New Orleans waters recede, survivors lured out

By Michael Christie

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Engineers pumped flood waters out
of New Orleans on Tuesday and rescuers pulled out survivors of
Hurricane Katrina to empty the devastated city and find the
thousands feared dead in a disaster that shook America.

As emergency teams began to take control of New Orleans,
its mayor pleaded with people who survived the hurricane and
have insisted on staying in their homes to get out right away.

“It is a health risk. There are toxins in the water, there
are gas leaks where we may have explosions. We are fighting at
least four fires right now and we don’t have running water. It
is not safe,” Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Oil floating on the toxic waters could mingle with flaming
gas leaks. “If these two unite, God bless us,” he said.

Police said they would begin to remove survivors from the
city whether they like it or not.

“We’ll do everything it takes to make this city safe. These
people don’t understand they’re putting themselves in harm’s
way,” police superintendent P. Edwin Compass said.

After days of delays, aid efforts have now picked up and
water was being pumped out of flooded streets after the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers used rocks and sand to plug a huge gap
in levees that were overwhelmed during the hurricane.

Flood levels in some areas were said to have dropped a foot

and Nagin said 60 percent of the city was now under water,
down from 80 percent last week.

But it will still take weeks to dry the city out, and
rescue teams expect to find thousands of bloated bodies inside
homes that were swallowed in the flood. Huge fires at buildings
around the city hampered the rescue efforts on Tuesday.

A full eight days after Katrina tore in, sending deep
waters from Lake Pontchartrain cascading into the home of jazz
and Mardi Gras, very few bodies have even been recovered.

Louisiana’s official death toll stands at just 71 but
authorities say it will climb into the thousands.

In neighboring Mississippi, 170 were confirmed dead, but
many more are feared to have perished inside the debris.

Facing a mammoth task to find, identify and bury thousands
of bodies, many of them decayed, Louisiana state is looking for
a burial ground with individual graves for those that cannot be
identified.

LURED OUT WITH FOOD

Rescue teams sent dozens of boats and helicopters back into
flooded neighborhoods to rescue remaining survivors, while
other helicopters dropped water onto building fires.

In drier areas, rescuers offered residents food if they
agreed to be evacuated.

“These are people who tried to stick it out but time and a
lack of food has worn them down. So we are using food to lure
them out,” said Texas fireman Brady Devereaux.

“They said if we tried to stay, they will come back soon
and force us out,” said Warren Champ, 50.

He and about 30 others were then put on a government bus
for evacuation after being patted down for weapons. Officials
said about 3,000 people were rescued in the last day.

But others were refusing to budge, because they were scared
their homes would be looted and they have no place to go.

“They ain’t taking me nowhere, man,” said Vietnam War
veteran Errol Morning.

“I don’t want to leave because I’ve got faith in God,” said
Bruce St. John, the pastor of a Christian church.

New Orleans’ famous French Quarter was a militarized zone
with 82nd Airborne Division troops patrolling, road blocks set
up and Texas sheriffs in cowboy hats riding horses in streets
that used to host the most famous street parties in America.

It was a clear show of force to criminal gangs that ran
wild, looting and shooting, in the days after Katrina.

“We appear to be moving in the right direction. There
appears to be less and less shootings in the city and we won’t
stop until the final shot is fired and the individual is
arrested,” said Jim Letten, the U.S. Attorney for Louisiana.

The challenges ahead are huge. State officials said 140,000
to 160,000 homes were flooded and will not be recovered, and it
would take years to restore water service to all of the city.

“It’s almost unimaginable, the things we are going to have
to deal with,” said Mike McDaniel, the head of Louisiana’s
department of environmental quality.

More than a million people may have been driven from their
homes — many perhaps permanently — with hundreds of thousands
taking refuge in shelters, hotels and homes across the country
following one its worst natural disasters.

Firefighters said the flooding made it tough to tackle the
fires breaking out around the city and that the blazes were in
turn taking crucial resources away from rescue efforts.

BOTCHED RESCUE

Bungled rescue efforts in the first days of the crisis and
a slew of dramatic images that made New Orleans look more like
the scene of a Third World refugee crisis have touched off a
political crisis for President George W. Bush.

Bush said on Tuesday he would lead an investigation to find
out what happened with the emergency operation, but he resisted
growing demands for an immediate probe.

“There will be ample time for people to figure out what
went right, and what went wrong. What I’m interested (in) is
helping save lives,” he said.

The New York Times said Bush’s administration was trying to
deflect blame to state and local authorities. The White House
denied the report.

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi who
lost his coastal home in the storm, said Federal Emergency
Management Agency Director Michael Brown’s job is in jeopardy.

“If he doesn’t solve a couple of problems that we’ve got
right now he ain’t going to be able to hold the job, because
what I’m going to do to him ain’t going to be pretty,” he said
on CBS.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed calls
for a commission, like the one that examined the September 11,
2001, attacks, to study how the hurricane response went wrong.

U.S. oil prices fell on Tuesday as industrialized countries
prepared to release oil from emergency stocks and some U.S.
refineries began to resume operations.

(Additional reporting by Mark Egan and Paul Simao in New
Orleans; Jim Loney and Lesley Wroughton in Baton Rouge, Steve
Holland and Maggie Fox in Washington)