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Topic: evacuation of Superdome suspended (Read 151 times)

navywife65
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evacuation of Superdome suspended
« on: Sep 1^st, 2005, 12:48pm »

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This scares the heck out of me. My hubby is headed down there right now and should be there within the next few days. Between the thugs with guns and the disease I'm scared for him to step off the ship. I just wish these stupid people would stop ruining it for the people who want help and need the help desperately.

NEW ORLEANS The evacuation of the New Orleans Superdome was disrupted Thursday after a gun shot reportedly was fired at a military helicopter as thousands of National Guard troops poured into the Big Easy to boost security in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans as the first of nearly 25,000 refugees being sheltered at the Superdome began to arrive in Houston, Texas. Thousands of people rushed from nearby hotels and other buildings, hoping to climb onto the buses taking evacuees from the arena.

"We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing.

One ambulance official overseeing the airlift rescue operations said a gunshot was fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak.

"We have suspended operations until they gain control of the Superdome," said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome.

Zeuschlag said the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control. "That's not enough," he said. "We need a thousand."

He also said that during the night, when a medical evacuation helicopter tried to land at a hospital in the outlying town of Kenner, the pilot reported that 100 people were on the landing pad, and some of them had guns.

The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. Schneider said those evacuations were continuing and were not affected by trash fires burning outside the Superdome. Law enforcement officers will ride with the school buses, he said.

"At the Superdome, we have a report that one shot was fired at a Chinook helicopter," Schneider said, adding that the Chinook is "an extremely large aircraft."

Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, said she had no such report.

The 10,000 new National Guard troops deployed to the regions brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the largest military response to a natural disaster.

Meanwhile, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (search) ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and stop thieves who were becoming increasingly hostile.

"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said Wednesday.

Volunteers with boats hoping to help rescue those still stranded on rooftops in New Orleans were told to stand down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after shots were fired.

"The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's "Today" show. "We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them."

President Bush will tour the hurricane devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign to help victims recover, the White House said Thursday.

Bush will survey the Alabama and Mississippi coast by helicopter, then go on to New Orleans. He also will tour some locations on the ground.

"The president has wanted to visit the area as soon as possible," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "We didn't go sooner because we didn't want to be disruptive of efforts on the ground."

Bush on Thursday warned that looters, price gougers, insurance fraudsters, those taking advantage of charity and others will face the maximum consequences for their actions.

There will be "zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this," Bush said in a live interview at the White House with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I've made that clear to our attorney general."

Chaos at the Superdome

Evacuees who had taken refuge in the Superdome were waiting hours to get onto buses that were taking them 350 miles away to the Houston Astrodome, which can hold 27,000 people. Conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.

"We are going to do everything we can to make people comfortable," Red Cross spokeswoman Margaret O'Brien-Molina said. "Places have to be found for these people. Many of these people may never be able to rebuild."

In New Orleans, the refugees had lined up for the first buses, some inching along in wheelchairs, some carrying babies. Almost everyone carried a plastic bag or bundled bedspread holding the few possessions they had left. Many had no idea where they were heading.

"We tried to find out. We're pretty much adrift right now," said Cyril Ellisworth, 46. "We're pretty much adrift in life. They tell us to line up and go, and we just line up and go."

At the Supredome, fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.

The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

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. "I buried my dog."

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. 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," Edwards said.

People chanted, "Help, help!" as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

John Murray, 52, said: "It's like they're punishing us."

The Astrodome's schedule has been cleared through December. The dome is used on occasion for corporate parties and hospitality events, but hasn't been used for professional sports in years.

The arena's new residents will be issued passes that will let them leave and return as they please, something that wasn't permitted in New Orleans.

While they recognize it's not a permanent fix, the governors of Louisiana and Texas worked out a plan to get refugees to Texas where they can have clean clothes, food, showers and ways to communicate with family.

"Unfortunately there are no great ideas at this particular point in time. You have to do what you have to do," Texas Gov. Rick Perry told FOX News Thursday morning. "As America comes together on this, this is the only appropriate and right thing to do."

Perry said there will be a "substantial" number of additional shelters that will be made available with beds, showers and other items provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other organizations.

"We're going to be very flexible with these individuals," Perry said. "We're going to find a place for these people to stay until they make arrangements."

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said his state has welcomed many evacuees and is preparing for more in what he calls "Operation Care."

"We're now working on ways to deal with helping them long-term everything from educating their kids" to helping with prescriptions, communicating with families, accessing bank accounts, finding long-term housing and employments, Huckabee told FOX News. He also hailed the leaders of the states hite hardest by Katrina.

"They're doing an outstanding job in ... trying to lead their states in the equivalent of Armageddon it is apocalyptic in nature," he said.

Violence Escalates

Nagin has called for a total evacuation, saying that New Orleans will not be functional for two or three months and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two. Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.

Asked how many people died in the hurricane, Naglin said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi. State officials said Nagin's guess of thousands dead seemed plausible.

That would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which have blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

"I would not be surprise if this is the worst disaster this country has seen," Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., told FOX News.

Tempers were also starting to flare amid the chaos.

Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Miss., fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus and a truck carrying medical supplies for a hospital. Some police officers said they had been shot at.

Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna, La., after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

"There are physical threats to safety from roving bands of armed individuals with weapons who are threatening the safety of the hospital," said spokesman Steven Campanini.

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets - even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Water Finally Stops Rising

The water that has been gushing into New Orleans after several levees broke appeared to have finally stopped rising. The water apparently has finally reached a level higher than that of Lake Pontchartrain (search). The Army Corps of Engineers will try to pump water out of the city; they're hoping the water will seep out of the city at about a half-an-inch per hour.

The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.

City officials have estimated that it could take weeks to pump out the city and even more time to get the city's power back on and water systems functioning again.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

In Mississippi, ambulances roamed through the passable streets of devastated places such as Biloxi, Gulfport, Waveland and Bay St. Louis, in some cases speeding past corpses in hopes of saving people trapped in flooded and crumbled buildings.

Jerry Lewis' annual Labor Day fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association also will include celebrity appeals for help.

Although the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from the federal petroleum reserves after Katrina knocked out 95 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's output, gasoline prices surged above $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

FOX News' Jeff Goldblatt, Steve Harrigan, Rick Leventhal and Liza Porteus and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

« Last Edit: Sep 1^st, 2005, 12:49pm by navywife65 »

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rcs_mum
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Re: evacuation of Superdome suspended
« Reply #1 on: Sep 1^st, 2005, 2:05pm »

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Will keep you in our prayers, navywife65.

Will you be able to remain in contact with him while he is in the affected area??

Is he going to be on the search and rescue team? or on the security details?

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navywife65
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Re: evacuation of Superdome suspended
« Reply #2 on: Sep 1^st, 2005, 2:14pm »

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Thank you rcs mum. I thank you for the prayers. With everything the people down there are going through I don't want to seem petty, for lack of a better word. I worry about my husband every time he pulls out and with conditions down there it makes it even more scary. That said I'm extremely glad that he's able, with his shipmates, to go down there and help them out. It breaks my heart to watch the images on t.v. and listen to these people suffering. And now with the Governor saying that law enforcement can use whatever force is necessary, it's going to be like a warzone. I have a bad feeling that there are going to be many innocent people hurt.

As far as staying in contact or what he's doing I know nothing. He took his cell phone but I really don't think he is going to be able to get through.

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navywife65
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Re: evacuation of Superdome suspended
« Reply #3 on: Sep 1^st, 2005, 2:18pm »

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Oh my goodness, they just said that the charity hospital has come under sniper fire. The hospital is trying to evacuate but can't because they are being fired on. Sad

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luci
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Re: evacuation of Superdome suspended
« Reply #4 on: Sep 1^st, 2005, 2:37pm »

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Navywife, I know you are worried and no one here
will think you petty at all. If my husband were going
there, I'd sure be worried as the other married
members would be also!

You know you can always come here and post or PM
any of us when your fears get to be too much for you.

Let's all stay positive that all with the evacuation will
go well and this city will be back better than it was soon.

The evacuation has started up again.

PRAYERS TO ALL :angel:

THE VICTIMS AND THOSE GIVING AID! :angel:

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"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and
can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

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