• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

New Orleans waters recede, survivors lured out

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 17:05 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

More News in this Category