'It's been hell' for them

Hurricane victims still being rescued from flooded homes as evacuation effort makes some headway

BY KATIE THOMAS AND TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITERS. Thomas reported from New Orleans and Susman from New York. This story was supplemented by wire service reports.

September 4, 2005

Fires blazed in New Orleans' shattered downtown yesterday as rescue workers, some in water scooters, tried to reach people still stranded in their homes six days after Hurricane Katrina sent the waters of Lake Pontchartrain sloshing over the city.

With National Guard troops finally bringing food, water, and some sense of order to evacuees awaiting transport from the Superdome and convention center, attention was turning to saving those languishing elsewhere. That included airdrops of boxes containing food and water into flooded areas, where people pushed through neck-high water to retrieve them.

"It's been hell," Phillip Holt said yesterday, about an hour after a helicopter had rescued him from his home near the French Quarter. Clutching a pet Chihuahua, Holt said rescue workers gave him an option: his four dogs or his luggage. He chose the dogs, though one got left behind in the rush.

"The looting has been horrendous. Every store in our neighborhood has been looted," said Holt, who like most evacuees had no idea where he would go.

Buses, trains, planes and helicopters were transporting people mainly to Texas, where government-run shelters in everything from stadiums to minimum-security prisons housed about 120,000 people. The Red Cross said its shelters in nine different states housed 94,000 people. Tens of thousands were living with relatives or in hotels as a result of Katrina, which left New Orleans, a city of 480,000, uninhabitable and which drove people in Mississippi and Alabama from their homes.

Officials said they didn't know how many people were yet to be rescued in New Orleans and surrounding towns flooded Tuesday after gaps formed in levees protecting the area from Lake Pontchartrain.

"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were there," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.

The relief effort, which critics say was bungled from the start, was picking up steam, though signs of its missteps abounded. Just as the convention center was cleared of nearly all its desperate evacuees, who had spent days there with no food, water, or toilets, National Guard troops began setting up dozens of portable toilets. Others sat beside piles of boxed meals, which only became readily available Friday.

An 'ultracatastrophe'

As people weakened by hunger, thirst and illness staggered onto buses, paramedics began picking up corpses of those who hadn't survived the wait. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she expected the death toll to be in the thousands.

New Orleans' deputy police chief, W.S. Riley, issued a stinging indictment of the federal effort, saying the first Guard members who arrived slept in their trucks and played cards before they jumped in to help police.

"The first three days we had no assistance," he told the French news agency AFP.

The secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said yesterday nobody could have anticipated the "ultracatastrophe" of a major hurricane followed by levee breaks and that the extraordinary logistical problems, on top of bureaucratic issues, prevented getting troops in place sooner. By yesterday, Chertoff said, 13,000 guardsmen were in New Orleans. A total of 40,000 guardsmen were to be deployed in Louisiana and Mississippi in coming days.

In addition, President George W. Bush ordered 7,000 active military forces to join 4,000 already in the Gulf Coast.

In his weekly radio address, Bush acknowledged failings in the relief effort. "Many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable," said Bush, who saw the breadth of the disaster for the first time Friday when he toured the region.

Superdome finally cleared

Despite the stepped-up efforts to clear New Orleans' Superdome and the convention center, the situation at both places remained grim. Throughout the day, thousands of people lined streets outside both complexes waiting for buses. When they arrived, some were simply too weak to stand in the long lines for seats.

"My stamina is just not up to that right now," said Alvin Seymore Sr., 51, who had been at the convention center since Tuesday.

Some clearly ill people were moved to the front of lines by National Guard troops keeping order, but others got overlooked. Pinkey Guy, 70, a diabetic who said she had not had medication for four days, sat in line in a wheelchair, her ankles so swollen they bulged out of her shoes. "I'm all right, as long as I can get on the bus," she said.

As buses came and went, the streets where families had set up makeshift tents and beds to escape the stench and darkness inside the center itself became a wasteland of trash, abandoned lawn chairs, and overflowing Dumpsters, with dead bodies lying among the ruins.

By yesterday evening, the Superdome had been cleared of people, but the trash left behind was up to five feet deep.

"I feel like I've been here 40 years," said one of last evacuees, Louis Dalmas Sr., as he boarded a bus. "Any bus going anywhere - that's all I want."

Thomas reported from New Orleans and Susman from New York. This story was supplemented by wire service reports.

The latest developments

Buses evacuate everyone from the Superdome and were moving people out of the convention center.

Texas' governor says his state has as many as 120,000 evacuees in shelters, and 100,000 in hotels and motels.

President Bush orders another 7,000 active-duty and 10,000 National Guard troops to the Gulf region.

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff says his department's preparations weren't adequate to cope with a "combination of catastrophes." Workers hope to finish fixing breaches in the Lake Pontchartrain levees by today.