New Orleans Issues an S.O.S., Descends Into Anarchy

NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans descended into anarchy yesterday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken.“I’m not sure I’m going to get out of here alive,” a Canadian tourist, Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing, said. “I’m scared of riots. I’m scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire.”Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear, and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in American history.New Orleans’s top emergency management official called that effort a “national disgrace” and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.Congress rushed to provide a $10.5 billion down payment in relief aid for hurricane victims. The Senate approved the measure last night and the House will convene at noon on Friday to speed the measure to Mr. Bush’s desk.About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the New Orleans Convention Center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. The police chief, Eddie Compass, said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.“We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten,” Chief Compass said. “Tourists are walking in that direction, and they are getting preyed upon.”A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city’s unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.“This is a desperate SOS,” Mayor Nagin said in a statement. “Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don’t anticipate enough buses.”At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics, and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water, or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.“I don’t treat my dog like that,” 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.“You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people,” he said. “You can go overseas with the military, but you can’t get them down here.”The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles, and garbage.“They’ve been teasing us with buses for four days,” Mr. Edwards said. “They’re telling us they’re going to come get us one day, and then they don’t show up.”Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.At one point, the crowd began to chant “We want help! We want help!” Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd …”“We are out here like pure animals,” the Reverend Issac Clark said.“We’ve got people dying out here – two babies have died, a woman died, a man died,” Helen Cheek said. “We haven’t had no food, we haven’t had no water, we haven’t had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us.”A tourist, Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, “Go to hell – it’s every man for himself.”“This is just insanity,” she said. “We have no food, no water …all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave.”Among those rescued yesterday was entertainer Fats Domino, who had been unaccounted for in the wake of the hurricane. He was plucked from the flooded city by a helicopter late yesterday and was reported to be in good condition.At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP’s rifle, a police captain, Ernie Demmo, said. The man was arrested.Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the Superdome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets, or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.By yesterday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. A National Guard captain, John Pollard, said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.A day after Mr. Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire, and carjackings.In Washington, the White House said Mr. Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, George H.W. Bush, and President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.

New Orleans Issues an S.O.S., Descends Into Anarchy

New Orleans Issues an S.O.S., Descends Into Anarchy

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