From the archives: Search for Katrina survivors continues

This story was originally published in Newsday on September 5, 2005

A week later, rescuers still searching to save last of those who endured disaster, while feds acknowledge death toll will reach 'thousands'

Scouring neighborhoods still submerged by filthy flood waters, rescuers yesterday embarked on a desperate door-to-door bid to save the last of Hurricane Katrina's survivors, many of them elderly or invalid left stranded in attics or on balconies.

Their plights underscored the brutal fight for survival still being waged a full week after the storm, a fight that has blended with utter chaos to turn New Orleans into a no-man's-land.

In a sign of the treachery engulfing the city, police yesterday said they shot eight men, killing five or six, who opened fire on contractors from the Army Corps of Engineers. Corps spokesman John Hall said police were escorting the contractors headed to work on repairing levee breaches that left 80 percent of New Orleans under water. The contractors were not injured in the shootout.

Yesterday, federal authorities - facing an onslaught of criticism for taking five days to get the relief effort going full steam - concurred with Gov. Kathleen Blanco's assertion that thousands had been killed.

"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on CNN.

"We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Fox News. "It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine."

Vignette after tragic vignette illustrated the impact of the slow response.

Of at least 59 bodies picked up in New Orleans, 22 were on Interstate 10, where thousands who survived Katrina and ensuing flooding had converged to await help that didn't come. Another 10 corpses were pulled from the Superdome, where tens of thousands of people were left without food, water, air conditioning or working toilets.

In neighboring St. Bernard Parish, Sheriff Jack Stephens said 31 senior citizens died inside the flooded St. Rita's Nursing Home. The president of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard, dissolved into sobs as he described the daily reassurances a colleague gave to his elderly mother that rescuers would reach her in a nursing home in St. Bernard. She drowned Friday.

"Bureaucracy has committed murder here," he said, accusing the Federal Emergency Management Agency of blocking attempts days ago to get water trucks and diesel fuel in place in the parish.

FEMA director Michael Brown and Chertoff have responded to accusations of government bungling of the rescue effort, insisting levee breaches could not have been predicted.

But according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, Brown and Chertoff had been briefed by the National Hurricane Center on the potential for the levee to be topped. Dr. Max Mayfield, the center's director, told the newspaper that they were included in electronic briefings and in formal advisories.

"It's not like this was a surprise," Mayfield told the newspaper.When relief efforts finally kicked in, Broussard said they focused on clearing desperate mobs that swelled to tens of thousands from New Orleans' Superdome and convention center, leaving outlying parishes all but forgotten.

Yesterday, helicopters and boats were scouting those areas and the vast expanse of New Orleans hunting for stragglers. A civilian helicopter crashed, but apparently was not carrying evacuees, and the two people on board walked away with cuts and bruises. Rescue workers told people to wave sheets to draw attention to themselves, and used bright spray-paint to indicate which buildings had been searched.

They plucked Bertha Young, 76, from her home on Felicity Street, and transported her to the convention center, where helicopters were ferrying the sick and frail to medical facilities. Young said she had not thought to leave earlier because she thought Katrina would be like so many other storms, which barely touched New Orleans.

"I've been through them before," she said while pushed in a wheelchair toward a helicopter.

Rescue worker Kenny Cole, 56, said it had been emotionally wrenching to coax poor, elderly people to get into his 18-foot skiff. "It took us a half an hour or 45 minutes to persuade them," he said of some people.

Some had stayed behind to care for pets or sick or elderly neighbors, or simply thought they could ride out the storm. Tom and Gail Cruise had planned to do that in their second-floor apartment. After watching the water rise to the windows of the first floor they invited one neighbor after another to hunker down with them.

Eventually, they were sharing their one-bedroom apartment with 17 others, including a man in his 80s dependent on an oxygen bottle.

"Once we committed to stay, we couldn't leave," said Tom Cruise, adding that accounts of the horrible conditions at the Superdome and other shelters also deterred many people from leaving once the flooding began..

"They saw the news and what was in store for them if they left," he said.

When the elderly man's oxygen ran low, others clambered to the roof and flagged down a Coast Guard helicopter, which carried him away. The Cruises finally left yesterday, with their dog Tilia, after a Coast Guard crew said they had no choice.

Some buildings had giant numbers scrawled on them, indicating the bodies inside. Bodies were also being found on the streets. "HERE LIES VERA, GOD HELP US," someone had scrawled atop a white sheet covering a body left in a makeshift grave in New Orleans' Garden District.

At some houses, rescuers used axes to break through walls and windows to check for victims.

Willie Cheatham, 37, didn't want to leave until he had found his wife, whom he had become separated from Saturday. After searching for her amid bedlam at the Superdome, he gave up and returned through ankle-deep water to his home yesterday.

"I worry if she's alive, or what", said Cheatham, surviving on bottled water from relief workers.

The tragedy also had taken its toll on New Orleans police and firefighters. Mayor Ray Nagin said two police officers had committed suicide and that he was hoping to get all the force, and the firefighters, a respite in coming days. Nagin said they would be sent to Baton Rouge for rest and counseling, if needed.

Evans reported from New Orleans and Susman from New York. This story was supplemented with wire service reports.