Lothruin is right, Copago - there are many wealthy people in New Orleans, but unfortunately many more who come from generations of intense poverty.

Aside from all the above mentioned obvious reasons for not getting out of town...well. It's a coastal thing. I have attended a few hurricane parties over the years. These are folks born and bred in the mirror of the sea, warned over and over again about the impending 'big one'. [ A lot like hard core southern Californians who sneer at tremors] They tend to roll their eyes over hurricane reports. But by the time they realized this was the one they'd been warned about, the freeways were jammed, gas stations hard to get to and it was just too late.

There are current reports of rescue helicopters being shot at, as they go to airlift people from the football stadium. There's no information yet on who's responsible or why they're doing it, but the rescue attempts have been temporarilly suspended.
About a third of the Louisiana National Guard and much of their heavy equipment are presently in Iraq. State authorities say this isn't affecting rescue attempts, but I wonder how the people awaiting rescue feel about this aspect?
I wonder too, if Pres. Bush may re-think some of his opinions about global warming after this appalling crisis. Global warming has not, as far as I'm aware, been linked to the present situation but it must be a warning at least, and not be brushed aside.
Sadly, I think this catastrophe still has a long way to go. Local temperatures are around 34 C, and with high humidity (extra high due to the flooding) the equivalent ambient temperature is about 45 C. The potential for disease and death by heat exhaustion is considerable.
There are no words strong enough to express my admiration for those directly involved in the rescue of survivors of 'Katrina' and its aftermath.

It's midnight here, and the late news had pictures showing how far below sea level New Orleans is .. incredible.

There's a cross-section near the bottom LH corner of this page: New Orleans
Cross section of N.O.: most of city below sealevel

The aussie reporter in New Orleans clsoed with the questin - would the city be rebuilt? ..

As LadyMacB said, some people are looting TV sets and the like, I also heard of guns being stolen. These are the people I referred to a low-lifes.

As for the woman taking food and saying she hopes to pay for the goods one day if she is able - excuse me but if the hurricane hadn't happened presumably she would have had to purchase food. Yes, I appreciate that she might now have no income coming in but presumably she has money available which would have bought food for this week until pay day.

Oh well, I guess the storekeeper will have insurance to cover his stolen stock.

*shrug* Perhaps she'd already spent her paycheck on food for the week, and that food is now rotting beneath 8 feet water. And of course there's simply no guarantee that her paycheck will arrive on time, or at all.

I'm simply not comfortable making any judgements of these people at the moment. Having narrowly escaped death only to face days, weeks, months of hunger and homelessness, having slogged through the streets of your city amid terror and death, up to the waist in foul water... I can only feel pity, and wonder what I myself would be desperate enough to do under those circumstances. Especially if I had started out as a person in already nearly desperate poverty, and had suddenly seen what little I had wrenched away from me.

Just watching the news about moving the people from N.O. Dome to Houston Dome. I haven't heard this mentioned before but aren't there closed army bases around that could be reopened to help house these people. I heard the govt was closing many bases. Or are they not closed yet?

I remember a time when I was unemployed. I remember eating noodles and butter, no cheese. That's how broke I was. If there had been a disaster of this magnitude, I couldn't have fed myself for any length of time.

I did have contacts near-by, but who knows if I could have reached them (my church, my friends) or if they could have helped. I can't imagine my looting any store but I can understand a person's desperate needs. Sometimes it is the hardest thing in life: to accept that others act totally out of what our norms or values are.

Instead of thinking of the people who have reacted in such destructive ways, we should remember (and thank!) all the good people helping the hurricane victims. From the Red Cross, to the National Guard to the donations that people are sending. There was a baby born on Highway I-59 during the evacuation. Think of how scared her mother must have been and what a blessing that the baby was healthy!

For the animal lovers among you: there is a reputable animal rescue organization in Placerville, California called Noah's Wish. They are currently in Louisiana rescuing stranded pets and perhaps wild creatures, too. Their website is noahswish.org if you'd like to check them out.

--Robyn

Quote:

---

Just watching the news about moving the people from N.O. Dome to Houston Dome. I haven't heard this mentioned before but aren't there closed army bases around that could be reopened to help house these people. I heard the govt was closing many bases. Or are they not closed yet?

---

The bases that were on the list this year for closure have not closed as of yet. There are, however, many bases and forts that have been closed in the past that are being used as staging areas for the many trucks (18 wheelers) that have been brought in from around the US that are carrying relief supplies, i.e., generators, water, food, etc. Some of the bases that are still in operation are sharing part of their land as well for these trucks and drivers.

I can understand people looting for food and basic necessities, particularly under such circumstances, but I cannot understand people looting gun stores and looting televisions and other electronic equipment. On the news they even showed two uniformed police officers who were filling up a shopping cart in a Wal-Mart. Police officers looting? Who on earth can excuse that? And this morning I heard the looting was moving closer to the residential areas of New Orleans. I find all of this lawlessness very immoral and quite appalling. In the wake of such a devasting tragedy you would think these people might find other things to do rather than go on a free shopping spree.

My brother is with the Army Corps of Engineers in Texas and they are fully involved in this situation. He sent me this e-mail today. I am very glad his co-worker was able to find his family, but the part about the neighbors is quite sad.

Quote:

---

FYI. Jay works with me in our office; his family lived in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, and he hadn't heard from them since last Sunday, so this is a great relief.

The satellite image links below may be hard to get to; the web traffic must be overwhelming them.



-----Original Message-----
From: JoAnn M SWD
Subject: FW: NOAA Hurricane Katrina Imagery

Jay left a voice mail message while Elisa and I were in the budget meeting. He was at the edge of Mobile with car loaded up with kids and grandkids and ready to head back to Texas. It's 693 miles, he said, so they should be in late tonight. His earlier message is below.

Jo Ann

-----Original Message-----
From: Jay
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:12 PM
To: Jo Ann

Jo Ann,

Thank you very much for forwarding this information to me. Rhonda and I are about to get on the road for Mobile to pick up her Mother, son, daughter-in-law, and the two grandbabies. We received word that the immediate family all survived but with major damage to homes. My home in Waveland was reported destroyed and my next door neighbors, a family of four, were found drowned in their living room. There are many stories...and ones yet to be told.

Thank you for your concern. I'll have my cell phone with me if you need to contact me. I hope it works since it still is a 228- number.

Jay



----- Original Message -----


Websites below contain some imagery taken by DIGITAL GLOBAL using their QUICKBIRD SATELLITE.

These are 'free' images of the Bay Saint Louis area of the MS coastline. The destruction is incredible.



http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/

http://alt.ngs.noaa.gov/katrina/

---

In many ways I think this is a far more devastating national tragedy than was 9/11 (which mainly involved the toppling of two very tall buildings and damage to a third). The magnitude of the destruction, the disruption of services and daily life, and the displacement of people, in addition to the loss of life, in this current situation is just mind boggling. I think it is almost impossible to grasp the full extend of what has happened, and how long it will be before life achieves any degree of normality for the people affected and for that entire part of the country. My heart really goes out to all those who have been directly affected. This morning I began crying just listening to some of the stories.

And the reveberations will be felt all across this country. On my way home tonight I noticed that gas stations had already raised prices 50 cents a gallon above what they were at the end of last week. And that's only the beginning.

Coordinating all of the necessary immediate services must be a nightmare. There is so much that needs to be done, it is really overwhelming.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times
September 1, 2005
Officials Struggle to Reverse a Growing Sense of Anarchy

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
and MARIA NEWMAN

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 1 - National Guard troops by the thousands moved into this storm-ravaged city today as state and local officials struggled to reverse a growing sense of anarchy sparked by reports of armed looters, bodies floating untouched in stagnant floodwaters, and food and water supplies dwindling for thousands of trapped and desperate residents.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana said that the death toll from the storm and its aftermath would be in the "thousands," based on reports that she was receiving from officials throughout the state, The Associated Press said.

She also said in a televised news briefing that 12,000 National Guard troops are scheduled to arrive in the area in the next several days, as well as police officers and sheriff's deputies from as far away as Michigan.

They will be given arrest and other law enforcement powers, she said, and "looting and other lawlessness will not be tolerated." She also said she had instructed them to "strictly enforce Louisiana laws and to use necessary force."

The governor said she had requested 40,000 National Guard troops, "but if we hit the 40,000 mark and still feel like we need more, we will get them," she said,

With grim televised scenes showing bodies lying in the streets or in the city's convention center, a meeting place for many refugees, and groups of people throughout the area still waiting desperately for the most basic assistance, Mayor C. Ray Nagin issued a dire cry for help.

"This is a desperate S.O.S.," he said. "Right now, we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently, the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for 15 to 20,000 people."

"We are now allowing people to march," he said. "They will be marching up the Crescent City connection to the Westbank Expressway to find relief wherever they can."

At the White House, President Bush, who is coming under attack by some Democrats who accuse him of not acting quickly enough to address the situation, said that he was asking former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to head a relief effort, as they did several months ago for the Asian tsunami.

"We're dealing with one of the largest relief efforts in our nation's history, and the federal government's got an important role to play," President Bush said. "Our first priority, of course, is to save lives."

Hundreds of those who had sought shelter at the Superdome sports facility began leaving this devastated city this morning by bus, by purloined vehicles and any other way they could find, and overwhelmed rescue officials said that they were working to find more shelters to receive them, in any state or any city that would provide them.

The secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, said the scope of the disaster was on a scale that Americans were accustomed to seeing only beyond their shores.

"Ultimately, we're talking about the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, and that will be a challenge in this country on par with some of the tragedies that we've seen overseas," he said, adding that displaced people in hotels, motels, shelters or with relatives would receive rental assistance and other aid to help them through the next weeks and months.

With New Orleans 80 percent under water, officials are just beginning the process of moving 20,000 or so refugees overflowing from the Superdome to Houston, even as other residents in the city were still being rescued from their water-logged neighborhoods. There were numerous reports - and rumors - of fights and disorder in the streets, worsened by unreliable communications. But there was no doubt that people were becoming more desperate as food and clean water ran out.

This morning, the evacuation of the Superdome was briefly interrupted when what sounded like a shot rang out from the crowd, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard said. While cautioning that the report was unconfirmed, Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of Louisiana National Guard said that nothing hit the Chinook helicopter that was aiding in the evacuation at the time and that no one had been reported injured.

"It did not shut down the process," he said of the report of gunfire.

In Houston, about 3,000 evacuees from New Orleans arrived at the Astrodome this morning, including 14 people who came in a catering truck that they admitted they had stolen.

The refugees were given an initial medical screening and then were provided with basic toiletries, clean clothes and a hot breakfast.

Gloria Roemer, a spokeswoman for Judge Robert Eckels, the director of Harris County's office of homeland security, said that while the original admission policy had been to accept only those people leaving the Superdome in New Orleans, the Red Cross, which is directing the effort at the Astrodome, had decided to allow any storm refugee.

The group of 14 arrived at the Astrodome in a catering truck after a 10-hour drive from New Orleans, said Kentrell Diaz, 21, one of those in the truck. They were told that they could get breakfast inside, but would not be allowed to stay there.

Mr. Diaz showed a reporter a piece of paper that he said he was given at the entrance to the Astrodome with a map of the Houston area and a list of other Red Cross shelters.

He said that he and other members of his traveling party on the commandeered truck had lived in New Orleans East and had swum to safety after floodwaters reached the second floor of their apartment building.

Another member of the bread truck party, Gloria Collins, 26, clutched her 6-month old son, Nakee Collins. She acknowledged that the truck she arrived on had been stolen.

"The police stopped us and said, 'I know it's not yours,' but he let us go," she said. "There were people shooting to protect their own boats. It's a survival thing."

The Astrodome is prepared to accept 25,000 temporary residents, and Ms. Roemer said the residents of the new city under the dome would be given identification badges and allowed to come and go as they pleased.

"They are not prisoners," she said.

The Harris County sheriff's deputy and the Houston police are providing security.

A spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, Renita Hosler, said that a registration process had been set up to match the displaced with missing family members but that she had no information about how it would be shared with the public.

Governor Blanco said on Wednesday that she wanted the Superdome totally evacuated within two days. The plans were to move most of the refugees to Houston's Astrodome, 350 miles away, in a convoy of hundreds of buses. About 700 of the elderly and sick were removed from the sweltering stadium on Wednesday, but they were being sent elsewhere in the state. The situation inside the arena was described as desperate, with thousands living in refugee-camp-like conditions and lacking basic necessities like food and sanitation.

Ships, planes, helicopters and convoys of supplies and rescue teams converged on the Gulf Coast, and Pentagon officials said 30,000 National Guard and active-duty troops would be deployed by this weekend in the largest domestic relief effort by the military in the nation's history.

With police officers and National Guard troops giving priority to saving lives, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores for food, clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often in full view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of carjackings, apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were reported, as were a number of shootings.

People left without a shelter didn't know whether it was safer in the streets or in abandoned buildings.

Daryl Hubbard, one of nine people who took refuge in the BellSouth building in New Orleans on Sunday, spoke to MSNBC by telephone this morning.

"We don't know which way to leave if we tried to," he said. "We don't know if we're walking into a worse situation than we're in now."

Mr. Hubbard said there was a man in the building with asthma who was complaining about his chest tightening up. Mr. Hubbard's wife takes at least three or four different types of medication daily, which was taken by mistake on Wednesday by Coast Guard officials when they took two elderly people out of the building.

"They told us they were coming back and no one's been back," he said. "What we really need is to get out. Red Cross dropped water and stuff. We're getting to the end of that, we only have a few bottle left with a couple of things of food."

On Wednesday night, Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers, most of the city's force, to turn from search and rescue to stopping the looting.

New Orleans, a city of 500,000, mostly below sea level and reliant on levees along the Mississippi River running south of it and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, was a nightmarish waterworld that Mr. Nagin said would have to be abandoned while the levees were repaired and the city drained.

He called for a "total evacuation," adding: "We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months."

Total recovery appeared to be far more remote. Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers said that it would be weeks or months before the city could be pumped dry and that it would take years to rebuild its thousands of homes and businesses, its streets, highways and other infrastructure, an investment that could cost billions of dollars and perhaps never recover the rich cultural heritage of New Orleans.

One paradox, experts said, was that the destruction of a city that has always been vulnerable to water might provide an opportunity to rebuild it to make it more secure, with stronger buildings and with levees capable of withstanding the strongest storms. The present levees are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane; Hurricane Katrina was Category 4, one short of the highest category.

With the level of Lake Pontchartrain down several feet, the lake and its feeder canals had reached a point of equilibrium with the water in the city, Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, said on Wednesday.

For thousands of people trapped in New Orleans it was little consolation. Hundreds were still huddled on rooftops or isolated on patches of ground, where they have awaited rescue for two days without food or water. An armada of small boats was out, rescuing many from flooded areas in the city's poorest sections. Mayor Nagin suggested the ultimate death toll could reach into the thousands.

People wandered aimlessly, on land and through shallows, pushing shopping carts of belongings. Some perched on sections of Interstate 10 that were above water.

At Ellington Field Airport in Houston, the first of an expected four military transport planes carrying about 150 seriously ill and injured patients from New Orleans arrived Wednesday.

Across the region, there were tales of misery, with hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses destroyed, with roads washed away and airports shut down, with power grids shattered and five million people in four states lacking electricity.

And to the rising toll of victims killed, injured or homeless and jobless were added other plagues: possible epidemics; overwhelmed hospitals and sanitation facilities; lost communications and transportation systems; and almost everywhere hellish scenes of wreckage-strewn communities.

In Mississippi, at least 110 people were dead, hundreds of waterfront homes and businesses were destroyed, nearly a million homes were without power and dozens of casinos built on barges were heavily damaged or wrecked, depriving 14,000 people of jobs and the state of $500,000 a day in tax revenues. In Biloxi, looters rifled casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. The city of Gulfport was almost destroyed, and Biloxi was heavily damaged.

In Alabama, more than 400,000 homes and businesses were without power, flooding reached 11 feet in Mobile and hundreds of homes along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay were flooded. Florida, struck by the eastern edge of the cartwheeling storm on Monday, reported 11 deaths, and more than 100,000 homes and businesses were still without power.

Jeremy Alford contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., for this article; Felicity Barringer from Metairie, La.; Ralph Blumenthal and Joseph B. Treaster from New Orleans; John M. Broder from Houston; and Robert D. McFadden, Shadi Rahimi and Christine Hauser from New York.
-----------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------

I do not envy the governors and the mayors who are grappling with this staggering human catastrophe.

Again, I would like to encourage everyone who lives in the states to beware of opportunists and scam artists. Once these vultures learn which major organisations will be involved they will gather all the relevant information and attempt to solicit finds over the internet and on the phone. If someone [especially posing as a policeman or EMT ] calls your home to ask for Katrina donations - wish them good luck - but tell them no thanks. One should also be leery of pickle jars and card tables set up in front of your local shopping center labeled 'Hurricane relief fund'. There's a 99% chance these funds will never reach the people who so desperately need them.

Never give out sensitive information like social security numbers, debit card numbers or credit card info to relief fund solicitors over the phone.

Unfortunately, we learned just how low some people will go because of the phone scams and mis - handled funds after 9/11. It may seem silly to suggest what may seem like obvious cautions - but you'd be amazed at how many well meaning contributors have fallen for these schemes in the past.

Thanks, Lanni

I got permission to start a collection up at my job to send to the American Red Cross to help with the relief. I called the Help Now number but with the tragedy, it's remained busy.
The Oxygen Network is asking people to sign up for their campaign. You receive no spam, you don't have to send any money (if you can't afford to), but you will receive one sign-up email, and they will donate $1 (up to $10,000), for everyone who signs up, to help with the relief.
Campaign

The problem has been exacerbated by the poor response from the White House.
FEMA had been set up in 1979 and was superb in dealing with emergencies.The Bush Administration replaced FEMA with Homeland Security which has shown poor reponse to this emergency.The hurricane was known to be coming and still the reponse was poor.God help America if there is a terrorist attack and the reponse is this bad.

Must agree with you there. The National Guard and other agencies should have been mustered and deployed days ago, not five days following the disaster. A serious case of 'too little, too late.'

Thanks for the link NalaMarie! Obviously most of the local charities there in New Orleans are totally disabled at this point. Those standbys of past, much lesser disasters , like store front missions and soup kitchens may not even exist at this point. It may be months and months before they can relocate and get up and running again. Several of the local charity sites I tried to access are completely down.

It feels a little bit like 'our Kursk'... Bumbling, too little, too late, not accepting help from others... Why hadn't they been dropping food down to the people from day 1? When they fly in to pick up people, they could have had food on the helicopter to drop off, pick up a person, go back, drop off the person and pick up food, repeat.

Now we've heard that 3 police officers have been found murdered and 200 NO officers have quit.

The people at the convention center had been told to go there where they would receive help, but they were left without even officers or National Guard troops to help them.

Someone on the news last night was quoted as saying 'why don't people just drive in and say 'hey, I'll drive you home'', but they don't realize that you CAN'T drive into NO, the streets are barricaded so even if a do-gooder wanted to, they couldn't.

And now help is arriving, but they're coming in armed to the teeth... maybe if they hadn't waited so long and came with food, they wouldn't need to have been armed.

These troops need to be armed, not because people are angry, and hungry and thirsty, but because some of these people are violent and lawless, and the lack of adequate security has allowed them to gain the upper hand. Of course food and water should have been sent in immediately. But armed reinforcements should have been sent in as well to maintain law and order.

Quote:

---

Chaos and gunfire hampered efforts to evacuate the Superdome, and, Superintendent P. Edward Compass III of the New Orleans Police Department said, armed thugs have taken control of the secondary makeshift shelter at the convention center. Superintendent Compass said that the thugs repelled eight squads of 11 officers each he had sent to secure the place and that rapes and assaults were occurring unimpeded in the neighboring streets as criminals "preyed upon" passers-by, including stranded tourists.

Mr. Compass said the federal government had taken too long to send in the thousands of troops - as well as the supplies, fuel, vehicles, water and food - needed to stabilize his now "very, very tenuous" city.

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been "carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days," he said "the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security."

---

On top of all the other hardships these people are enduring, they shouldn't have to be afraid they will be attacked by criminals because no one is maintaining control and keeping the peace.

This seems so reminiscent of what happened in Baghdad after we invaded. We failed to maintain law and order there too. And the people there became angry and bitter about it too. You can't leave people to fend for themselves and at the mercy of the criminal element.

If this is an example of how the government manages a major crisis, we will be sunk if we have another catastrophic terrorist attack. We are clearly not ready to deal with unforeseen major disasters.

I wonder how many more people in this country will now go out and buy guns to protect themselves, and their homes and families, just because they have now witnessed the inadequacy of the government to protect them in a crisis situation.

Here's a link to some of the comments being sent to the BBC's website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4207856.stm

We who grew up in Texas have always heard about the 140 mph winds and tidal waves that destroyed the beautiful Galveston back in 1900. Nearly ten thousand people were killed out of a population of around 37,000. So...these storms have come and gone for centuries on the US gulf coast, most likely a caprice of nature than anything else. This happens to be the most deadly, because nearly half a million people lived in New Orleans, and the attempt to rescue them has so far been [mostly] a dismal failure, coupled with the fact that so many refused to leave, or hadn't the means to evacuate.

I've read several interviews with people in the refugee camps and all I can say is, I'm sickened. The things I've read are absolutely horrible. People are starving and going without water for days and there's nothing anyone can do. I read of one woman who offered to bring water and food to some refugees stranded on a dock. She and her church were cooking and baking so that these people could have a bite to eat and the guards told them they weren't allowed to offer anything to the refugees. Now, I understand not wanting a riot on their hands if there wasn't enough to go around, but they had no idea how much these women were preparing. One thing I learned in the south is never underestimate the power of older southern women and their church groups.

If I can get ahold of a few links, I'll post them later. The articles I read were posted verbatim on another board and I don't want to open us up to any copyright issues.

No problem ktstew!