in too much of a hurry to declare the A-OK," Dr. Goldman said.
The public is getting an early look at conflicting information about New Orleans' environmental
safety. Both the EPA and Louisiana's environmental agency have warned of high levels of
fecal coliform bacteria, a sign that sewage has contaminated water. The flood damaged
sewage-treatment plants and probably broke sewer pipes, releasing untreated waste.
But the agencies differed this week on how to characterize other types of pollution. Mr. Johnson,
the EPA administrator, said Wednesday that early tests of drinking water from
residential areas found lead from an unknown source in amounts that violated legal
limits. With the water system's integrity unknown, lead from the floodwater could
enter the drinking water.
On Friday, however, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said that
more than 100 water samples taken Sept. 4 and 5 showed only "very low" amounts
of toxic substances and that all were "below any levels of concern."
Jim Elder, former head of drinking-water and wastewater enforcement for the EPA, said
confusing messages on water safety could be harmful. If people follow orders to boil
water, for example, but it's contaminated with lead, boiling will only concentrate the
lead in a smaller amount of liquid, making the water more dangerous.
Boiling also can release into the air any solvents, pesticides or asbestos in the water,
he said. Even if water pressure has returned, Mr. Elder said, people should assume
that delivery pipes are still broken and open to contamination and should use only
bottled water until the system is thoroughly inspected and tested.
"There may be pressure in the line, but
[assuming the water is safe] could be very mistaken," Mr. Elder said.
N.O. Police Say They Are Regaining Control
Sep 10, 1:20 PM EDT
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The first street-by-street sweep of this swamped city revealed
far fewer corpses than originally feared, and the police chief said Saturday his hard-
pressed force was regaining control despite a shortage of roughly 300 officers.
"We're much more organized at this point," said Police Chief Eddie Compass. "We
have our logistics in order and the patrols are going very well."
Compass said more than 200 people had been arrested in recent
days and were being held in a makeshift jail.
Of a force of 1,750, Compass said he is short about 300 officers, but he had
offered no details about where they were or why they were not available for duty.
"I can't worry about that now," he said. "We're doing the job we have to do."
Mayor Ray Nagin and others had predicted up to 10,000 deaths in New Orleans,
but that number appeared less likely after a count on Friday, said retired
Marine Col. Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security chief.
"Some of the catastrophic deaths that some people
predicted may not have occurred," Ebbert said.
He declined to give a revised estimate, but said: "Numbers so far
are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000."
Also Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projected it will take a month
to dry out New Orleans, which had been 80 percent covered following the storm
and levee breaches. The Corps previously said it could take 80 days.
The news came as authorities shifted most of their attention to counting and
removing the dead, after days spent cajoling the living to get out of a city
beset by fetid floodwaters and scattered fires.
Since the hurricane struck Aug. 29, residents, rescuers and cadaver-sniffing
dogs have found bodies floating in the water, trapped in attics or left on broken
highways. Some were dropped off at hospital doorsteps or left
slumped in wheelchairs out in the open.
Police and soldiers had been marking houses where corpses were found, or
noting their location with global positioning devices, so that the bodies could be collected later.
Nagin had suggested last weekend that "it wouldn't be unreasonable to
have 10,000" dead, and authorities ordered 25,000 body bags. But soldiers
brought in over the past few days to help in the search were not seeing that kind of toll.
"There's nothing at all in the magnitude we anticipated," said Maj. Gen.
Bill Caldwell, commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
Ebbert said the search for the dead will be done block-by-block,
with no news media allowed to follow along.
"You can imagine sitting in Houston and watching somebody removed from
your parents' property," he said. "We don't think that's proper."
State officials could not provide an exact count of the dead recovered so far.
Corpses from New Orleans were taken to a morgue in nearby St. Gabriel,
where medical examiners worked to identify the remains.
Still, thousands of stubborn holdouts were believed to be staying put in the city.
"There are still quite a few still holed up in their homes," said Oklahoma Army
National Guard Brig. Gen. Myles L. Deering. "We'll continue to check on
them to make sure they're OK and try to encourage them to leave."
Health officials also noted that aerial spraying of pesticides will begin Sunday
to curb mosquito-borne illnesses such as West Nile virus.
There were no widespread reports of anyone being taken out by force under
a three-day-old order from the mayor, and there were growing
indications that that was little more than an empty threat.
"We're trying our best to persuasively negotiate and we are not using force
at this time - I cannot speak to the future," said city attorney Sherry Landry.
Police fearing deadly confrontations with jittery residents enforced a new
order that bars homeowners from owning guns. That order apparently does not
apply to the hundreds of M-16-toting private security guards hired
to protect businesses and wealthy property owners.
In a shift, the military began providing cages to homeowners to allow them to
evacuate with their pets. "We got the capacity, and it seemed like the right
thing to do," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore.
Meanwhile, the floodwaters continued to recede, with about three dozen of the
174 pumps in the area working and an additional 17 portable pumps in place.
About 350,000 people in the New Orleans area were still without electricity,
but utilities said some power has been restored to the central business district.
Authorities said the airport will reopen to commercial flights Sept. 19. And a
$30.9 million contract was signed to rebuild the Interstate 10 bridge over
Lake Pontchartrain that sustained major hurricane damage.
The developments in New Orleans came against an increasingly stormy backdrop
in Washington, where Federal Emergency Management Agency Director
Michael Brown was relieved of his command of the onsite relief efforts amid
increasing criticism over the sluggishness of the
agency's response and questions over his background.
Embattled Brown Relieved of Katrina Duty
Sep 9, 5:19 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Emergency Management Agency Director
Michael Brown, the principal target of harsh criticism of the Bush administration's
response to Hurricane Katrina, was relieved of his onsite command Friday.
He will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans
relief, recovery and rescue efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced.
Earlier, Brown confirmed the switch. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a federal
relief effort that has drawn widespread and sharp criticism, Brown told The Associated Press
after a long pause: "By the press, yes. By the president, no."
"Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response
to this unprecedented challenge," Chertoff told reporters in Baton Rouge, La. Chertoff
sidestepped a question on whether the move was the first step toward Brown's leaving FEMA.
But a source close to Brown, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FEMA director
had been considering leaving after the hurricane season ended in November and that
Friday's action virtually assures his departure.
Brown has been under fire and facing calls for his resignation because of the administration's
slow response to the magnitude of the hurricane. On Thursday, questions were raised about
whether he padded his resume to exaggerate his previous emergency management background.
Less than an hour before Brown's removal came to light, White House press secretary Scott
McClellan said Brown had not resigned and the president had not asked for his resignation.
Democratic lawmakers weren't satisfied with the move; they immediately demanded Brown's
ouster from FEMA.
"The events of the last ten days have shown that Mr. Brown has repeatedly exercised poor
judgment and has failed in his basic responsibilities," said a letter to Bush from Senate Democratic
Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Dick Durbin, Debbie Stabenow and Charles E. Schumer. "His
continued presence in this critical position endangers the success of the ongoing recovery
efforts. ... It is not enough to remove Mr. Brown from the disaster scene."
Republican Sen. Trent Lott, whose Pascagoula, Miss., home was destroyed in the storm,
said he, too, had concluded that FEMA "was overwhelmed, undermanned and not capable
of doing its job" under Brown's leadership.
"Michael Brown has been acting like a private, instead of a general," Lott said.
Chertoff suggested the shift came as the Gulf Coast efforts were entering "a new phase
of the recovery operation." He said Brown would return to Washington to oversee the
government's response to other potential disasters.
"I appreciate his work, as does everybody here," Chertoff said.
In a telephone interview with AP, Brown said he was "anxious to get back to D.C. to
correct all the inaccuracies and lies that are being said." Asked if the move was a demotion,
Brown said: "No. No. I'm still the director of FEMA."
He said Chertoff made the decision to move him out of Louisiana. It was not his own
decision, Brown said.
"I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good
Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep. And then I'm going to go
right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims," Brown said. "This
story's not about me. This story's about the worst disaster of the history of our country
that stretched every government to its limit and now we have to help these victims."
The White House had insisted publicly for days that Bush retained confidence in his
FEMA chief. Last Friday, Bush praised Brown during a tour of Alabama, telling him,
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
But there was no question that Brown's star was fading in the administration. In the
storm's early days, Brown was the president's primary briefer on its path and the
response effort, but by the weekend those duties had been taken over by Chertoff.
Even before Chertoff's announcement, the beleaguered Brown was facing questions
Friday about his resume.
Bush administration documents have credited Brown with overseeing emergency services
while working for the city of Edmond, Okla., in the mid-1970s. Brown's official biography
on the FEMA Web site says he served as "an assistant city manager." But a former mayor
of Edmond, Randel Shadid, told AP on Friday that Brown had been an assistant to the city
manager - never assistant city manager.
"I think there's a difference between the two positions," said Shadid. "I would think that
is a discrepancy."
Asked later about the White House news release that said Brown oversaw Edmond's emergency
services divisions, Shadid said, "I don't think that's a total stretch."
A longtime acquaintance, Carl Reherman, said Brown was very involved in helping set up
Edmond's emergency operations center and assisting in the creation of an emergency
contingency plan in the 1970s. At the time, Reherman was a city councilman, and he
later became mayor.
FEMA deputy strategic director Nicol Andrews said a report in Time magazine, which
first detailed the discrepancies, was "very inaccurate."
Similarly, a January 2003 White House announcement of Brown's nomination to head
FEMA lists his previous experience as "the Executive Director of the Independent
Electrical Contractors," a trade group based in Alexandria, Va. Two officials of the
group told Newsday this week that Brown never was the national head of the group but
did serve as the executive director of a regional chapter in Colorado.
Registered Sex Offenders 
Among Evacuees
POSTED: 12:36 pm CDT September 9, 2005
have to call your cop's in your area for
info to make sure you don't get any of theme in your home are shelters or communites
thay need help too and yes thay have rights too
That means those registered in the system could end up in shelters or communities
across La. and in other states are you might have some in your home liveen with you yek
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Among the tens of thousands of people evacuated from southeastern
Louisiana because of Hurricane Katrina are some 3,000 registered sex offenders.
The seven parishes with the most damage and displaced people from the hurricane
and flooding have 3,000 registered sex offenders and sexual predators, including
1,405 in Orleans Parish. That's according to the Louisiana State Police sex offender registry.
Florida has a hurricane policy that requires certain registered sex offenders to ride
out a storm in jail, but Louisiana has no policy in regard to sex offenders during hurricanes or evacuations.
That means those registered in the system could end up in shelters or communities
across La. and in other states.
Capt. Jerry Patrick of the Louisiana State Police said the sex offender registry is as
close to real time as possible. That means that shelters and communities that take in
evacuees can check people's names against the state or national sex offender registry.
Patrick said those officials should use available state and national resources if
they have concerns.
New Internet Tech Being Used
In Hurricane Zone
WiMax May Replace Infrastructure Storm Razed
POSTED: 12:41 pm CDT September 9, 2005
too see there web site link right here http://www.wimax.com/
WiMax, a wireless networking technology being tested in various places around
the world, is being used at a hurricane evacuation shelter.
It is also in use at other spots on the Gulf Coast hit by Hurricane Katrina.
The Wall Street Journal reported the WiMax technology will let authorities set up high-speed
Internet access in remote areas where there is no existing infrastructure.
WiMax is like WiFi in that it allows Internet connections with no wires, but it has
greater range and speed.
In the case of the Gulf Coast, much of the infrastructure was damaged or destroyed
by Hurricane Katrina.
Once it's set up, the network will be used for Internet-based telephone service as
well a system to exchange information related to the relief effort.
Hurricane Katrina Damage Estimate
Upped To $125B
POSTED: 1:44 pm CDT September 9, 2005
NEW YORK -- A leading risk assessment firm said hurricane Katrina caused at least
$125 billion in economic damage and could cost the insurance industry up to $60 billion in claims.
That's significantly higher than the previous record-setting storm, Hurricane Andrew
in 1992, which caused nearly $21 billion in insured losses in today's dollars.
Risk Management Solutions, a Newark, Calif.-based firm, said its revised damage figures
reflect, in part, the ravages of heavy flooding in New Orleans, which has prompted
officials to try to evacuate the city.
Laurie Johnson, an RMS vice president, said the flooding, which occurred when
levees collapsed and water from rivers and canals flowed into the low-lying city,
also makes it harder to project final losses.
She estimates damage to infrastructure such as roads and bridges and the utility
system in New Orleans alone at more than $10 billion.
Fewer Bodies Than Expected Found
In Orleans Parish
POSTED: 11:45 am CDT September 9, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Army personnel in New Orleans say they are finding fewer bodies
than they expected.
The commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, said his
troops had expected to find hundreds of bodies in the area they're clearing --
Orleans Parish, where about half of it is still under water.
Soldiers are marking sites where bodies are found, but are not removing any corpses.
Caldwell said about 800 people are still living in the French Quarter, which was not as
heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina as other parts of New Orleans. He said
troops found several hundred more living in a housing project, afraid to go to evacuation centers.
Caldwell also said the military won't be involved in any forced evacuations if those are ordered.
Dallas Launches Fundraising Campaign
To House Victims
POSTED: 1:47 pm CDT September 9, 2005
DALLAS -- It's called "Project Exodus," and Dallas Mayor Laura Miller hopes it finds
homes for hundred of families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
Miller announced the two-month fundraising campaign Friday to raise private dollars
to move victims into apartments around Dallas. The aim is to raise $3 million in private
donations to cover the first two months' rent for as many as 800 Katrina households.
She said the campaign already has received $250,000 in donations, and the 7-Eleven
convenience stores around Dallas have agreed to sell Mardi Gras beads for a
dollar each to benefit the fund.
The fund is intended for families not already eligible for public housing assistance.
As of Thursday, about 17,000 Hurricane Katrina survivors from Louisiana, Mississippi
and Alabama were housed at Reunion Arena and the Dallas Convention Center.
Teen has incredible story of survival
06:47 PM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005
Some of the most incredible stories of surviving Hurricane Katrina are
coming from its youngest victims.
At 16, Kelly Martin saw more in a few days last week than most people will see in a lifetime.
Martin is now a patient at Texas Children's Hospital where she finds comfort in her
new furry friends. She named one stuffed animal Molly. Another Lionell.
It's a world away from the hell she witnessed in New Orleans.
"Lived through people shooting at the helicopters, running up five, six flights of stairs," said Kelly.
She endured five frightening days in New Orlean's Tulane Hospital --
through the hurricane and its ugly aftermath -- all without her mom at her side.
"It was heartwrenching because we thought she was gone," said Rochelle Martin, Kelly's mom.
Rochelle Martin had to stay in Lafayette when Kelly was flown to
New Orleans for treatment. Then the hurricane hit.
Closed roads kept mom out and eventually she lost all contact with her daughter.
"And I put on the TV and they said they was finding bodies which I hadn't heard
from her so I thought it was her," said Rochelle. "I said, 'What if that's my child?'"
Kelly survived the storm, but she was still in danger. Just as she was
waiting to board a rescue helicopter...
of a sudden, a bunch of nurses came and told us we had to run upstairs
because they was shootin' at the helicopter," Kelly remembered.
With a tube still in her spine, Kelly had to run up six flights of stairs. That
caused the tube to protrude and resulted in an infection.
Now healthier and with mom at her side, Kelly is ready for more
surgeries and more challenges.
St. Tammany Parish residents can
return beginning Friday
12:42 PM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005
St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis said residents can begin
returning to their homes Friday at 8 a.m.
Davis said about 30 percent of the parish had power restored and more are coming on
every hour. He said Covington was in the best shape with Mandeville, Madisonville and
even some of the major thoroughfares in Slidell having power and gasoline.
Davis added that several pharmacies were up and running and that
some grocery stores were back up.
According to Davis, if you return and you need to stay in a shelter at night
because of damage to your home, you should call 1-985-898-2323 for shelter information.
Davis said you should be prepared to return to a home without power and
he said those returning near the Lakefront in Mandeville should be
prepared to see a good deal of damage.
Soldiers, police take guns from homes
Homes with corpses marked for later action
11:15 AM EDT on Friday, September 9, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — Soldiers and police confiscated guns from homeowners as they
went house to house, trying to clear the shattered city of holdouts because of the
danger of disease and fire. Police on Friday also marked homes with
corpses inside, with plans to return later.
As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite
orders from Mayor Ray Nagin earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. By midmorning,
though, there were no immediate reports of anyone being taken out forcibly, police said.
Police are "not going to do that until we absolutely have to. We really don't want to do
that at all," Deputy Chief Warren Riley said.
Some residents who had previously refused to leave - whether because they wanted to
protect their homes from looters, they did not want to leave their pets behind, or they simply
feared the unknown - are now changing their minds and asking to be rescued, police said.
"They realize they're not going to this awful situation like the Superdome or the Convention
Center," Riley said. "As days go by, it seems less and less likely that we'll have to force anyone."
He added: "I don't know of any incidents where people are being bellingerent."
Police and soldiers seized numerous guns for fear of confrontations with jittery residents
who have armed themselves against looters.
"No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons," Riley said.
On Thursday, in the city's well-to-do Lower Garden District, a neighborhood with many
antebellum mansions, members of the Oklahoma National Guard seized weapons
from the inhabitants of one home. Those who were armed were handcuffed and briefly
detained before being let go.
"Walking up and down these streets, you don't want to think about the stuff that you're
going to have to do, if somebody's pops out around a corner," said one of the
Guardsmen, Chris Montgomery.
Police also went door-to-door checking for bodies or anyone in need of rescue.
Houses where corpses were found were marked so that authorities could go back later.
Upcoming Celebrity Benefits To Raise
Money For Relief Efforts
POSTED: 10:43 am CDT September 8, 2005
Upcoming celebrity benefits to raise money for relief efforts in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
- Alabama is scheduled to play a benefit concert in Montgomery, Ala. Thursday.
- The major networks and over two dozen cable outlets will broadcast
- "Shelter From the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast" Friday (7 p.m. CT).
- Performers on the commercial-free hourlong telecast will include Neil Young,
- Paul Simon, Alicia Keys, Sheryl Crow, the Dixie Chicks, Rod Stewart and Randy Newman.
- The fundraiser has been expanded to include appeals for donation throughout the
- day, beginning at 6 a.m. (CT) and ending with the networks' late shows.
- "ReAct Now: Music & Relief" will air Saturday on MTV, VH1 and CMT (7 p.m CT)
- with artists including the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Sheryl Crow,
- Alan Jackson, Kelly Clarkson, the Neville Brothers and Kanye
- West. The "American Idols Live!" tour will hold a benefit
- show Sunday in Syracuse, N.Y. From September 11-18,
- jazz musicians in Manhattan will raise money for the American Red
- Cross with shows in clubs throughout the city.
- Chefs for Humanity, an organization created by the Food Network's Iron Chef
- Cat Cora, will hold an eBay auction Sept. 12-21, to raise money for UNICEF's Katrina relief fund.
- David Banner, through his Heal The Hood foundation, will hold a Sept. 17 benefit
- concert in Atlanta with guest appearances/performances by T-I, Nelly, Twista and others.
- Jazz at Lincoln Center will host a benefit concert, to be televised on PBS, Sept. 17 in
- New York City. Among those participating: Wynton Marsalis, Bill Cosby,
- Elvis Costello, Robert De Niro, Paul Simon and Bette Midler.
- Dashboard Confessional will play three benefit concerts Sept. 18-20 in Toronto, Chicago
- and Sayreville, N.J. with hopes of raising $500,000.
- Madison Square Garden will host a benefit concert Sept. 20 with a lineup
- including Elton John, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Buffett, Bette Midler, Lenny Kravitz
- and Fats Domino, a New Orleans native who was believe missing for days
- after the hurricane hit.
- "Gospel Angels," a live concert from Atlanta, will air Sept. 22 (7 p.m. CT)
- on the Gospel Music Channel and Paxson Communications' i network. The
- show will include performances from hurricane victims' shelters.
Landrieu: Federal Government Failed
To Protect American Lives
POSTED: 1:41 pm CDT September 8, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mary Landrieu took to the Senate floor today to
accuse the federal government of failing in its "greatest responsibility" --
protecting the lives of Americans after Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans flooded.
Landrieu, who lost her family home in the storm, was surrounded by Senate
Democrats as she spoke for 30 minutes in the hushed chamber about her
experiences over the past two week. Only one Republican, Sen.
Thad Cochran of Mississippi, was on the floor.
Landrieu joined her Republican colleague, Sen. David Vitter, in
calling for a bipartisan response to the disaster.
But she led Senate Democrats today in proposing a broader aid
package than the one Bush proposed.
It would largely bypass the Federal Emergency Management
Agency and provide relief funds directly to disaster victims.
Vitter is in Louisiana today.
Katrina prompts questions on
military role in crises
Thu Sep 8, 7:17 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Criticism about the U.S. government's
delayed response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has
put a renewed spotlight on the role the U.S. military should play in responding to such crises.
While there are now some 19,000 active-duty troops and 45,000 National
Guard members -- part-time soldiers -- involved in relief efforts in the stricken
Gulf Coast, it took several days to get significant numbers of troops into the region.
As New Orleans flooded last week, tens of thousands of residents were stranded in
danger, squalor and lawlessness, and few troops were on hand to provide relief or restore order.
U.S. lawmakers have already begun gathering facts on the military's response and
are considering whether to relax the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits
troops from doing domestic law enforcement.
Gen. Peter Pace, designated as the next chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of
Staff, on Thursday called for re-examination of federal laws to ensure that the
active-duty military could be as engaged and effective as possible in
responding to crises like the hurricane.
Some believe rigid interpretations of the 1878 law, enacted during the post-Civil War
reconstruction period, may have slowed down deployment of active-duty troops after
the storm. Others argue there are numerous exceptions to the law, and
it can be waived by the president.
Pace, speaking at a conference hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and the
Marine Corps Association, was careful not to endorse any relaxation of that law, but said the
Pentagon and Congress should study existing legislation carefully to "make
sure the needs of the country are best served."
Top military and Coast Guard officials at the conference agreed U.S. forces
were well-trained to respond in emergency situations, although some stressed
that civilian authorities should maintain primary responsibility in such cases.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, a Republican from Virginia,
has questioned restrictions on military action imposed by the 19th century law several
times since the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks, and vowed to do so again this week.
Lawmakers and the military discussed allowing active-duty military to help domestic agencies
combat terrorist threats after those attacks, although ultimately opted not to do so.
The entire legal framework governing the U.S. military is being examined by the
military as part of a quadrennial review now underway, said Loren Thompson,
a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute.
"All these artificial legal distinctions about where people can serve, and under
what circumstances, just get in the way of serving the nation," he said, although he
added certain curbs were needed to prevent abuses of military deployments at home.
Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
said the U.S. public clearly wanted the military to play a bigger role in responding to disasters.
Despite the heavy loss of life and property in this case, it still paled in comparison to
the possible effects of a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city, he said, and only the
military would be able to control operations of the scale required in that situation.
Lt. Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, agreed that
U.S. troops were trained to respond quickly and flexibly to any possible crisis, but he
rejected the notion that the military should be made the primary responder.
"This is not the responsibility of the military," he told the conference.
"We absolutely must have civil authorities."
Teams Find New Orleans Holdouts Wavering
Tue Sep 8, 8:10pm PT
NEW ORLEANS - More stragglers seemed willing to flee the filthy water and stench of
death Thursday as increasingly insistent rescuers made what may be
their last peaceful pass through swamped New Orleans before using force. Some are
finally saying, `I've had enough," said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
spokesman Michael Keegan. "They're getting dehydrated. They are running out of food.
There are human remains in different houses. The smells mess with your psyche."
Across a flooded city where as many as 10,000 holdouts were believed to be stubbornly
staying put, police made it clear in orders barked from front porches and through
closed doors that they would return — next time, getting tough.
Police said they were 80 percent done with their scan of the city for voluntary evacuees,
after which they planned to begin carrying out Mayor Ray Nagin's order to forcibly
remove remaining residents from a city filled with disease-carrying water,
broken gas lines and rotting corpses.
"The ones who wanted to leave, I would say most of them are out," said Detective
Sgt. James Imbrogglio. "There may be a few left, so we're going to go check
one of our last areas that's underwater today and then hopefully that will be it."
The job of carrying out the mayor's order was left largely to the 1,000 or so remaining
members of New Orleans' beleaguered police force.
"We are not going to be rough," said Police Chief Eddie Compass. "We are
going to be sensitive. We are going to use the minimum amount of force."
The near-conclusion of the voluntary evacuation came as receding floodwaters revealed
still more rotting corpses. Nagin has said the death toll in New Orleans alone could
reach 10,000, and state officials were ordering 25,000 body bags.
Volunteer rescuer Gregg Silverman, part of a 14-boat contingent from Columbus,
Ohio, said he expected to find many more survivors in his excursion through the
city's flooded streets. Instead, he found mostly bodies.
"They had me climb up on a roof, and I did bring an ax up to where a guy had tried to
stick a pipe up through a vent," Silverman said. "Unfortunately, he had probably just
recently perished. His dog was still there, barking. The dog wouldn't come.
We had to leave the dog just up there in the attic."
As for other bodies his group encountered: "Obviously we are not recovering
them. We are just tying them up to banisters, leaving them on the roof."
At St. Rita's nursing home in the town of Chalmette, authorities struggled to identify
as many as 30 residents who may have perished.
Dr. Bryan Patucci, coroner of St. Bernard Parish, said the nursing home staff
apparently believed it was more dangerous to move the residents than keep them
at the building. He said it may be impossible to identify all the victims until
authorities compile a final list of missing persons.
The Army Corps of Engineers said the city was still about 60 percent flooded —
down from as much as 80 percent last week — but was slowly being drained by
37 of the 174 pumps in the Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, and
17 portable pumps. Together, those pumps can move 11,000 cubic feet of water
per second, roughly equal to 432 Olympic-size swimming pools per hour.
Engineers said the mammoth undertaking could take months, and could be complicated
by corpses getting clogged in the pumps.
"It's got a huge focus of our attention right now," said John Rickey of the Corps.
"Those remains are people's loved ones."
In Washington, the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said the decision to pour
heavily contaminated floodwaters from New Orleans streets into Lake Pontchartrain
could pose future environmental problems.
"We were all faced with a difficult choice," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said.
The other option was to pour the water into the Mississippi River, where it
eventually would move into the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, President Bush declared Sept. 16 as a national day of remembrance
for the dead, and he encouraged those displaced by the storm to sign up for
$2,000 debit cards to help rebuild their lives. Congress also rushed to approve
an additional $51.8 billion in emergency aid for the victims.
Bush dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to the region Thursday amid persistent
criticism of the sluggish pace of the federal response. Stopping along a street
of splintered homes in Gulfport, Miss., Cheney said much progress is being
made in a relief effort he termed "very impressive."
As he spoke, a passer-by hurled an expletive at the vice president. "First time
I've heard it," Cheney joked with reporters when asked if he was hearing a lot of such sentiments.
Later in New Orleans, Cheney visited a repaired levee and surveyed the damage
as he rode through the streets in an armored Humvee.
At Louis Armstrong Airport, now a bustling military encampment, New Orleans'
City Council met for the first time since Katrina, with members defending how
they handled the disaster and defiantly vowing to rebuild.
"New Orleans has been built back from many disasters," said Councilwoman
Cynthia Hedge Morrell. "New Orleans was here before there was a United States of America."
Some 400,000 homes in the city are without power, with no immediate prospect
of getting it back. Where water has been restored, it is not drinkable. The city is
still dangerous — not primarily, as it was last week, from armed criminals, but
from the sewage-laden floodwaters, which are believed to contain E. coli and other dangerous germs.
Fires were also a continuing problem. At least 11 blazes burned across the city
Thursday, including a rash of fires that raged across the campus of historically
black Dillard University, destroying three large buildings.
Across town at the Audubon Zoo, curator Dan Maloney said some of the 1,400
animals were lost, but keepers have been too busy caring for survivors to take
a count. The dead included two sea otters that were moved to different tanks
before Katrina and died from stress.
Some of the most vulnerable creatures — including several macaws, eagles and
a pair of African lions — were being transferred to other zoos.
Said chief gardener Tran Asproditis: "It's just sad that this has happened and it
is going to take us a long time to recover and reopen for the kids. And that's what
we want to do, is just open so the kids can come back."
A child in charge of `6 babies'
Tue Sep 6, 9:40 AM ET
In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees
stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the
road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed
him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2, and one was wearing only
diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her
14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told
rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few
have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering
together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans.
In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to
coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.
Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life,
knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned,
said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into
he back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.
"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being
in charge of six babies?"
Children reported missing
So far, parents displaced by flooding have reported 220 children missing, but that
number is expected to rise, said Mike Kenner of the National Center for Missing
& Exploited Children, which will help reunite families.
"When my kids were little I used to lose them in Target, so it's not hard for me
to believe," said Nanette White, press secretary for the Louisiana Department of
Social Services. "Sometimes little kids just wander off. They're there one second
and you blink and they're gone."
At the rescue headquarters, Deamonte volunteered his vital statistics. He said his
father was tall and his mother was short. He gave his address, his phone
number and the name of his elementary school.
He said the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were
his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building.
The children were clean and healthy--downright plump in the case of the infant,
said Joyce Miller, a nurse who examined them. It was clear, she said, that
"time had been taken with those kids."
All evening Thursday, volunteer Ron Haynes carried one of the 2-year-old girls
back and forth, playing with her until she was calm enough to eat dinner.
"This baby child was terrified," he said. "After she relaxed, it was gobble, gobble, gobble."
Late the same night, they got an encouraging report: A woman in a shelter in
Thibodaux, about 45 miles west of New Orleans, was searching for seven children.
People in the building started clapping at the news. But when they got the mother
on the phone, it became clear that she was looking for a different group, said
Sharon Howard, assistant secretary of the office of public health.
"What that made me understand was that this was happening across the state,"
she said. "That kind of frightened me."
The children were transferred to a shelter operated by the Department of Social
Services, with rooms full of toys and cribs where mentors from the Big Buddy
Program were on hand day and night. For the next two days, the staff did detective work.
One of the 2-year-olds steadfastly refused to say her name until a worker took
her picture with a digital camera and showed it to her. The little girl pointed at it
and cried out, "Gabby!" One of the boys had a G printed on his T-shirt when he
arrived; when volunteers started calling him G, they noticed that he responded.
Deamonte began to give more details to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big
Buddy mentor: How he saw his mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter.
How he promised her he would take care of his little brother.
Late Saturday, they found Deamonte's mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio
along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her
children's pictures on a Web site set up over the weekend by the National Center for
Missing & Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight waited
to take the children to Texas.
In a phone interview, Williams said she is the kind of mother who doesn't let her
children out of her sight. What happened, she said, was that her family, trapped in
a New Orleans apartment building, began to feel desperate.
Wrenching moment
The water wasn't going down, and they had been living without light, food or air
conditioning for four days. The baby needed milk and the milk was gone. So she decided
they would evacuate by helicopter. When a helicopter arrived, they were told to send
the children first and that the helicopter would be back in 25 minutes.
It was a wrenching moment. Williams' father, Adrian Love, told her to send the children ahead.
"I told them to go ahead and give them up, because me, I would give my life for my
kids. They should feel the same way," said Love, 48.
The helicopter didn't come back.
While the children were transported to Baton Rouge, their parents wound up in
Texas. Days passed without contact. On Sunday, Williams was elated.
"All I know is I just want to see my kids,"
she said. "Everything else will just fall into place."
At 3 p.m. Sunday, social workers said goodbye to the children who now had names:
Deamonte Love; Darynael Love; Zoria Love and her brother Tyreek. The girl who
cried "Gabby!" was Gabrielle Janae Alexander. The girl they called Peanut was
Degahney Carter. And the boy whom they
called G was actually Lee--Leewood Moore Jr.
The children were strapped into car seats and driven to an airport for the flight to
San Antonio to rejoin their parents. Deamonte was hanging on to Robertson's
neck so desperately that Robertson decided, at the last minute, to ride with him as far as Lafayette.
Robertson said he doubted the children would
remember much of the evacuation, or the smell of the flooded city.
"I think what's going to stick with them is that they survived Hurricane
Katrina," he said. "And that they were loved."
IRS Program Converts Vacation
to Donation
WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday announced a new program
to encourage workers to give up unused vacation time and sick days that could be
turned into charitable contributions to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina
Employers would convert the donated time into cash contributions to charities and workers
would be able to deduct the amount donated from their federal tax return, officials said.
A similar program was put into effect after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
but it received only a limited response. Treasury Secretary
John Snow and IRS Commissioner Mark Everson told reporters at a news conference
Thursday that the government planned a much greater effort to publicize the new
program and expected a much larger response this time.
"We are seeing a tremendous outpouring of the American spirit," Snow said. "That is
our indication that this program will be utilized and have a desirable effect."
Officials refused to provide any estimates of lost revenue to the government from
the utilization of this new deduction.
For workers to be able to take advantage of the program, their employers will have
to set up a leave-based donation program under guidelines that will be published by the
IRS. The program will cover unused vacation time, unused sick leave and unused personal leave.
Even workers who do not itemize deductions on their tax returns, which covers
about two-thirds of all filers, will be able to participate in this program, the IRS said.
The IRS also announced Thursday that it was extending a number of tax deadlines
for people living in areas affected by Katrina until Jan. 3. Previously, the IRS had
extended these tax deadlines including extending until Oct. 31 the Sept. 15 deadline
for individuals to make quarterly estimated payments.
The Jan. 3 extension will cover people living in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama
and three counties in Florida.
On the Net:
IRS: http://www.IRS.gov
Americans give record amounts of
aid to Katrina victims
SEP.8.2005 TIME IS 11:20AM
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Americans are offering unprecedented aid in the wake of the
Hurricane Katrina disaster -- at least 587 million dollars -- eclipsing the initial pace of
relief for the September 11 attacks and the Asian tsunami, charitable organizations said.
As of early Thursday, American donations had totaled 587 million dollars, according to the
Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper that tracks charitable contributions.
The Chronicle said that in the 10 days after the September 11 attacks, Americans had donated
239 million dollars to charitable causes and in the first nine days after the tsunami hit,
donations totaled 163 million dollars.
However, the total amount of US charitable contributions linked to September 11
eventually topped 2.2 billion dollars and those for the tsunami have hit nearly 1.3 billion,
according to the newspaper.
For Katrina, US corporations had provided well over 200 billion dollars of the overall
relief total, according to the Chronicle.
The donations from Americans are in addition to the one billion dollars in cash and
material goods from 45 countries accepted so far, according to the State Department.
The
said it had received 485 million dollars in gifts and pledges for the hurricane
relief effort as of Wednesday, of which 251 million has been received online.
"This is the largest response to a single natural disaster in the 125 years of the American Red Cross,
and there's no doubt it will set many records in terms of the length and expanse
of the operation," said Joe Becker, senior vice president of the organization.
Many people are giving through Internet portals like Yahoo, which collected 52 million
dollars as of Thursday. Google was used for over 10.6 million dollars in aid.
Among the major corporate donors, Exxon Mobil has pledged seven million dollars and
is matching contributions by employees, retirees, surviving spouses, dealers and distributors
worldwide. Chevron has committed five million dollars.
Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and his family said they are donating 1.5 million
dollars, breaking a tradition of anonymous gifts. Hip-hop star Jay-Z has pledged
one million dollars to the Red Cross.
John Grisham, the novelist, and his wife have given five million dollars to fund
they established to help recovery efforts in Mississippi.
The sports world has kicked in as well. The New York Yankees gave one million
dollars to the Salvation Army relief fund.
Stephon Marbury, a member of the New York Knicks basketball team, said he was
donating between 500,000 and one million dollars to relief efforts.
"It's so touching because I think about them kids," Marbury said, trying to choke back
tears at a news conference in which the NBA Players Association pledged 2.5 million dollars.
The Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant and the Dallas Mavericks' Alan Henderson have
contributed 100,000 dollars each.
In addition to cash donations, relief is flowing in many forms.
Intel said it arranged for the donation of 1,500 laptop personal computers, 150 wireless
Internet access points and wireless radios, in addition to a one million dollar cash donation.
Television host Oprah Winfrey contributed one million dollars to America's
Second Harvest for food and grocery products from several area retail stores.
The International Bottled Water Association donated at least seven million bottled
water servings and Wisdom Oral is sending 156,000 toothbrushes displaced families.
New Orleans readies 25,000 body bags
Armed soldiers, police try to persuade holdouts to leave
09:12 AM EDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — Soldiers toting M-16s strengthened their grip on this swamped
city as concerns grew about the risks posed by the toxic floodwaters and officials
braced for what could be a staggering death toll by readying 25,000 body bags.
Across miles of ravaged neighborhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates and housing
projects, workers struggled to find corpses and convince the city's
last stubborn residents to leave.
"Right now, human life is paramount so I'm concentrating all my
power on getting out people who want to leave," New Orleans Police
Chief Eddie Compass told NBC's "Today" show Thursday.
Searchers were armed with proof of what many holdouts had long feared:
The floodwaters are thick with sewage-related bacteria that are at least 10
times higher than acceptable safety limits. The muck contains E. coli, certain viruses
and a type of cholera-like bacteria.
"If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She urged anyone coming into
contact with the water to scrub with soap and water.
The danger of infection wasn't limited to the New Orleans area. The bacteria is
feared to have migrated to crowded shelters outside the state, where many evacuees
are staying. Four deaths - one in Texas, three in Mississippi - have been
attributed to wound infections, said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the CDC.
Officials readied for the potential of a horrendous death toll. Bob Johannessen,
spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said officials have
25,000 body bags on hand in Louisiana. Asked if authorities expected that many
bodies, he said: "We don't know what to expect."
Mayor C. Ray Nagin had earlier said New Orleans' death toll could reach 10,000.
Already, a temporary warehouse morgue in rural St. Gabriel that had been prepared
to take 1,000 bodies was being readied to handle 5,000. The official death toll in Mississippi
climbed to 201 Wednesday, but more than 1,000 are feared dead there, too.
In Mississippi, efforts to restore power to residents along the battered coast were
moving along. Gov. Haley Barbour said Thursday on "Today" that power would
be restored by Sept. 11 to all homes and businesses able to receive it.
Katrina victims could also soon get federal money in their pockets - and even in the mail.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, stung by criticism that it failed to
act fast enough when Katrina hit, was prepared to hand out $2,000 debit cards for
each household affected by the storm. At the Houston Astrodome where many
New Orleans evacuees are being housed, long lines formed to register.
"The concept is to get them some cash in hand which allows them, empowers them,
to make their own decisions about what do they need to have to start rebuilding,"
said Michael Brown, FEMA's head.
In addition, the U.S. Postal Office has delivered some 15,000 Social Security checks
to collection points in areas affected by Katrina, despite
being unable to locate 2,000 of its own workers.
Postmaster General John Potter vowed to get the checks to customers.
"Regardless of where they are, we'll move their mail to them," Potter said. "My
message to everybody is, if they are relocated, please inform us."
The Bush administration on Wednesday formally asked Congress for $51.8 billion
in Katrina relief and recovery expenses, in addition to $10.5 billion already approved,
calling it the latest installment - but not the last.
"We will in fact need substantially more," said budget director Josh Bolten,
estimating that the money would cover expenses for a few weeks.
The need to move on with their lives has refugees in shelters across Texas slowly
moving out. Some are staying in the state. Others are catching buses or taking flights elsewhere.
In Houston, the number of refugees was down Wednesday to a total of 8,096
among four shelters including the Astrodome, said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Joseph Leonard.
Yvette Herbert, one of the Astrodome's refugees, said buses were leaving
for cities all over the country Wednesday. Among them were Chicago, Atlanta,
Detroit and numerous cities in California.
"Everywhere except New Orleans," the 19-year-old said.
"I want to go back home but we can't right now."
Nagin has ordered law officers and the military to evacuate all holdouts in
the city - by force if necessary. There were no reports of anyone being physically
removed and it was not clear how the order would be carried out.
The stepped-up evacuation came as workers trying to restart essential services came
under sniper fire. More than 100 officers and seven armored personnel carriers
captured a suspect in a housing project who had been firing on workers
trying to restore cell phone towers, authorities said.
"We're putting a lot of people on the street right now and I think that we are
bringing it under control," said Capt. Jeff Winn, commander of the police SWAT team.
"Eight days ago this was a mess. Every day is getting a little bit better."
The floodwaters continued to recede, though slowly, with only 23 of the city's
normal contingent of 148 pumps in operation, along with three portable
pumps. The water in St. Bernard Parish had fallen 5 feet.
John and Cathy Nost rode out the storm in their French Quarter home.
Now they are unwilling to evacuate even though they say they're suffering
from high fevers they attributed to heat exhaustion.
Military units supply them with food and water. They bathe in water from a
nearby swimming pool laced with bleach as a disinfectant and lug buckets back to flush their toilet.
"It's not that you get used to it, but you don't want to walk away," said John Nost, 59
Evacuees leaving Houston shelters
HOUSTON -- The number of hurricane evacuees staying at Houston shelters fell from
25,800 to just over 8,000 as people are finding relatives to stay with or alternative
housing, relief officials said Wednesday.
"What that indicates to us is that the displaced citizens from Louisiana are finding
places to go and resume their lives. They are finding relatives. They are finding homes
in the community," said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Joe Leonard. "This is not a prison.
This is not a cage. If they want to get up and leave, we are not stopping them."
Officials said they were able to get a more accurate count in the early morning hours
during the new shelter curfew, 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., when evacuees are required to
be inside the Reliant Park grounds.
About 900 evacuees arrived at Houston shelters overnight but Leonard said people
are leaving faster than they are coming in. Leonard, the commander in charge of
shelter operations, said his goal is to consolidate and possibly close the three Reliant
Park shelters, nicknamed Reliant City, by Sept. 18 if all the evacuees find someplace
to live. He did not say whether his plan included the George R. Brown Convention
Center, where 1,366 evacuees are currently staying.
FEMA liaison Ed Conley said that the agency’s focus now is providing assistance to
evacuees in Houston and that there are no plans to transport people to shelters in
other states. FEMA officials were registering individuals for aid,
such as $2,000 debit cards and housing assistance.
Evacuee Arrested for Panhandling in Ga.
sep.7.2005
ATLANTA - A man who fled Louisiana with his family to escape Hurricane Katrina
was arrested for asking motorists for money in this city
where banning panhandling has been a hotly debated issue
James Scott says he had slept in a car for days with his brother, sister and her two
young children before they decided to ask for help.
Nearly broke, the family drove to Buckhead, an affluent north Atlanta neighborhood
Thursday and got out near a shopping mall, hoping for the charity of others.
"It's the most expensive mall in Atlanta," Scott said. "I thought I could get some help."
After a half hour of asking passing motorists for help, Scott was approached by
a policeman on a bicycle. Scott showed the officer his Louisiana driver's license,
his car tag and his car registration — proof that he was not a local homeless person,
but an evacuee down on his luck in an unfamiliar city. He was arrested for soliciting.
"I asked the cop, 'You can't feel my pain?'" said Scott, who added that another
officer gave him $7 as he was taken to jail.
Atlanta Police Department spokesman John Quigley said soliciting on a public
sidewalk is allowed, but not in traffic. He said he was not aware of any increase
in panhandling arrests in Atlanta since the hurricane.
Last month, Mayor Shirley Franklin signed into law a panhandling ban around
tourist destinations in parts of downtown Atlanta, not the area where Scott was
arrested. The ordinance drew noisy protests from opponents who declared the
ban was a mean-spirited way to hide the city's homeless population.
Canal Street Living Up To Its Name
POSTED: 4:05 pm CDT September 7, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans’ Canal Street is still living up to its name --
this time serving as a water route for rescuers.
Only five pumps are working out of more than 100 laced throughout New Orleans,
indicating that it will probably take some time for the waters to completely recede.
But rescue crews continue scouring the city for residents still hesitant to evacuate
despite the hazardous conditions of the water.
Teams are enforcing the mayor’s evacuation order with 2.5-ton trucks and small
boats, moving through neighborhoods to rescue peopleAt the Grand Palace Hotel,
which made headlines recently for an array of health violations, several people
had to be ordered to leave by the Army National Guard.
Authorities estimate that more than 10,000 people still remain in the city even a
week after Katrina struck the area, leaving
rescuers in areas such as Canal Street with unfinished jobs.
Police step up New Orleans evacuation
11:01 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — Using the unmistakable threat of force,
police and soldiers went house to house Wednesday to try
to coax the last 10,000 or so stubborn holdouts to leave storm-shattered
New Orleans because of the risk of disease from the putrid, sewage-laden floodwaters.
"A large group of young men armed with M-16s just arrived at my door and told me
that I have to leave," said Patrick McCarty, who owns several buildings and lives in
one of them in the city's Lower Garden District. "While not saying they
would arrest you, the inference is clear."
A frail-looking 86-year-old Anthony Charbonnet grumbled as he locked his front
door and walked slowly backward down the steps of the house where he had lived since 1955.
"I haven't left my house in my life," he said as soldiers took him to a helicopter. "I don't want to leave."
Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered law officers and the military late Tuesday to
evacuate all holdouts – by force if necessary. He warned that the combination
of fetid water, fires and natural gas leaks after Hurricane
Katrina made it too dangerous to stay.
In fact, the first government tests confirmed Wednesday that the amount
of sewage-related bacteria in the floodwaters is at least 10 times higher than
acceptable safety levels. Dr. Julie Gerberding, chief of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, warned stragglers not to even touch the water and
pleaded: "If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so."
As of midday, there were no reports of anyone being removed by force. And it
was not clear how the order would be carried out.
Active-military troops said they had no plans to use force. National Guard officers
said they do not take orders from the mayor. And even the police said they were
not ready to use force just yet. It appeared that the mere threat of force would be the first option.
"We have thousands of people who want to voluntarily evacuate at this time,
" Police Chief Eddie Compass said. "Once they are all out, then we'll
concentrate our forces on mandatory evacuation."
Mindful of the bad publicity that could result from images of weary residents
dragged out of their homes at gunpoint, Compass said that when his officers
start using force, it will be the minimum amount necessary.
"If you are somebody who is 350 pounds, it will obviously take more force
to move you than if you are 150 pounds," the chief said.
The stepped-up evacuation came as workers trying to get into the city to restart
essential services came under sniper fire. More than 100 officers and seven
armored personnel carriers captured a suspect in a housing project who had been
firing on workers trying to restore cell phone towers, authorities said.
"These cell teams are getting fire on almost a daily basis, so we needed to
get in here and clean this thing up," said Capt. Jeff Winn, commander of the police
SWAT team. "We're putting a lot of people on the street right now and I think
that we are bringing it under control. Eight days ago this was
a mess. Every day is getting a little bit better."
The police chief boasted that 7,000 more military, police and other law
officers on the streets had made New Orleans "probably the safest city in America right now."
Across miles of ravaged neighborhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates
and housing projects, workers struggled to find and count corpses sniffed out by
cadaver dogs in the 90-degree heat. The mayor has said New Orleans' death toll
could reach 10,000. Already, a temporary warehouse morgue in rural St. Gabriel
that had been prepared to take 1,000 bodies was being readied to handle 5,000.
The enormity of the disaster came ever-clearer in neighboring St. Bernard
Parish, which was hit by a levee break that brought a wall of water up to 20
feet high. State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded nursing home
in Chalmette when the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And Rep.
Charlie Melancon said more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse
while they waited for rescuers to ferry them to safety.
The floodwaters continued to recede, though slowly, with only 23 of the city's
normal contingent of 148 pumps in operation, along with three portable pumps.
The water in St. Bernard Parish had fallen 5 feet.
Because of the standing water, doctors were being urged to watch for diarrheal
illnesses caused by such things as E. coli bacteria, certain viruses, and a type
of cholera-like bacteria common along the warm Gulf Coast.
Given the extent of the misery, Louisiana's two U.S. senators – Democrat Mary
Landrieu and Republican David Vitter – wrote a letter to Senate leaders
Wednesday urging them to put aside partisan bickering in assigning blame
over the federal response and focus on providing for victims.
"Please do not make the citizens of Louisiana a victim once again by allowing
our immediate needs to be delayed by partisanship," they wrote.
Patricia Kelly was driven out of her home by flooding in the low-lying Ninth
Ward and took up residence under a tattered, dirty green-and-white-striped
patio umbrella in front of an abandoned barber shop. Despite the warnings, she refused to leave.
"We're surviving every day, trying to tolerate the situation by the grace of
God. He's keeping us holding on just one day at a time," she said. "I'm going
to stay as long as the Lord says so. If they come with a court order, then we'll leave."
Sgt. Joseph Boarman of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, whose soldiers
helped coax people from their homes, said he could almost understand the
reluctance to leave: "It's their home. You know how hard it is to leave
home, no matter what condition it's in."
Dolores Devron lashed out in anger as soldiers led her and her husband,
Forcell, out of their flooded home.
"There are dead babies tied to poles and they're dragging us out and
leaving the dead babies. That ain't right!" she screamed, waving her
arms as she was directed onto a troop carrier truck.
In the high and dry French Quarter, 48-year-old Jack Jones said he would
resist if authorities tried to force him out of the home where he has lived since the 1970s.
While the streets were strewn with garbage, rotting food and downed power
lines, Jones kept his block pristine, sweeping daily, spraying for mosquitoes
and even pouring bleach down drains to kill germs.
Jones said the sick, the elderly and people who lack supplies should be evacuated
– but not folks like him. He has 15 cases of drinking water, a generator, canned
ravioli, wine, coffee and three cartons of Marlboros.
"I've got everything I need," he said. "I just want to be left alone."
Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit Cards
WASHINGTON - The federal government plans to begin doling out debit cards
worth $2,000 each to adult victims of Hurricane Katrina,
Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff descibed the
plan in a conference call with state officials Wednesday morning. The unprecedented
cash card program initially will benefit stranded people who have been moved to major
rescue centers such as the Houston Astrodome.
"They are going to start issuing debit cards, $2,000 per adult, today (Wednesday) at
the Astrodome," said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
The cards could be used to buy food, transportation, gas and other essentials,
according to a state official who was on the call and requested anonymity because
the program has not been publicly announced.
In Boston, Gov. Mitt Romney said the cards will be offered "to people in shelters as
well as people who are not in shelters but who have evacuated the area and need help.
" He said the hope is the cards will encourage people to leave shelters voluntarily.
It's unclear how much the debit card program will cost the government, but it's likely
to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars since
hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced
Church Donates 300 Bibles To Evacuees
Episcopal Diocese Responds To Request POSTED: 9:30 am CDT September 7, 2005
SALT LAKE CITY -- Some of the 583 Hurricane Katrina evacuees who have
been moved to Utah have asked for Bibles.
The Episcopal Diocese of Utah has arranged for 300 copies of the New International
Version to be delivered to the National Guard's Camp Williams at no cost.
Episcopal priests and trained lay leaders also have joined the ranks of chaplains
attending to the religious needs of evacuees.
Officials have shut down Utah's hurricane assistance hot line numbers after 7,000
people called to offer aid to evacuees who have been taken there.
St. Bernard Parish hit hard
10:33 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
CHALMETTE, La. — In St. Bernard Parish, fatigued and frustrated authorities
say they'll match their Hurricane Katrina devastation with anyone else's.
"If you dropped a bomb on this place, it couldn't be any worse than this,"
said Ron Silva, a district fire chief.
They said while federal help came slowly to New Orleans, it's even been slower
to their outlying area of some 66,000 people on Louisiana's southeastern edge.
"It's Day 8, guys. Everything was diverted first to New Orleans, we understand
that. But do you realize we got 18 to 20 feet of water from the storm, and we've
still got 7 to 8 feet of water?" Silva said.
In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a Canadian
task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the storm to help,
St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.
"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should
be here faster than that," Stone said.
Rescue teams and other help has been arriving from around the country this
week, but parish authorities say action is needed to reduce water levels.
Destruction swept the parish, throwing boats out of marinas and into the middle
of two-story-home neighborhoods, leaving flipped-over cars with their rear
bumpers resting against roofs, refrigerators atop roofs, and single-story homes
with water to the roofs. There were several roofs with holes where
residents apparently used axes to cut their way out.
The parish's fire department and sheriff's department have taken authority,
commandeering heavy equipment and other vehicles for use to clear paths
and evacuate people. The some 100 firefighters have been working virtually
around the clock, Silva said, using their own vehicles, some of which now
have engine damage from overuse and sea water.
Authorities say they're not ready to estimate
numbers of dead; at least dozens, maybe more.
Some Planning To Defy New Orleans
Evacuation Order
Bush, Congress Promise Probes Of Katrina Response UPDATED: 8:09 am CDT September 7, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Get out or be taken out by force.
That's the latest message from the mayor of New Orleans to any residents trying
to stick it out in the hurricane- and flood-ravaged city.
Mayor Ray Nagin gave the order last night after rescuers said they'd found
hundreds of people ignoring repeated calls to leave.
There are people like Dennis Rizzuto, who said he has food and water for a
month and a generator powering his home. He and his family declined a boat
ride to safety. Said Rizzuto, "They're going to have to drag me."
Other people have had enough. Johnnie Lee MacGuire stayed for
a week but now said, "It's too filthy."
The water that's a toxic stew of sewage and dead bodies is receding
inch-by-inch. But only a handful of pumps are working to drain the city.
Hours Passed Before FEMA Chief Asked For Volunteers
Internal documents show the government's disaster chief waited roughly five
hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before asking Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to dispatch 1,000 agency employees to the region.
The documents show the volunteers were given two days to arrive.
In a memo to Chertoff, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, said that among duties of these employees was to
"convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
A Homeland Security Department spokesman said Brown had positioned
front-line rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm.
The memo aimed to assemble a federal work force to
coordinate various operations, the spokesman said.
White House, Congress Pledge Investigations
Both the White House and Congress are pledging to investigate the
government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
Some Democratic leaders are also calling on President
George W. Bush to fire Brown.
U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barbara Mikulski,
D-Md., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., said FEMA needs new leadership.
"I don't expect that the agency can go forward with its
current leadership," Clinton said. "If you're incompetent,
you'll have a job in this administration." See
separate story on Clinton, Mikulski, Pelosi concerns.
A Senate committee will soon hold hearings
on what went wrong with the emergency response.
The chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the panel needs
answers to a number of fundamental questions. She said they include
whether the federal government is organized well enough to provide
emergency services in "response to catastrophes such as Katrina or terrorist attacks."
The committee will get a private briefing from Department of
Homeland Security officials Wednesday, and the
actual hearings could be scheduled as early as next week.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he wonders why TV reporters
could get in and out of New Orleans with satellite equipment,
but the federal government couldn't get in with water, medicine and doctors.
For his part, the president said he'll lead his own investigation
into what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Bush said Vice President Dick Cheney will go to the Gulf Coast
region on Thursday to help determine whether the government is doing all it can.
"Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way
of getting the job done for the people," Bush said.
Bush said there will be "ample time" to figure out what went
right and what went wrong as the federal government responded.
For now, he said, he wants to focus on saving lives and getting people the help they need.
The president is trying to pump up what he calls a
"tidal wave of compassion," but critics are questioning his focus.
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Bush is firing a
barrage of photo opportunities and misinformation,
while shifting blame for what went wrong.
Dean is not alone. At least one evacuee who saw Bush Monday
in Baton Rouge said she's "not interested in hand-shaking"
and "photo ops." Mildred Brown said, "I need answers."
Bush said people want the White House to
"play the blame game," but he said it's not the time to point fingers.
Bush said the investigation will be partly aimed
at making sure the country could withstand more storms, or an attack.
"We still live in an unsettled world," he said.
Bush said he will seek as much as $40 billion for the next phase of recovery efforts.
Katrina Confusion: Right City Name, Wrong State
Emergency officials in South Carolina are scratching
their heads over some post-Katrina confusion.
Dozens of medical workers rushed to a hangar in Charleston,
S.C., Tuesday, to prepare for 180 injured evacuees. But the
evacuees' flight was actually headed to Charleston,
W.Va. It was the second time the federal government told
South Carolina officials to be ready for a plane
full of people, only to have it end up hundreds of miles away.
No one's been able to explain the confusion so far.
A triage unit to evaluate patients will be kept at the Charleston
Air Force Base through the week because officials think injured
evacuees will eventually make it to the city along South Carolina's coast.
Reporter Shot In Baton Rouge
A reporter for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper is carrying
a reminder of his coverage of Hurricane Katrina -- a bullet.
The newspaper says Marcus Franklin was shot on Monday night by
a gunman who attempted to rob him at a dimly-lit intersection.
Franklin said the man approached him and asked how much money
he had. He said he heard a pop that sounded like a firecracker and
realized after pulling away that he had been shot in the stomach.
He spent the night in a Baton Rouge hospital, where doctors said
it would be too risky to remove the bullet.
New Orleans Man Accused Of Shooting At Helicopter
A New Orleans man has been charged with shooting at a military rescue helicopter.
Wendell Bailey was taken into custody Monday night by agents
with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives. The agents were in the neighborhood to investigate
neighbors' complaints of gunfire and heard shots
from an apartment window as a helicopter flew over.
Authorities said the bullets apparently did not hit anything.
Officials Work To Stem Spread Of Disease
Health officials are working to stem the spread of disease among
those affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Officials said four people may have died of a waterborne bacterial
infection circulating in dirty floodwaters. The germ, common in
warm Gulf Coast waters, is usually spread by eating contaminated
food, but it can penetrate open wounds, too.
Rescue workers and others are being warned.
A federal health official said the deaths -- one a hurricane refugee
evacuated to Texas, the other three in Mississippi --
are being attributed to wound infections.
Also, officials are trying to control a diarrhea-causing virus found
among some refugees in Houston's Astrodome. Officials there
are handing out alcohol-based hand sanitizers to help prevent its spread.
So far, there are no large disease outbreaks attributed to the hurricane.
New Orleans Mayor Sees 'Significant' Progress
The mayor of New Orleans said he's seeing "significant" progress
in his city, now about 60 percent under water, which is
down from 80 percent during the darkest days of last week.
Nagin made the estimate fresh from an aerial tour of the flooded city.
With a major levee break finally plugged, engineers were struggling
Tuesday to pump out the water, still as high as 7 feet in some places.
The breach was in the 17th Street canal levee. It was repaired with
helicopters used to repeatedly drop giant sandbags into the gaping break.
Water in some low-lying areas has dropped by more than a foot.
Nagin said two pumps are working to get the water out of the city,
but said many problems still exist. He said that a lot of gas is still leaking.
Nagin described the latest progress as "rays of light," but he and
other authorities said they're bracing for the horrors the receding
waters and toxic muck are certain to reveal.
Nagin has said the city's death toll could reach 10,000.
"It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," he said.
Meanwhile, Louisiana's governor is trying to play down talk of a rift
with Washington over the hurricane relief efforts.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said "there is no divide" and that "every leader
in this nation wants to see this problem solved."
On Monday, Blanco and Bush kept their distance during a tour of a
Baton Rouge relief center. But at their next stop, the Republican
president kissed the Democratic governor on the cheek.
Behind the scenes, state and federal officials have each suggested the
others are to blame for a slow response to the crisis.
As for the federal response, Nagin said he's "gone from anger to
despair to seeing us turn the corner."
Evacuees In Houston Astrodome Face Curfew
Many of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston's Astrodome have
turned down offers to go to cruise ships -- preferring to stay where
they are and try to track down loved ones.
However, those people staying in the Astrodome and in Houston's
other major shelters will be facing a curfew. Officials with the Houston
Police Department said they want to stop the continual entering
and exiting of evacuees at the Astrodome, which is why an 11 p.m.
curfew was implemented beginning Tuesday.
"We are finding that these people are wandering the parking lots of
the Astrodome complex. We are trying to make some order out of it.
They are coming in at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. disturbing people, disrupting
children trying to sleep. We are going to have school starting.
We are just trying to get more order into the complex," an HPD official said.
Evacuees not inside the Astrodome, Reliant Center or the
George R. Brown Convention Center by 11 p.m. will be locked out until 6 a.m.
"We are maintaining a strong presence out here to give the
survivors the absolute sense of security," HPD Sgt. David Craine said.
One evacuee told Houston television station KPRC that 11 p.m.
seemed like a good hour; however, another said he felt like he was being locked up.
HPD officials said they have made 37 arrests in six days inside
and around the Astrodome. They said most of those arrests
were due to public intoxication or disorderly conduct.
KPRC reported that HPD is also investigating at least one
allegation of sexual assault inside the Astrodome.
Officials said that the Astrodome has 17,500 evacuees, Reliant
Center has 3,800, Reliant Arena houses 2,300 residents and
the George R. Brown Convention Center holds 1,300 people.
Katrina To Cost 400,000 Jobs,
Cause Economic Slowdown
Economic Growth Could Fall By Full Percentage Point
POSTED: 9:01 am CDT September 7, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A non-partisan agency says Hurricane
Katrina will have a "significant but not overwhelming" effect on the economy.
The Congressional Budget Office said employment is likely
to drop by 400,000 people in coming months.
The assessment obtained by The Associated Press said economic growth
could decline by as much as a full percentage point in the second half of this year.
Snipers Firing On Workers
Repairing Cell Phone Towers
POSTED: 8:53 am CDT September 7, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- There are reports from New Orleans of shots being
fired at cell phone workers on towers trying to restore service.
Authorities have been going door to door at nearby apartment buildings,
sometimes forcing doors open in their search for snipers.
Some pawn shops in the area are federally licensed gun dealers that were
looted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The operation includes dozens of New Orleans police, Louisiana State Police,
ATF and other law enforcement members. Most are wearing flak jackets.
No shots have been heard during Wednesday morning's operation and no one
has been pulled out of any apartments.
Reporter Shot In Baton Rouge
A reporter for the St. Petersburg Times newspaper is carrying a reminder of his
coverage of Hurricane Katrina -- a bullet.
The newspaper said Marcus Franklin was shot on Monday night by a gunman who
attempted to rob him at a dimly-lit intersection.
Franklin said the man approached him and
asked how much money he had. He said
he heard a pop that sounded like a firecracker and realized
after pulling away that he had been shot in the stomach.
He spent the night in a Baton Rouge hospital, where doctors said it would
be too risky to remove the bullet.
New Orleans Man Accused Of Shooting At Helicopter
A New Orleans man has been charged with
shooting at a military rescue helicopter.
Wendell Bailey was taken into custody Monday night by agents with the
federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The
agents were in the neighborhood to investigate neighbors' complaints
of gunfire and heard shots from an apartment window as a helicopter flew over.
Authorities said the bullets apparently did not hit anything.
Kanye West Says He Will Keep
Politics Out Of NFL Show
POSTED: 8:27 am CDT September 7, 2005
LOS ANGELES -- Kanye West isn't talking about "you-know-what." At least not yet.
At a news conference publicizing Thursday's NFL Kickoff concert, West said
Tuesday that it won't be until Sunday that he can "go down to
you-know-where and help." West sparked controversy Friday night during NBC's live
telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief when he went way off
script and accused the government of not helping hurricane
victims fast enough because they're poor and black.
He concluded his comments by saying, "George Bush doesn't care
about black people." West was asked Tuesday if the NFL asked him to keep
his comments to himself for the kickoff concert.
The rapper said that he'll do his job and perform at the concert.
He said he can't say anything about it or, as he put it,
"wear any T-shirts that say anything about you-know-what." West is one of
several performers who will be a part of Thursday's
NFL Kickoff concert along with Good Charlotte, Maroon 5 and others.
He is also taking part in Saturday's MTV, VH1, CMT telethon.
NBC Responds To Kanye West's Comments
On Hurricane Telethon
Singer Criticizes President, Media Coverage
Help for the hurricane evacuees is pouring in from everywhere, including
NBC's Concert For Hurricane Relief held Friday night.
But unscripted comments from musician Kanye West threatened to
take some of the show's focus off raising funds.Musician and New Orleans native
Harry Connick Jr., whose voice was raw from spending the last couple of days in
the devastated area, was among the performers who took part in the NBC special.
Other Louisiana natives performing on the special were Aaron Neville, Wynton
Marsalis and Tim McGraw. McGraw's wife, Faith Hill, comes from Mississippi.
During the special, West apparently ignored the script provided to him to give his
opinions about coverage of the relief effort and express his Here is a statement from
NBC regarding West's comments on the telethon:
"Tonight's telecast was a live television event wrought with emotion. Kanye West
departed from the scripted comments that were prepared for him and his opinions in
no way represent the views of the networks. It would be most unfortunate if the efforts
of the artists who participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who
are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's opinion."
NBC pulled the comments from its West Coast broadcast
and issued a statement after the show.
Michael Jackson Plans Song To
Benefit Katrina Victims
POSTED: 6:36 pm CDT September 6, 2005
NEW YORK -- Michael Jackson has written a song to help raise funds
for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Jackson's spokeswoman said he will ask other musicians to join him in recording
the song, tentatively titled, "From the Bottom of My Heart."
The pop star hopes to record it within two weeks in the style of "We Are the World,"
which he co-wrote and produced in 1985 to raise money for famine relief efforts in Africa.
Jackson, who has been mostly reclusive since he was acquitted of child molestation
charges in June, has been spending much of his time in Bahrain. He's been the guest
of Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, whose label, Two Seas Records, will produce the single.
BIG 8 AT IT'S BEST NEWS
UPDATE FRESNO NEWS
SEP.6.2005 TIME IS 11:10PM TUESDAY
UPDATE SOME NEWS OUTLET'S ARE
SAYING THAT 400 ARE morn evacuees MAY BE COMEING FRESNO
Mayor Alan Autry side no one will be turn away by fresno .ca.and fresno.ca. Mayor Alan Autry
side that SanDiego evacuees will have 60 to 90 day's stay in San Diego .ca. and
will liken have to get out after the 60 to 90 days IS UP. WHH NOW THAT IS
SAD I WAS SICKEN BY THIS STORY THIS WAS ON ABC.30. NEWS IN FRESNO.CA
11:00PM NEWS .THAY NEED ARE HELP NOT A HOW LONG THAY HAVE TO STAY.
CITY OF FRESNO .CA. LINK'S TO FRESNO WEB SITE'S HERE
Hurricane Evacuees Coming
to CITY of Fresno, California ?
September 6, 2005 time is 12:44pm
Could hurricane victims with no place to live end up calling Fresno home? Hundreds
of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims are now fanning out across America and Fresno
Mayor Alan Autry is welcoming evacuees to the San Joaquin
Valley.Compared to some other California cities, it looks like a generous
offer from the mayor of Fresno. Cities like San Jose are opening their
doors to 100 hurricane victims and San Francisco is
slated for 300 victims. But Fresno, a smaller city with higher unemployment,
will take more. "A natural disaster in one American city
is a natural disaster in every American city," said Fresno
Mayor Alan Autry.Autry said the city and county of Fresno have committed
to housing 400 evacuees, initially in hotel rooms paid for by the Red Cross.
State officials say the entire state has agreed to take only 1,000 evacuees,
so Fresno's commitment is 40% of that. City officials say
evacuees could arrive in Fresno as early as Tuesday, though state officials are not as sure.
"It is not determined whether or not we will receive any," said Sheryl Tankersley
of the State Office of Emergency Services.
A few hurricane victims who had no means of leaving New Orleans ended up looting
stores and there were even shootouts with police.
"My initial reaction was of concern. But it's far overweighed by the need for us as a
community to demonstrate our love and compassion," said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.
Refugee advocates say Fresno has good experience welcoming newcomers. 2,300
Hmong immigrants recently landed in Fresno and another 400 are expected this month or next.
"Nothing is more important than personal relationships and I would hope that
of all the families that come, we will be able to match up each family with a
Fresno family," said refugee housing advocate Sharon Stanley.
The city also has Grizzlies Stadium as a backup plan for housing hurricane
victims, but the Red Cross thinks there will be enough hotel rooms to accommodate the needs.
Mother Rescues Daughter After Hurricane
September 6, 2005 from fresno .ca. link to this story on kfsn.abc.30. http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=local&id=3420197
Hurricane Katrina has torn lives apart. But, a Valley family is back
together after an emotional reunion.
18-year-old Kia Thomas is a college student from Fresno
who was trapped in a dorm room at Xavier University in New Orleans.
She was rescued and taken to Baton Rouge.
It was Kia Thomas' first time away from home and she had never
experienced the force of a hurricane.
When her mother learned she was in danger, she had only one
goal — get her daughter out of harms way.
Selina Adams and her husband drove across country just two weeks
ago to New Orleans to deliver their daughter, Kia Thomas,
to Xavier University. It was the college of her choice.
"I was so excited," recalled Kia. "I couldn't wait to meet my roommate.
I couldn't wait to move in."
The Edison High School graduate knew her parents had sacrificed to
send her to college. So, when the storm began to head for New Orleans,
Kia knew her family could not afford to fly her home.
She was one of about 400 students who stayed behind. When Hurricane
Katrina threatened, Kia says they fully expected to be evacuated.
When they learned the university apparently had no plans to get them out,
some began to panic. "We were upset ... we were confused," said Kia.
Back home, Kia's mom frantically made calls to the Red Cross and the Coast Guard.
She had to work to convince them that students were still stranded at Xavier College.
Thursday morning, Kia says they heard helicopters outside their dorm rooms.
"We all started to poke our heads out the window. We had t-shirts on broom
sticks, we had flashlights and we were waving our arms," explained Kia.
By then, Kia had placed a frantic cal to her mother asking her to come and get her.
"I was concerned about her mental health.
This was hard for her," said Kia's mother, Selina Adams.
ABC-30 paid the airfare, so mother and daughter could be reunited.
Kia, along with about 200 other students,
had been evacuated to Southern University in Baton Rouge.
After a 10 hour journey, a nervous mother arrived at her destination to pick up Kia.
Kia was the last of the students to be picked up. She left with just a plastic bag.
All of her personal belongings and identification were left behind.
While it was a frightening experience, Kia says weathering the
storm and its aftermath taught her a lot about herself.
She learned she was a leader, "I can do whatever I set my mind to do. I set my
mind to be strong for the group and keeping us together, and it happened."
Now, Kia Thomas registered at Fresno Pacific University. Action News has
been told the university is providing her with tuition, room and board for the year.
Mexican army convoys head
for U.S. to deliver Katrina aid
09/07/2005
A Mexican army aid convoy set out for the U.S. border Tuesday, carrying
water treatment plants, mobile kitchens and supplies
to feed the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Large Mexican flags were taped to many of the 35 green-painted
Mexican army trucks and tractor trailers as they rumbled northward,
in what apparently will be the first Mexican military unit to operate on U.S. soil since 1846.
The trucks, carrying 195 unarmed soldiers, officers and specialists,
were expected to arrive in Laredo, Texas, sometime Wednesday. From
there they are to proceed to Houston, where they will
apparently be used to produce water and hot meals.
The convoy included two mobile kitchens that can feed 7,000
people each per day, three flatbed trucks carrying mobile water
treatment plants, and 15 trailers of bottled water, blankets and applesauce.
It also includes military engineers, doctors and nurses.
In 1846, Mexican troops briefly advanced just north of the Rio Grande in
Texas, which had then recently joined the United States. Mexico, however,
did not then recognize the Rio Grande as the U.S. border.
The two countries quickly became mired in the Mexican-American War,
which led to the loss of half of Mexico's territory in 1848.
Mexico sent a squadron of pilots to train in the United States in the 1940s,
but they served outside the United States — in the Philippines — in World War II.
In 1916, the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa led a group of irregular fighters
in a brief raid into Columbus, N.M., in what is considered the
last battle against foreign forces on U.S. soil.
Mexico was planning another 12-vehicle aid convoy to leave Tuesday
or Wednesday and already has a Mexican navy ship steaming
toward the Mississippi coast with rescue vehicles and helicopters.
Nevada to take firefighters,
800 Hurricane Katrina refugees
09/07/2005
New Orleans firefighters and their families arrived Tuesday for casino
vacations in a state gearing up to accept 800 or more Gulf Coast
residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Most of the 43 firefighters and family members arrived at McCarran
International Airport from Baton Rouge, La., Tuesday night to begin
short stays at a hotel-casino off the Las Vegas Strip, officials said.
"They just need to be able to recover so they can go back and do what the
Lord has entrusted them to do," Mayor Oscar Goodman said at a brief news
conference where he was joined by several firefighters and family members.
Officials said they expect the city will host up to 400 New Orleans police,
firefighters and their families at hotel-casinos on and off the Strip.
Several hotel-casinos are donating rooms, including Station Casinos, which
donated 35 rooms to those who arrived Tuesday. The firefighters and their
families flew free on Allegiant Air, a Las Vegas-based airline.
New Orleans Fire Department Capt. Phillip Mason
said he was looking forward to some rest.
"They asked us if we wanted a free trip to Vegas, all expenses paid.
You'd be crazy to say no," he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gov. Kenny Guinn and local government and relief
officials said they were preparing for the Federal Emergency Management
Agency to fly 300 people to the Reno area on Wednesday, and a total
of 500 to Las Vegas on Thursday and Monday.
"By Thursday, we need to be ready for the first wave," Penney Towers,
American Red Cross southern Nevada chapter executive director, told
a news conference at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas.
"The recovery effort is long-term," Towers added. "We're looking at least a year."
The arrivals are part of a nationwide push to place Gulf Coast refugees of the
Aug. 29 hurricane and provide rest for New Orleans police and firefighters
traumatized by the loss of homes and colleagues.
Guinn declared a limited state of emergency in Nevada to free state funds
to help screen and treat the evacuees for health problems, find temporary
housing and allow the state to seek reimbursement from the federal government.
"I think Nevada is going to do a great job of helping our fellow Americans
in great need," the governor said in Reno. "One day these people were
living their lives and the next day they were in turmoil. They don't even know
where they are going to go until they get on the airplane and shut the door."
At least 100 will be housed in government-owned housing on the
campus of a state mental health facility in Sparks, and 200 at Army
National Guard barracks in Stead, state officials said.
Guinn chief of staff Mike Hillerby said officials worked through the weekend
to set up the relief efforts, which will include housing, food, clothing,
health care and schooling for the children of evacuees.
Officials praised a pledge from casino giant Harrah's Entertainment to
provide 150 rooms in the Las Vegas area and said
they hoped other hotels and businesses also will help.
Harrah's executive Tom Jenkin said the evacuees will be housed
indefinitely at the six Las Vegas Strip hotels the company owns.
Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada has 265 cots available at a
homeless shelter it operates in Las Vegas, said Monsignor Patrick
Leary, the agency executive. He noted that in other cities, the number
of FEMA refugees exceeded original estimates.
Leary said after the news conference that he thought Nevada could get
as many as 5,000 people — counting those finding shelter with friends
and family members and moving to the state looking for jobs.
"This is a huge project," Leary said. "But it's one that, together, we can accomplish."
Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said everyone moving to
southern Nevada from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast should
register at a Catholic Charities community center where they would be
provided assistance and medical screenings for infectious and chronic diseases.
"We do not want to transfer people from cot to cot," Reilly said.
Guinn said Nevada has sent 225 Air and Army National Guard forces
to the Gulf States, including police and security forces,
60 medics, food, water and medical supplies.
The state has also dispatched a C-130, two helicopters and two 50-bed
disaster medical facilities. Officials said 103 state and
local law enforcement officers were on the way to the affected area.
On the Net:
Some of world's poorest
nations offer Katrina aid
07:11 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
BANGKOK, Thailand — Some of the world's poorest nations –
Bangladesh, Afghanistan and tsunami-hit Thailand – have offered the United States
aid and expertise to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
While some of these aid pledges were small compared with the
millions of dollars and heavy machinery promised by Europe, they
come from nations with far less to give and are symbolic recognition
of the role U.S. aid has played in their development.
The Bush administration has not drawn a distinction between wealthy
and needy countries in accepting pledges of help for Katrina.
"As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, the United States
has been at the forefront of providing assistance to those in need throughout
the world at times of crises or natural disasters,"
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Tuesday.
"Therefore, it is no surprise when the United States is confronted
with an event like Hurricane Katrina that those in the
international community have responded in kind."
Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, where millions of
people live on a monsoon- and flood-prone delta, pledged $1 million
to Katrina's victims and offered to send specialist rescuers
to inundated areas, the Foreign Ministry said.
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia said the assistance from Bangladesh
– a major recipient of U.S. economic development aid – was "a token of
goodwill and sympathy," spokesman Zahirul Haque said late Monday.
Thailand Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkon said his Southeast
Asian country would send 60 doctors and nurses
and a shipment of rice to the United States.
The assistance is a "gesture from the heart," Kantathi said, adding
that Thailand remembers the help it received from the United States
after last year's tsunami that left 228,000 dead or missing across 11
Indian Ocean countries. Thailand's death toll was more than 8,000.
Impoverished Afghanistan, which is still struggling to recover from two
decades of war that ended when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban
regime in 2001, has pledged $100,000 for Katrina victims, the government announced.
Neighboring Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the international fight
against terrorism, has offered doctors and paramedics, and Washington
"expressed their appreciation for the offer," Foreign Ministry
spokesman Mohammed Naeem Khan said.
Some 2,700 Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans were in the regions
hit by Katrina, and the Pakistani Embassy in Washington is working
with U.S. authorities to provide them with help, Khan said.
In Latin America, Honduras has offered to send 135 flooding and
sanitation experts, and Peru has offered to send a medical team of up to 100 members.
A Mexican ship loaded with eight all-terrain rescue vehicles, seven
amphibious cargo vehicles, a mobile hospital, two rescue helicopters
and drinking water set sail Monday from the Gulf Coast port of Tampico,
and the country has set up consular offices in trailers around the disaster
zone to help some of the estimated 140,000 Mexicans who
live in the region – including 10,000 in New Orleans.
President Vicente Fox said a Mexican Army mission would follow.
"These humanitarian missions are a reflection of the sentiments of solidarity
of the people of Mexico with the U.S. population," Fox said.
Even leftist governments often at odds with Washington have
offered to chip in. Cuba has offered to send 1,100 doctors and
Venezuela offered 1 million barrels of gasoline, $5 million in cash
and more than 50 tons of canned food and water.
More traditional, wealthier Asia-Pacific allies also have pledged relief help.
On Tuesday, New Zealand promised $1.4 million in aid and offered to
send urban search and rescue specialists and a
victim identification team to hurricane-hit states.
Japan pledged another $500,000 in emergency aid, raising its total
donation to $1 million, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
Singapore said it sent a fourth military helicopter based in Texas to
hard-hit Louisiana, and 45 airmen were participating.
Since the first three CH-47 Chinook helicopters arrived last week,
Singaporeans have flown dozens of missions, evacuating several
hundred people and transporting thousands of tons of equipment
and humanitarian supplies, the Defense Ministry said.
New Orleans lawmakers:
Let people see their homes
06:58 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Whether to snatch up a few personal photographs or simply to inspect their
homes and cry, evacuated New Orleans residents should be allowed back to
look at their damaged belongings, said a group of lawmakers who, in some
cases, aren't sure about the conditions of their own homes.
"I understand why we can't stay. I understand there are health issues. But,
you know, you want to get the photographs of your children and dry them
out," said Rep. Peppi Bruneau, R-New Orleans, at a meeting of
New Orleans area state and local officials.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, however, is trying to get local residents
who stayed behind to clear out when search and rescue boats or military
troops make their house to house searches, warning that even when the
water is pumped out of the city, a toxic, muddy mess would remain.
Police and military blockades are keeping most people out the city.
Residents who evacuated before Hurricane Katrina hit, who followed the
directions of the mandatory evacuation, should know the status of their
homes, lawmakers from New Orleans said, pointing to neighboring Jefferson
Parish, where residents were allowed in, starting Monday to assess damage.
Lawmakers said repeatedly barring people from their homes may drive
them to other areas -- and possibly states -- to set up permanent homes
elsewhere. Sen. Diana Bajoie, D-New Orleans, said in some instances,
people need to get to their homes to protect them from fire. Fires have ignited around the city.
"It sounds simple, but somebody needs to turn the gas off. That's not
something you normally think about when you leave the house," she said.
Exhausted firefighters fight to
save New Orleans from blazes
10:32 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — Firefighter Byron Muse slumped on the wet pavement
near Magazine Street on Tuesday, exhausted, gulping bottled
water near the gutted remains of an apartment building.
It wasn't even 8 a.m. and his department already had battled a blaze that gutted
a 19th-century apartment building and a neighboring home. And other engines'
crews that helped save nearby homes and businesses were racing off to still another fire.
"I don't know what time it is. I don't know what day it is. We're just fighting
these every day. We have no water. We have no water system," he said, his
voice hoarse and his face drenched in sweat. "Everybody's
sticking together. We're doing the best we can."
Fires continue to plague this storm-ravaged city, even as looting and
violence have ebbed with the weekend arrival of U.S. Army 82nd Airborne
troops, Marines and National Guard units from as far away as California and Oregon.
Smoke from house fires and warehouse and business blazes has wafted across
the city. Some have clearly been arson. Others are believed to have been touched
off by the leaking gas mains that still pose a hazard in flooded neighborhoods.
Fire officials say they are having to focus on saving people and keeping other
structures from burning, because the loss of electricity
has slowed flows in the city's water system.
The officials say their crews have not been able to respond to some fires
because of flooding. And at least one city fire truck was stolen in the looting
that followed the storm. The department had to post armed guards at fire halls.
And armed escorts have had to accompany crews to protect them from sniper
fire. In one incident, more than a dozen firefighters were briefly pinned down
and had to radio for a helicopter rescue at the
Fairgrounds, home of the city's famed Jazz Fest.
But unlike the morale-plagued Police Department, which has lost as much
as a third of its officers since the hurricane crisis began, fire officials
say their crews have not suffered significant desertions.
"It helps that we're together as teams, that we work and live together.
Nobody is out there alone," Fire Department spokesman Roman Nelson said.
Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed inundated at least
half of the city's fire stations and knocked out the city's emergency
communications system for days, undermining firefighting and rescue efforts.
Thirty-six firefighters who had to flee their flooded station were briefly
trapped in a three-story Bell South building in New Orleans East.
Capt. Larry White said he and his colleagues decided to stay in the area to
try to rescue residents. Several firefighters had brought boats to their
station before the storm, and they ended up helping about 2,000 people to safety.
The crisis has taken a visible toll. Some firefighters lost relatives,
and the district chief in charge of the department's hurricane response
plan lost the home he had just spent three years renovating.
Firefighters have worked without a break, first helping mount rescues
and then trying to keep the city from burning.
"We got fires all over the city, every day," said a city health
department EMT who travels with the fire crews. "I was out 16 hours
yesterday. We're doing better than we were right after the storm,
but it just doesn't stop."
On Tuesday, the strain was visible on firefighters as trucks from
across the city responded to a fire at the Isabelle Apartments, a
19th-century apartment building near the antique shops of Magazine Street.
At least eight people were in the building when it began to burn, and
neighbors said some emerged from the smoke and flames saying that
one resident had set the building on fire after arguing with another
over alcohol and threatening to burn up his belongings.
Some elderly residents stood on nearby sidewalks and watched as tanker
trucks brought water to help fight the fire and firefighters maneuvered pump
trucks and other equipment to try to keep the blaze from spreading. Soldiers
from an Oregon National Guard unit stood watch,
keeping spectators back as they protected the fire crew.
Overhead, helicopters used slings to haul water from the nearby
Mississippi River and dropped it on the burning building to try to extinguish the blaze.
By the time it was under control, the blaze had melted garbage bags on
a sidewalk across the street and had burned the old apartment building to the ground.
Even as Muse's crew cleaned up, other engine crews were speeding off to another call.
"We've got enough people, and we've got a strong enough operation," he said. "We'll get through this."
Fund set up by former presidents
raises $1 million on day one
06:46 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
NEW YORK — The fund set up by former Presidents Bush and Clinton to benefit
survivors of Hurricane Katrina raised more than $1
million in online donations during its first 24 hours, the ex-presidents said Tuesday.
"The immediate success of this fund is demonstrative of the great
generosity of the American people," said Bush, who together with
Clinton had announced the establishment of the Bush-Clinton Katrina
Fund in Houston on Monday. "Recovery is going to take years; we need
to help these Gulf Coast communities get back on their feet and we
need to help these citizens get their lives back."
Clinton said in a joint statement, "I am so encouraged by the immense
outpouring of donations from the American people. The spirit of America
is astounding and I am constantly amazed by the fortitude
and generosity of the citizens of this great country."
More than 30 corporate donations were pledged to the fund when it was
announced, and since then more than 5,000 individuals have donated online.
St. Bernard ends school this year,
St. Tammany plans for Oct.
09:26 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
St. Bernard Parish -- nearly completely submerged by Hurricane
Katrina -- dashed some hopes that life would return to normal anytime
soon, announcing that children probably won't be able to return to the parish's schools this school year.
New Orleans' school system was devastated by the storm, and officials
are still just trying to piece together financial records. But the city's
neighboring parishes also were hard hit, with students in most areas
urged to enroll in schools where they evacuated until power can be
restored, water can be drained and schools are decontaminated.
Nearly all the schools in St. Bernard, a low-lying parish southeast of
New Orleans, were flooded or at some point under water from the storm.
Teachers and school system staff will get another paycheck this month but
nothing else was promised, according to information
posted on the state education department Web site.
"Almost all of our schools have been under water, and we will not, in all
likelihood, be fully operational this school year. Therefore, if you can
find employment, secure it. If not, file for unemployment benefits,"
the St. Bernard Parish school system message said.
In Plauemines Parish, a coastal strip of land jutting out into the Gulf
of Mexico, six of the nine public schools are flooded, but officials
say they hope to get schools running by next month.
To the west of New Orleans, the suburban Jefferson Parish isn't
expecting to re-open most schools until January.
"Parents and guardians should enroll their children in schools where their
families are currently housed," said Diane Roussel, superintendent of the school system.
Meanwhile, St. Tammany Parish, to the north of New Orleans, still is
hoping to start school in most reaches of the parish by Oct. 3, although
it's unlikely to begin in Slidell at that time because much of the city was hard hit by Katrina.
"We have assessed our schools and support facilities and found varying
degrees of damage at some sites. Work is underway preparing schools to
reopen. As soon as electricity and other essentials can be restored to
schools, we hope to get ready to resume classes," Gayle Sloan, parish
schools superintendent, said in a letter posted with the Department of Education.
New Orleans Interim Superintendent Ora Watson is more optimistic than
Jefferson Parish officials, even though significant portions of Orleans Parish are under water.
She said schools in areas like Algiers and some parts of uptown New Orleans
that weren't hard hit by the storm could be open in about six weeks.
It was unclear how that could happen with power outages estimated to
last months and public health officials warning even the soil in areas
that weren't flooded could be contaminated.
"I'm going to work to have schools running some time this year," Watson said.
Cecil Picard, state superintendent of education, said "this year" in Orleans
Parish, however, will mean "maybe this school year, but I wouldn't think this calendar year."
Eight schools out of 127 schools in Orleans Parish weren't flooded by Katrina, Picard said.
For those students displaced by the storm, Picard urged parents to enroll
them in schools as soon as possible, wherever they are. He said most of
those students are ending up in the Lafayette and East Baton Rouge Parish school systems.
Katrina economic effect likely to top $100 billion
06:41 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
The economic hit from Hurricane Katrina keeps growing, with experts now
saying it's likely to top $100 billion and could go much higher.
And while the epicenter of the damage is on the Gulf Coast, consumers around
the country -- already dealing with record-high gas prices -- also may end up
paying more for everything from lumber to coffee because of disruptions wrought by the storm.
The government has yet to put an overall price tag on Katrina,
but there is general agreement the hurricane will be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.
Paul Getman, chief executive officer of Economy.com, estimates
the economic loss from the hurricane that devastated New Orleans
and a swath of communities along the Gulf Coast will total around $175 billion.
Most of that -- $100 billion -- is damage to homes, businesses, roads,
bridges, levees, telecommunications, water and sewer systems and other
public infrastructure, he said. Another $25 billion is the cost of disrupted
economic activity. Larger energy bills faced by consumers
and businesses make up the other $50 billion.
Risk Management Solutions of Newark, Calif., which specializes in
estimating potential losses from natural disasters and terrorist
attacks, estimates the economic loss from Katrina could exceed $100
billion in terms of property and infrastructure damage and business
interruptions, marketing director Shannon McKay said.
Fallout from the hurricane will slow economic activity for the country
as a whole in the months ahead anywhere from one-half percentage
point to a full percentage point, economists said. That's because
elevated prices for energy and other goods are expected to damp spending by
consumers and investment and hiring by businesses, analysts said.
The storm's economic impact is being felt by consumers and businesses around
the country because the Gulf Coast region is an essential hub for oil and gas production
and distribution. The area also is home to vital shipping and transportation links that
allow grain and other goods to flow out of the country and coffee and other cargo to flow in.
Oil facilities were knocked out. Ports, roads and railways were crippled. Businesses were shut down.
For consumers, the fallout means higher prices not only for gasoline,
which has soared over $3 a gallon, but potentially for a variety of other goods as well, analysts said.
"Consumers are likely to pay more for lumber, coffee, chocolate, perhaps
sugar -- anything that we import through the ports in the affected region
will face higher prices," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.
More expensive fuel costs to transport all kinds of goods also are likely
to show up in higher prices charged to consumers. "Almost every good
that sits on store shelves might see an increase in price related to Katrina," Zandi predicted.
As business costs go up, manufacturers are likely to pass more of those
increased costs for energy and other materials to customers and ultimately
to consumers in the form of higher prices, said Clifford Waldman, economist
at Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a research group. Factories, he noted, are big users of natural gas.
"I think businesses will be more inclined to pass through more of their
energy cost increases to consumers because they don't view the situation
as temporary. It is really eating into their profits now and they really need
to pass through more costs to consumers," predicted Paul Kasriel,
chief economist at The Northern Trust Co.
Prices for paper products, detergents, asphalt, roofing shingles and other
materials with heavy petroleum or natural gas components to them also are likely to rise, economists said.
Lumber prices have mostly jumped in response to an expected surge in
demand related to Katrina rebuilding, said Ken Simonson, chief economist
for The Associated General Contractors of America. Prices for cement
and rubber -- goods that flowed into the country through the now ravaged
Port of New Orleans -- also are likely to rise, he said.
"Consumers who are doing repairs or additions to their home will notice
the effect when they buy a bag of cement," Simonson said.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, Economy.com is now estimating that
consumer prices in the second half of this year will increase by 3.2 percent
on an annualized basis. That's up from a pre-hurricane estimate of a 2.5 percent increase.
The National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile,
is surveying members to get a handle on supply disruptions
and other economic fallout related to Katrina, said David Huether, the association's chief economist
Disaster chief waited to seek volunteers
08:53 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane
Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch
1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region – and
gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought
the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours
after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees
was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.
Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across
the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide
appeal for help came only as the storm raged.
Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event"
but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you
for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."
The initial responses of the government and Brown came under escalating criticism
as the breadth of destruction and death grew. President Bush and Congress on Tuesday
pledged separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina. "Governments
at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown had positioned front-line
rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug.
29 aimed to assemble the necessary federal work force to support the rescues,
establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups, Knocke said.
Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus
on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.
"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," Knocke
said. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some
of the successful efforts."
Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected t
o "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government
officials, community organizations and the general public."
"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department
and as we know, one of yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending
1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.
Knocke said the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland
employees was to ensure they had adequate training.
"They were training to help the life-savers," Knocke said.
Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of
disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia. "You must be physically
able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and
have the ability to work in the outdoors all day," Brown wrote.
The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue
departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks
or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help
from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said Tuesday that Brown should step down.
After a senators-only briefing by Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff and other Cabinet members, Sen.
Charles E. Schumer said lawmakers weren't getting their questions answered.
"What people up there want to know, Democrats and Republicans, is
what is the challenge ahead, how are you handling that
and what did you do wrong in the past," said Schumer, D-N.Y.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the administration is "getting
a bad rap" for the emergency response.
"This is the largest disaster in the history of the United States,
over an area twice the size of Europe," Stevens
said. "People have to understand this is a big, big problem."
Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request
for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday
afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James
May, said the Homeland Security Department called
then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees.
St. Bernard Parish hit hard
10:33 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 6, 2005
CHALMETTE, La. — In St. Bernard Parish, fatigued and frustrated authorities
say they'll match their Hurricane Katrina devastation with anyone else's.
"If you dropped a bomb on this place, it couldn't be any worse than this," said
Ron Silva, a district fire chief.
They said while federal help came slowly to New Orleans, it's even been slower
to their outlying area of some 66,000 people on Louisiana's southeastern edge.
"It's Day 8, guys. Everything was diverted first to New Orleans, we understand
that. But do you realize we got 18 to 20 feet of water from
the storm, and we've still got 7 to 8 feet of water?" Silva said.
In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a
Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after
the storm to help, St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.
"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should
be here faster than that," Stone said.
Rescue teams and other help has been arriving from around the country
this week, but parish authorities say action is needed to reduce water levels.
Destruction swept the parish, throwing boats out of marinas and into
the middle of two-story-home neighborhoods, leaving flipped-over cars
with their rear bumpers resting against roofs, refrigerators atop roofs,
and single-story homes with water to the roofs. There were several roofs
with holes where residents apparently used axes to cut their way out.
The parish's fire department and sheriff's department have taken authority,
commandeering heavy equipment and other vehicles for use to clear paths
and evacuate people. The some 100 firefighters have been working virtually
around the clock, Silva said, using their own vehicles, some of which now
have engine damage from overuse and sea water.
Authorities say they're not ready to estimate numbers of dead; at least dozens, maybe more.
Mayor OKs forced evacuations
12:02 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — As flood waters receded inch by inch Tuesday, New Orleans Mayor Ray
Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to force the evacuation of all residents
who refuse to heed orders to leave the dark, dangerous city.
Nagin's emergency declaration released late Tuesday targets those still in the
city unless they have been designated by government officials as helping with the relief effort.
The move comes after some citizens bluntly told authorities who had
come to deliver them from the waterlogged city that they would not leave their homes and property.
While acknowledging the declaration, police Capt. Marlon
Defillo said late Tuesday that forced removal of citizens
had not yet begun. He said that officers who were visiting homes were
still reminding people that police may not be able to rescue them if they stay.
"That would be a P.R. nightmare for us," Defillo said of any
forced evacuations. "That's an absolute last resort."
Repeated telephone calls to Nagin's spokeswoman, Tami Frazier,
seeking comment were not returned.
Meanwile, city officials Tuesday measured their progress in
inches, as engineers struggled to drain this saucer of a city
in a Herculean task that could take weeks _ if they are lucky.
The Army Corps of Engineers said the timetable ranges from three weeks
to nearly three months, depending on a string of variables, including rainfall,
the still-unknown condition of the pumps abandoned to Hurricane Katrina,
and whether the system can withstand the flotsam of broken buildings, trees, trash and corpses.
Work has also been impeded by sporadic gunfire coming from
"criminals with guns," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' chief district engineer.
The contractors are "getting used to it and that's pretty scary," Wagenaar said.
Despite complications, "we have to get the water out of the city
or the nightmare will continue," said Louisiana Environmental
Secretary Mike McDaniel. He said the water will be pumped into Lake
Pontchartrain even though it is fouled with sewage,
heavy metals, gasoline and other dangerous substances.
The pumping began after the Corps used hundreds of sandbags and rocks
over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street
Canal levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80 percent of this below sea-level city.
Following an aerial tour Tuesday, Nagin said the water was
dropping ever so slightly, and he estimated that it covered only 60 percent of the city.
"Even in areas where the water was as high as the rooftops, I
started to see parts of the buildings," he said, adding, "I'm starting to see rays of light."
But he also warned of the horrors that could be revealed when
the waters recede. "It's going to be awful and it's going to wake
the nation up again," said Nagin, who a day earlier upped his
estimate of the death toll in his city to as much as 10,000.
The job to rid the city of water got off to a woefully slow start.
Once all of the city's pumping stations are running, they can move water
at a rate of 29 billion gallons a day and lower the water level a half-inch
per hour, or about a foot per day. But by late Tuesday afternoon, Corps
officials said only three of New Orleans'
normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating.
With the water dropping, military and police turned their attention to
evacuating the streets of the estimated 10,000 people still believed
to be in the city. Some have been holed up in their
homes for more than a week and refuse to leave.
"You've got to protect your property, that's the main thing," said 69-year-old
John Ebanks, who waved off would-be rescuers from a porch stocked with
food, mosquito spray and other supplies. "This is all I've got. I'm pretty damn old to start over."
In St. Bernard Parish, 38-year-old Dennis Rizzuto took a break from a
Monopoly game with his family to emerge from the second-floor window
of his home. He said he had plenty of water, food to last a month and a generator powering his home.
"They're going to have to drag me" out, Rizzuto said.
In a plea to holdouts who might be listening to portable radios
in the powerless city, Nagin warned that the fetid water could
carry disease and that natural gas was leaking all over town.
"This is not a safe environment," Nagin said. "I understand the spirit
that's basically, `I don't want to abandon my city.' It's OK. Leave for a
little while. Let us get you to a better place. Let us clean the city up."
To that end, the Pentagon began sending 5,000 paratroopers from the
Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division to use small boats, including inflatable
Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in flooded sections of the city.
Some National Guardsmen and helicopters were diverted from their search
missions Tuesday to fight fires, an emerging threat in a city that is still at
least a day and a half away from restoring the first running water since the storm.
A candle was blamed for starting one major blaze in the lower Garden
District -- a historic neighborhood of mostly wooden homes. The flames started
in an abandoned brick building and spread to a neighboring apartment house.
The blazes burned for hours before Chinook helicopters
with water pouches were brought in to fight the blaze.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said lawlessness
in the city "has subsided tremendously," and officers warned that those
caught looting in an area where the governor has declared an emergency
can get up to 15 years in prison. About 124 prisoners filled a
downtown jail set up at the city's train and bus terminal.
"We continue to get better day by day," Compass said.
The signs of hope came against increasingly angry rhetoric over the
federal response as too little too late. In Washington, congressional
leaders planned hearings into the aftermath of the storm.
"We need to rebuild the confidence of the American people ... in our
government's ability to protect them from attack, whether it comes from
nature or from terrorists," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. "The
government simply did not act quickly and effectively enough."
Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard was even more blunt.
"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area,"
he said on CBS' "Early Show." "Take whatever idiot they have at the
top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot.
Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
Five of the 13 sub-basins in New Orleans were still seriously flooded, and
barges and crews were getting into place to fix levee breaches at two other
spots -- the London Avenue canal and the Industrial canal. The London
Avenue canal is in the northwestern section of the city, the Industrial canal in the east.
The Corps is concentrating on the London Avenue canal, where workers
will spend at least two weeks filling a 45-foot hole with rocks and sandbags,
Wagenaar said. Once that drainage canal is fixed, then more pumps can start running.
Before work can even begin on the Industrial canal two barges pushed
onto a bridge by Katrina and a sunken barge need to be removed. The
Coast Guard has said 110 barges, ships and boats sank or ran aground
during the storm -- 67 of them in the Mississippi River, and another 43 along the coast.
The levees were deliberately breached in some spots to let the water flow
back out into Lake Pontchartrain, where the water level had dropped below that inside the city.
How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of the
pumps -- especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the
Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are screens
on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from time to time.
"We're working every avenue to do whatever we can to get things back in
order," said Walter Baumy, Corps manager for the project. "We're
going to accomplish the mission of getting the water out of the city."
New Orleans Mayor Sees
'Significant' Progress
City Goes From 80 Percent Flooded To 60 Percent
UPDATED: 2:40 pm CDT September 6, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- The mayor of New Orleans says he's seeing "significant" progress
in his city, now about 60 percent under water.
That figure would be down from 80 percent during the darkest days of last week. Mayor
Ray Nagin made the estimate fresh from an aerial tour of the flooded town.
With a major levee break finally plugged, engineers were struggling Tuesday to
pump out the water, still as high as 7 feet in some places.
The breach was in the 17th Street canal levee. It was repaired with helicopters used
to repeatedly drop giant sandbags into the gaping break.
Water in some low-lying areas has dropped by more than a foot.
Nagin said two pumps are working to get the water out of the city, but said many
problems still exist. He said that a lot of gas is still leaking.
Nagin described the latest progress as "rays of light," but he and other authorities said
they're bracing for the horrors the receding waters and toxic muck are certain to reveal.
Nagin has said the city's death toll could reach 10,000.
"It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," he said.
Meanwhile, searchers -- including actor Sean Penn -- have been looking for survivors.
They've encountered some residents who are refusing to leave their damaged homes.
But a police official, calling the city destroyed, said there's no reason for them to stay.
Rescue crews from as far away as California are trolling the evacuated city for stragglers.
But rescue workers said they can't force people to go. The mayor said
water won't be handed out to the holdouts anymore.
Meanwhile, Louisiana's governor is trying to play down talk of a rift
with Washington over the hurricane relief efforts.
Kathleen Blanco said "there is no divide" and that "every leader in
this nation wants to see this problem solved."
Earlier Monday, Blanco and President George W. Bush kept their distance
during a tour of a Baton Rouge relief center. But at their next stop, the Republican
president kissed the Democratic governor on the cheek.
Behind the scenes, state and federal officials have each suggested the others are
to blame for a slow response to the crisis.
As for the federal response, Nagin said he's "gone from anger
to despair to seeing us turn the corner."
Bush To Lead Investigation On Response To Hurricane Katrina
The president says he'll lead an investigation into what went wrong
with the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Bush said Vice President Dick Cheney will go to the Gulf Coast region
on Thursday, to help find out whether the government is doing all it can.
Bush said, "Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people."
Bush said there will be "ample time" to figure out
what went right and what went wrong as the federal government
responded. For now, he said, he wants to
focus on saving lives and getting people the help they need.
Bush is trying to pump up what he calls a "tidal wave of compassion."
He has four sessions Tuesday related to the killer storm: He
confers with his Cabinet, meets with lawmakers, sits down with
charity groups and makes a Rose Garden pitch for schools to take young evacuees.
Critics are questioning his focus. Democratic Party Chairman
Howard Dean said Bush is firing a barrage of photo opportunities
and misinformation, while shifting blame for what went wrong.
Dean is not alone. At least one evacuee who saw Bush Monday in
Baton Rouge said she's "not interested in hand-shaking"
and "photo ops." Mildred Brown said, "I need answers."
Bush said people want the White House to "play the blame
game," but he said it's not the time to point fingers.
Bush said the investigation will be partly aimed at making sure
the country could withstand more storms, or an attack.
"We still live in an unsettled world," he said.
New Orleans Police Chief Defends His Force
New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass is defending
the work of his officers following reports some have abandoned their jobs.
Compass denied that officers have left in droves and said that many
held their ground without food, water and even ammunition in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Two police officers killed themselves. Another was shot
in the head. And Compass said 150 had to be rescued.
He said others had gunbattles in dark, flooded streets.
At a news conference, a police official said between 400 and 500
officers on the 1,600-member police force are unaccounted for.
Compass said there are no firm numbers yet.
Officers still on the beat are being cycled off duty and given five-day
vacations in Las Vegas and Atlanta, where they will be offered counseling.
Guard To Continue Handing Out Food
The National Guard figures people will keep taking food, water
and ice as long as they keep giving it away.
Members of the Alabama National Guard will again form an
assembly line of sorts in a Mississippi shopping mall parking
lot Tuesday. They had a steady stream of cars and trucks
lined up Monday, thankful for the cases of water and crates of MREs.
Meanwhile, residents who returned home to Point Port, Miss.,
Tuesday found their homes destroyed or unrecognizable.
The town is in hard-hit Harrison County, home to Biloxi.
Those who stayed through the storm said nobody imagined
Katrina would do so much damage to their homes, which were
constructed under new guidelines passed after Hurricane Camille hit the area in 1969.
Doctor, EMTs Complain About Federal Response
Medical professionals in New Orleans said they were swamped
after Katrina struck and they're highly critical of the
way the federal government responded to the hurricane.
A doctor who spent the past week at squatters' camps on
Interstate 10 said more than 40 people died waiting for help.
And an emergency medical technician who also spent the week
treating people said some who were healthy got sick after
being stranded for days in camps on the Interstate.
They say federal officials should have
been more aggressive in bringing medical supplies.
But another EMT who arrived over the weekend from
Ohio said he can't fault the federal effort. He said the
situation is so overwhelming it would have been impossible to train for it.
Meanwhile, doctors prevented from using a state-of-the-art
mobile hospital in Louisiana because of red tape, have set up shop in Bay St. Louis, Miss.
The delay in getting deployed in Louisiana was over what doctors would be allowed to do.
But Mississippi authorities had fewer reservations about treatments
being offered to storm victims. In the hospital's first 16 hours of
operations, doctors treated about 100 people. The patients had
cuts and wounds and some were dehydrated.
The 113-bed hospital is based at Carolinas Medical Center, in
Charlotte. It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot
trailers. Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology,
satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery.
It's set up in a Kmart parking lot.
Army to Launch New Katrina Search Effort
sep.6.2005 time is 10:00am
WASHINGTON - Paratroopers of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division plan
to use small boats, including inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-
rescue effort in flooded areas of central New Orleans, the division commander said Tuesday.
In a telephone interview from his operations center at New Orleans International Airport,
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said his soldiers' top priority is finding, recovering
and evacuating people who want to get out of the flooded city.
Caldwell, who arrived in New Orleans on Saturday night to what he described as "
an absolutely chaotic situation" at the international airport there, said conditions
are improving, including a gradual return of electricity.
He said he and his soldiers spend their days on the streets of Orleans parish and
their nights sleeping on the ground at the airport, with no toilet facilities, no showers
and only military packaged meals and water for sustenance.
"We can go for weeks like this," he said. "At least we'll have homes to go back to."
Caldwell said that about 3,000 82nd Airborne paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C.,
are there now and another 2,000 were due to arrive Tuesday. They are in addition to
about 1,400 soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division and about 600 from the 13th Corps
Support Command arriving from Fort Hood, Texas. All should be in place by Wednesday, he said.
The Pentagon has insisted for days that no more than 5,200 active-duty
Army soldiers, plus 2,000 Marines, would be sent to help with Katrina relief,
but Caldwell said he plans to have about 7,000 soldiers by Wednesday. That is in
addition to about 2,000 Marines who are going to assist in damaged areas of Mississippi.
9/11 Families Reach Out to Katrina's Needy
Tue Sep 6, 5:27 AM ET
NEW YORK - Edie Lutnick can't watch images of Hurricane Katrina's
devastation for very long. The memories it evokes are too painful.
"How do you watch people saying that their loved ones are missing and look at pictures
of missing people and not have it be reminiscent of 9/11?" said Lutnick, whose brother
Gary was killed in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
As the families of Sept. 11 victims prepare for mourning rituals to mark the fourth
anniversary of the attacks, many have begun offering hurricane survivors the same
kind of support they received from strangers.
"We realize that our pain is something that we can help heal by giving back," said
Valerie McGee, whose husband, Brian McGee, died on Sept. 11. "It's time to give back."
The relatives of firefighter Stephen Siller plan to create the "9/11 Families for
Katrina Relief Fund" this week, Siller's brother Frank said. Siller's widow has
already donated two trailers full of water to victims in the Gulf Coast, he said.
Another group, the Coalition of 9/11 Families, may pair with one or two charitable
institutions to start another relief drive.
At least one victim's relative has already traveled to the Gulf Coast. Joe Downey,
the New York Fire Department's battalion chief of rescue operations, is one in a 36-member
team of New York emergency personnel sent to the hurricane region last week. His father,
deputy chief Ray Downey, was killed on Sept. 11.
"We're going to address this with the same force and intensity as we addressed 9/11,"
said Lutnick. She is the director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, which represents
families of Sept. 11 victims who worked at the Cantor Fitzgerald brokerage in the
World Trade Center, as well as some smaller firms.
McGee, a member of WTC Family Center, said she is finding the stories of Katrina
survivors looking for loved ones the hardest to take.
"Families are scattered. People you can't find. Same as in New York," she said.
"People never saw or heard from their loved ones again."
She said her group is starting with cash donations to the American Red Cross and
contemplating other ways to help Katrina victims.
For now, she said, "money is the most important thing."
Other family members said they were shocked that help hadn't come more quickly
to the thousands of stranded storm victims in New Orleans.
"I think it's really heartbreaking," said William Doyle, who lost his son,
Joseph Doyle, on Sept. 11. "Unfortunately,
these people aren't getting the help that the 9/11 families got."
On the Net:
http://www.coalitionof911families.org/
http://www.wtcfamilycenter.org/
http://cantorrelief.org/
Finding Katrina's "Forgotten"
Tue Sep 6, 8:13 AM ET
Katrina-battered residents of the Gulf Coast are engaged in a wrestling match between heartbreak
and hope. Much of the focus, understandably, has been on the plight of desperate
New Orleanians. But in the counties and parishes of
southern Mississippi and Louisiana, the damage and desperation are also heart-wrenching
Help here is still arriving in a trickle. A lone Army National
Guardsman in full flack jacket stands watch with an M-16 at the
Bogalusa Medical Center in Bogalusa, La., 70 miles north of New Orleans.
The lack of information is making matters worse. Some people are
driving 80 miles to Baton Rouge for gas -- wasting precious fuel -- unaware
that cities closer by have stations open. That's why some in this region of hardscrabble
towns, saw mills, and scrub brush are calling themselves "the forgotten."
ON THEIR OWN FOR NOW. Uncaptured by the national media so far, the
long-term damage to lives, homes, and businesses here is as real as in New Orleans
or Biloxi, Miss.. From Highway 98 in Mississippi and south along State Roads 35
and 41 in Louisiana, Katrina's rage twisted the tops off pine trees like bottle caps.
Towns and hamlets such as Slidell, La., and Columbia, Miss., are under
martial law, with curfews from dusk until dawn.
A security guard in Bogalusa declares life has returned "to the Stone Age."
Looters have stolen the furniture in Daddy's Porch, a Columbia retail outlet,
says an assistant manager at the local Wal-Mart, and driven off with Harley-
Davidson motorcycles from Big Easy Choppers in Slidell. Vandals have
smashed the windows of quick-loan shops.
As aid and attention begins to flood into New Orleans, help will come here.
But for now, people and towns on the edges of the Katrina zone are on
their own. I traveled the region's back roads this weekend to see how they're coping. Here's what I saw:
Stench, Sleep, and Repairs
At the Spaceway Truck Plaza & Restaurant west of Meridian, Miss.,
piles of people were lined up at lunch tables inside the cafeteria. Most of
them were refugees from New Orleans, as well as the Mississippi cities
of Gulfport and Biloxi, all roughly 200 miles south. Cars, 10 deep, waited
for gas at the eight working pumps. The scene was controlled chaos.
As mothers comforted children, exhausted workers from Duke Power and
Cingular took breaks. After six days working nonstop to install generators
to power the Cingular Wireless cell-phone network, all Tom Holzknecht wants to do is sleep.
His bloodshot eyes and sunburned face tell the story: On Aug. 28, he left
his home in Plainview, Ind. Between his labors, he has been catching
quick winks in his hot, musty truck ever since.
One night, he and his fellow contractors were offered hotel rooms near
Biloxi. But the stench of rotting garbage, sewage -- and possibly dead
bodies -- was so bad, he says, they stayed in the truck where
a breeze through the windows could cut the odor.
Now, he and other workers on his Wireless Communications Disaster Crew
are headed home for a rest. They may be back, he says, because the damage
is so bad. "It's the worst I've ever seen," says Holzknecht, 64, a veteran
of repair work after Hurricanes Floyd and Dennis.
Clinging to the Couch
Russ Wilson sits on his green couch. Not his favorite couch at home, but
the rentable one at his furniture shop, Autumn South Rentals, in Laurel,
Miss., 140 miles north of New Orleans. He and wife, Jeanette, have been
holed up there for a week, weathering Katrina in its back room. They can't go
home. The hurricane's fury sent two giant pines through the roof of their abode.
They saw the storm's force from their store, too. The roof of Elegant Evenings,
a salon across the square in downtown Laurel, ripped off and came crashing down
on the back of Wilson's pickup truck. "I dove behind the couch," says Jeanette.
Now, the twisted metal is still parked below the
town's flagpole. The American flag flutters, but in tatters.
Flying bricks and debris shattered Autumn South's upstairs windows.
The entire downtown square in Laurel is wrecked. Much of the townfolk
have fled. "The storm is gonna put a stop to business for a while," says Wilson.
Power came back on Aug. 31. But the town has little potable water or gas.
So Wilson and his wife sit on the couch in their shop -- and patiently
wait for the insurance adjuster to come. It could be weeks. Like thousands
of others in Laurel and beyond, he's hoping to reclaim some of the life he
knew before. But "time is all I've got right now," says Wilson.
"Catching Hell" in Angie
On the ground, it's clear why some hamlets not far from the rattling helicopters
and mass evacuation of the Big Easy aren't yet on the rescue map. Angie, La., is
nothing more than a crossroads, a poor town 80 miles north of New Orleans.
Street signs nearby read: "Prison area. Do not pick up hitchhikers."
A lone barbecue restaurant is surrounded by fallen trees. The Angie Farm
& Garden Supply store offers crickets and minnows for sale to local fisherman, but it's shuttered.
The people here are hurting. On Saturday, Sept. 3, the Washington Parish
sheriff's department handed out its first batch of water and ice in a week.
Cars, tractors, and four-wheelers flocked to the cow trailer parked at the Angie Fire Station.
Cindy Varnado, who's living in a double-wide trailer with 14 people from four
families, has been scrambling for supplies all week. She drove to Baton Rouge
for gas, to Covington, north of New Orleans, for bread, and now snatches a case
of water and four ice bags in Angie. "It's ridiculous," she says. And it's not
going to get any better soon. Varnado's husband, a land surveyor, got word
on Friday, Sept. 2, from his boss that there won't be any work for weeks, if not months.
What's the feeling among the locals, alone and without supplies for the last
week? Like "catching hell," says Darrin Dixon, who works at the local paper
mill. He doesn't expect power for six to eight weeks -- and probably no work,
either. Angie's water and ice supply was brief. It ran out in an hour.
Sentinels with Satellite Phones
Levern Meades is crying. The chief administrator of Bogalusa Medical Center
is exhausted, frustrated -- and searching for body bags. Power has been out at
his hospital in this town of 13,000, 70 miles north of New Orleans, for five days.
The air in the dark hallways is stifling. At least 14 people have died, including
one in Meades' care who couldn't get a kidney dialysis quick enough.
Meades thinks the bodies are being stored in a refrigerated trailer at a hospital
in Franklinton, La., the next town over. Just after the storm, there were 40 patients
in the Bogalusa hospital. Any needing critical care were transported by the
ambulances that could find gas to hospitals in Baton Rouge and Independence,
La. Now, five days after the storm, Meades has pared his patient total down to 14.
Two generators provide meager power that allows the hospital to care for new
trauma patients, most coming in now with chain-saw cuts and heat exhaustion.
Third-year medical students from Louisiana State University, who fled New Orleans
last weekend, served as two of his five doctors on the first night after the storm.
On Aug. 31, he hustled down to the Red Cross rescue center in Baton Rouge to
order water and medicine. But much of it hasn't arrived. "We've been the forgotten
parish (county)," says Meades.
ACTION, NOT JUST TALK. But Meades is weeping for another reason,
too. He's deeply touched by the outpouring of help from local citizens --
and perfect strangers. A local cop set up camp in the lobby to keep out looters,
and nurses have worked around the clock. Dr. Richard Hartman, 75, a retired
local physician, is serving as the hospital's surgeon and Emergency Room chief.
Other help has materialized out of nowhere. Daniel G. Fournerat is the general
counsel of PetroQuest, an oil and gas exploration company based in Lafayette,
La. After trekking west to Mississippi in search of his father-in-law this week
(he's safe), Fournerat pulled into the Bogalusa Medical Center on Aug. 31 and
was gripped by its plight. Since then, he's used his satellite phone -- one of only
three in town -- to call in supplies using a rented helicopter. He found two extra
ambulances in Lafayette and had them driven in. Six PetroQuest executives were
due to arrive on Sept. 3 in their personal SUVs laden with medicine, water, and ice.
Sleeping in Meades' office, Fournerat has become Bogalusa's good Samaritan.
He vows not to leave until next week -- and not before he finds 1,000 oxygen bottles
for the hospital. "You hear a lot of people talk," says Meades. "He's doing it."
Sandwich Missives
The Sandwich Man Inc. is silent. It's sweltering hot at the company in the town of
Pearl River, La., 40 miles north of New Orleans. Yet, five of the outfit's refrigerated
lunch trucks sit idly in the parking lot. No gas, no power, and no
workers gobbling lunch, so business is on hold.
But life goes on after the storm. Managers are trying to save some of its
food before it spoils, while a desperate worker pleads for money. Four letters
posted on the front door of The Sandwich Man offices tell the story:
To Anybody
We're O.K. House O.K. Minor damage.
Praying for you all.
Jack & Ruth
----------------------------------------------------------9/2/05 -- Afternoon. Don't have watch.
Cheryl,
I took bread and ham and cheese and mayo. Can't watch it ruin when I found linemen
at Cleco do not have enough food. Wish you could contact these people....
They need us to feed them. We took van to keep stuff cold.
Sorry I couldn't ask.
Love, Ruth
----------------------------------------------------------9/2/05
Everything looks pretty good considering what a storm came through here....
I would like to know everybody made it alright.... I am trying to relocate a
little closer. Maybe we can get this ball rolling again.
Cheryl
----------------------------------------------------------Miss Ruth,
I have lost everything. I really need to get my check. I
can hopefully get it cashed in Hammond.
Sincerely, Jan
Sludge-Swamped Slidell
Ralph Kastner, owner of Tuff's Equipment Rental, has his knee-high rubber
boots on. It's gear de rigeur in Slidell, five miles from New Orleans. The
Louisiana town on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain is now mostly reduced
to a stinking mass of black sludge.
When Katrina hit, a four-foot high wall of water washed out of the lake and into
town. It mowed down power lines, smashed businesses, and flooded homes. A
week on, the water has evaporated, leaving an inch-thick smear of waste that
smells like a combination of fish and garbage.
At Tuff's, Kastner stacked a dozen forklifts, each raised 10-feet high, around
the store's windows in hope of protecting against the storm -- and looters.
Kastner's quick thinking worked. Little was stolen except four generators out
of the back depot. But it wasn't enough to hold back the storm. Every rental
truck, forklift, generator, and backhoe is ruined. Water washed into the
engines, gummed up alternators, and shorted out batteries. At least $4.5
million worth of equipment is lost, Kastner estimates.
At Tuff's Storage, another of Kastner's businesses, the roof was ripped off,
and 32 cars parked on the lot were flooded. "It's total devastation," says
Kastner, barely holding back tears. "The sludge is in everybody's house."
SHARING FOOD. Mayor Ben Morris has declared martial law -- and police
cars zip up and down the main drag, Route 11. The get-tough approach has
thwarted some looting. "The Mayor said, 'If you see looting, take care of business --
and we'll worry about it later,'" says Kastner.
But police rule will do little to salvage the town. Speed boats lie smack in the
middle of the business district, tossed out of the lake and the lots of local boat
dealers by the storm. A giant truck trailer lies awkwardly against the wall of a
local restaurant. Pickup trucks and Land Rovers in the parking lot at Pontchartrain
Fresh Foods are slammed into pile-ons. The grocery store itself is a mass of
Gatorade bottles, boxed soup, and rotting produce in mud.
A homeless woman in dirty pants and an oversized plaid shirt has collected two
grocery carts worth of food. She wonders aloud how the local ducks survived
and how all the ravaged businesses will bounce back.
"This will really effect the economy," she says.
Amid the squalor, but with a smile, she offers a reporter some of her
newfound food -- a couple of muddy candy bars and some spoiled apple juice.
New Orleans Wary of What's Beneath Water
sep.6.2005 time is 9:10am
NEW ORLEANS - With a major levee break finally plugged, engineers struggled to pump
out the flooded city Tuesday as authorities braced for the horrors the receding water would
reveal. "It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," the mayor warned.
Mayor Ray Nagin said it would take three weeks to remove the water and another
few weeks to clear the debris. It could also take up to eight weeks to get the electricity back on.
"I've gone from anger to despair to seeing us turn the corner," he said on NBC's "Today."
Still, he warned that what awaits authorities below the toxic muck would be gruesome.
A day earlier, he said the death toll in New Orleans could reach 10,000.
The Army Corps of Engineers began pumping the water out after closing a major gap
in a key levee that burst during Hurricane Katrina and swamped 80
percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city.
Efforts to evacuate holdouts were stepped up, with boat rescue crews and
a caravan of law enforcement vehicles from around the country searching for people to rescue.
"In some cases, it's real easy. They're sitting on the porch with their bags
packed," said Joe Youdell of the Kentucky Air National Guard. "But some
don't want to leave and we can't force them."
Nagin warned: "We have to convince them to leave. It's not safe here. There is
toxic waste in the water and dead bodies and mosquitoes and gas. We are
pumping about a million dollars' worth a gas a day in the air. Fires
have been started and we don't have running water."
At the same time, the effort to get the evacuees back on their feet continued on several fronts.
Patrick Rhode, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said
evacuees would receive debit cards so that they could begin buying necessary
personal items. He said the agency was going from shelter to shelter to
make sure that evacuees received cards quickly and that the paperwork
usually required would be reduced or eliminated.
"We're eliminating as much red tape as humanly
possible," Rhode said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
The Air Force late Monday concluded its huge airlift of elderly and serious
ill patients from New Orleans' major airport. A total of 9,788 patients and other
evacuees were evacuated by air from the New Orleans area.
Local officials bitterly expressed frustration with the federal government's
sluggish response as the tragedy unfolded.
"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy
needs to stand trial before Congress today," Aaron Broussard,
president of Jefferson Parish, said on CBS' "The Early Show."
"So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot
they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me
a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.
In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a
Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the
storm, St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.
"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, U.S. teams should be here
faster than that," Stone said. Pointing to two large oil refineries, "When they're
paying $5 to $6 a gallon for gas, they're going to realize what this place means to America."
The frustrations were also felt along the Mississippi coast, where people
who have chosen to stay or are stuck in demolished neighborhoods scavenge for necessities.
Some say they will stay to rebuild their communities. Others say they
would leave if they could get a ride or a few gallons of gasoline. But all
agree that — with no water or power available, probably for months — they
need more help from the government just to survive.
"I have been all over the world. I've been in a lot of Third World countries
where people were better off than the people here are right now,"
retired Air Force Capt. William Bissell said Monday. "We've got 28 miles
of coastline here that's absolutely destroyed, and the federal government, they're not here."
The scope of the misery inflicted by Katrina was evident Monday as
President Bush visited Baton Rouge and Poplarville, Miss., his second inspection tour by ground.
"Mississippi is a part of the future of this country and part of that future
is to help you get back up on your feet," Bush told 200 local officials.
While in Louisiana, Bush tried to repair tattered relations with the state's
Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, while also
praising relief workers. Blanco played down any tension.
"We'd like to stop the voices out there trying to create a divide. There is no
divide," she said. "Every leader in this nation wants to see this problem solved."
Meanwhile, former Presidents Bush and Clinton got smiles, hugs and
requests for autographs when they met with refugees from Hurricane
Katrina — but it was Bush's wife who got attention for some of her comments.
Barbara Bush, who accompanied the former presidents on a tour of the
Astrodome complex Monday, said the relocation to Houston is "working
very well" for some of the poor people forced out of New Orleans.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas.
Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said during a radio
interview with the American Public Media program "Marketplace." "And
so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged
anyway, so this is working very well for them."
The two ex-presidents, who teamed up during a fund-raising effort for
victims of last year's Asian tsunami, announced the creation of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.
"We're most anxious to roll up our sleeves and get to work,"
said former President George H.W. Bush. "It will take all of us
working together to accomplish our goal. This job is too big for any one group."
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared a
public health emergency for Texas, saying it would speed up federal
assistance to help almost 240,000 storm evacuees — the most of any state.
In New Orleans, Deputy Police Superintendent W.J. Riley estimated
that fewer than 10,000 people were left in the city. Some simply did not want
to leave their homes, while others were hanging back to loot or commit other crimes, authorities said.
Nagin said the city had the authority to force residents to evacuate but
didn't say if it was taking that step. He did, however, say that water
will no longer be handed out to people who refuse to leave.
The leader of troops patrolling New Orleans declared the city largely
free of the lawlessness that plagued it in the days following the hurricane.
He lashed out at suggestions that search-and-rescue operation
were being stymied by random gunfire and lawlessness.
"Go on the streets of New Orleans — it's secure," Army Lt. Gen.
Russel Honore said to a reporter. "Have you been to New Orleans? Did anybody accost you?"
In neighboring Jefferson Parish, some of its 460,000 residents
got a chance to briefly see their flooded homes, and to scoop
up soaked wedding pictures and other cherished mementos.
"I won't be getting inside today unless I get some scuba gear,"
said Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner whose one-story home had water lapping at the gutters.
Red Cross website for Katrina
missing logs 94,000 names
SEP.6.2005 TIME IS 8:50AM
GENEVA (AFP) - Some 94,000 names have been registered on a website
created by the international Red Cross to help people trace
their relatives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the number is growing, it said
Use of the list on www.familylinks.icrc.org, which is compiled jointly with the American Red Cross,
has risen sharply in the past day, Florian Westphal of the International
Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) told reporters.
Survivors in the United States can use the "family news network" to let
people know where they are, while other relatives can post names of those
feared missing or remove names after people are located.
It is also accessible by a US toll-free telephone number.
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