Desperate survivors beg for help: printer friendly version

Desperate survivors beg for help

By Joseph B. Treaster and Deborah Sontag The New York Times
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2005

NEW ORLEANS Legions of desperate and hungry residents begged for help, corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts as Americans watched this city dissolve before their eyes on Friday.

Facing blistering criticism for his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush said Friday that "the results are not acceptable" and pledged to bolster relief efforts.

"We'll get on top of this situation," Bush said, "and we're going to help the people that need help."

He spoke on the White House grounds just before boarding his presidential helicopter, Marine One, to tour the region.

For the first time, however, he stopped defending his administration's response and criticized it. "A lot of people are working hard to help those who've been affected. The results are not acceptable," he said. "I'm heading down there right now."

Despite the promise of 1,400 National Guards members a day to stop the looting, a $10.5 billion recovery bill in Congress and a relief effort Bush called the biggest in U.S. history, the chaos spread.

As the weekend approached, there was a palpable sense here that Hurricane Katrina had faced Americans and their leaders with a catastrophe that was nearly overwhelming.

"This is a national disgrace," said Terry Ebbert, the chief of New Orleans's emergency operations. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

Explosions were heard and fires erupted early Friday in southwestern New Orleans, as authorities battled to restore order. The fires illuminated the predawn sky with red and orange flames.

An explosion rocked a chemical storage facility near the Mississippi River, east of the French Quarter, police officials said.

A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark.

Police officers had no more information and did not know whether there were any casualties.

At least two police boats could be seen at the site of the chemical explosion and a hazardous material team was on the way.

At the hot and stinking Superdome sports stadium, where tens of thousands were being evacuated by bus to Houston, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in long lines to board school buses.

After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get onto the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guards members.

Near the stadium, about 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the convention center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

Eddie Compass, the police chief, 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," Compass said.

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the governor, called people who committed such crimes "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq had landed in New Orleans and had orders to shoot to kill. "They have M-16s, and they're locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."

Bush was to tour the devastated Gulf Coast region Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign.

Despair, privation and violent lawlessness grew so extreme in New Orleans by late Thursday that the city's mayor issued a "desperate" plea for help and other local officials, describing the security situation as horrific, lambasted the federal government as responding too slowly to the disaster.

"We need additional troops, food, water," said Joseph Matthews, director of the city's Office of Emergency Preparedness. "We need personnel, law enforcement. This has turned into a situation where the city is being run by thugs."

Washington came in for considerable criticism, but, citing the magnitude of the disaster, federal officials defended their management of the calamity and pledged that more help was coming. The Army Corps of Engineers continued working to close a levee breach that allowed water from Lake Pontchartrain to pour into New Orleans.

Throughout this stricken region of the United States, scores of frantic people, without telephone service, asked for help contacting friends or relatives whose fates they did not know.

Although the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, speculated that thousands might have died, officials said they still did not have a clear idea of the precise toll.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, said Hurricane Katrina had presented a "double challenge" because it presented two disasters: the storm and then the flooding.

"For those who wonder why it is that it is difficult to get these supplies and these medical teams into place, the answer is they are battling an ongoing dynamic problem with the water," he said.

The U.S. Senate convened a special session late Thursday to pass an emergency supplemental spending bill providing $10.5 billion in relief.

Joseph B. Treaster reported from New Orleans, and Deborah Sontag from New York. Jeremy Alford contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Felicity Barringer from Metairie, Lousiana; Christine Hauser from New York; and Simon Romero from Houston.