More Help On The Way For Katrina Victims
WBEN Newsroom – Saturday, September 3, 2005 07:51 PMNew Orleans, LA (CBS/AP) – Thousands more bedraggled refugees were bused and airlifted to salvation Saturday, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.
Meanwhile, President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast on Saturday, as the Bush administration intensified efforts to rescue survivors and send aid to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast in the face of criticism it did not act quickly enough.
“In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need,’” President Bush said.
Already, the Coast Guard has rescued 9,500 people in addition to the thousands and thousands aided by local authorities, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a news conference. More than 100,000 people already had received humanitarian aid, he said.
No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina’s floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
You’re right, those people weren’t grateful for the water and MREs on Friday.
And the dying goes on — at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
CBS News Correspondent Byron Pitts reports that at least 30 patients have died at the airport since Wednesday.
Right again, those 30 plus people weren’t grateful for the water and MREs on Friday.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expected the death toll to reach the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
Touring the airport triage center, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, said “a lot more than eight to 10 people are dying a day.”
Most were those too sick or weak to survive. But not all.
Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten to death and another commit suicide at the Superdome. Womack was beaten with a pipe and being treated at the airport triage center.
“One guy jumped off a balcony. I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn’t leave,” he said.
Triple whammy. War, Katrina and the Superdome. He wasn’t grateful for his water and the MRE’s on Friday. (I’d say just about all the people who survived the hurricane/flood/New Orleans are going to be having some fun with PTSD now, something people in the health field would have liked to be able to track but it’s difficult to do so when the survivors are spread all over the nation.)
Three babies died at the convention center from heat exhaustion, said Mark Kyle, a medical relief provider.
The mothers of those three infants were likely not grateful for their water and MREs on Friday.
CBS News Correspondent John Roberts reports that the National Guard made a substantial dent in the 30,000 storm victims who’d lived in squalor at Convention Center.
“We should all go to heaven because I feel like we’ve lived though hell,” one woman told Roberts.
Some 20,000 refugees had been waiting for rescue for nearly a week at the Superdome, with as many as 25,000 more at the New Orleans convention center. National Guard Lt. Col. Bernard McLaughlin said the number may have been closer to 5,000 to 7,000. Most were finally taken out by bus and helicopter on Saturday.
At the convention center, thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had been stuck at the convention center for five days, was among those who filed past corpses to reach the buses.
“Anyplace is better than here,” she said.
“People are dying over there.”
Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter, where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days, his stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets around the convention center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.
Those people weren’t grateful for their water and MREs.
A once-vibrant city of 480,000 people, overtaken just days ago by floods, looting, rape and arson, was now an empty, sodden tomb.
The exact number of dead won’t be known for some time. Survivors were still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city. President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast on Saturday.
“There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn’t know were there,” Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.
Unless you were watching television and reading all the forums where people were posting pleas for their relatives to be rescued, giving names and addresses, most of the people being elderly and in frail health. Y’know, more people who FEMA says should take on part of the responsibility for their fate since they didn’t evacuate.
The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape — and, overwhelmingly, they were black.
“The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a man-made disaster,” said Phillip Holt, 51, who was rescued from his home Saturday with his partner and three of their aging Chihuahuas. They left a fourth behind they couldn’t grab in time.
When they got to the bus with those chihuahuas, they would have been told to leave them behind. Those were the rules. Sorry, no pets. I don’t know why news stories keep telling us about people who rescued their pets when those pets are still in New Orleans. Something I thought about early in the week when Bush was photographed disembarking Air Force One after his first flyover, carrying Toto with him.
Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from the city, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry said as many as 120,000 hurricane refugees were in 97 shelters across the state, with another 100,000 in Texas hotels and motels. Others were in Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas.
Emergency workers at the Astrodome were told to expect 10,000 new arrivals daily for the next three days.
Thousands of people remained at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where officials turned a Delta Blue terminal into a triage unit. Officials said 3,000 to 5,000 people had been treated at the triage unit, but fewer than 200 remain. Others throughout the airport awaited transport out of the city.
“In the beginning it was like trying to lasso an octopus. When we got here it was overwhelming,” said Jake Jacoby, a physician helping run the center.
Airport director Roy Williams said about 30 people had died, some of them elderly and ill. The bodies were being kept in refrigerated trucks as a temporary morgue.
When did the refrigerated trucks arrive on the scene? You know, one of those refrigerated trucks over at the Convention Center would have saved those three infants who died of heat exhaustion. But, hey, so would have a bus.
At the convention center, people stumbled toward the helicopters, dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse’s 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
“They’re good to see,” LaGarde said, with remarkable gusto as she waited to be loaded onto a gray Marine helicopter. She said they were sent by God. “Whatever He has for you, He’ll take care of you. He’ll sure take care of you.”
I’m glad for Nita LaGarde. But she seems to be talking about a god that is reserved for those who make it, not for those who don’t.
LaGarde’s nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a clean adult diaper in more than two days. “I just want to get somewhere where I can get her nice and clean,” she said.
Around the corner, a motley fleet of luxury tour buses and yellow school buses lined up two deep to pick up some of the healthier refugees. National Guardsmen confiscated a gun, knives and letter openers from people before they got on the buses.
Sounds like some scared people, carrying letter openers. Certainly doesn’t sound like thugs.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Derek Dabon, 29, said as he waited to pass through a guard checkpoint. “There’s no way I’m coming back. To what? That don’t make sense. I’m going to start a new life.”
Hillary Snowton, 40, sat on the sidewalk outside with a piece of white sheet tied around his face like a bandanna as he stared at a body that had been lying on a chaise lounge for four days, its stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
“It’s for the smell of the dead body,” he said of the sheet. His brother-in-law, Octave Carter, 42, said it has been “every day, every morning, breakfast lunch and dinner looking at it.”
When asked why he didn’t move further away from the corpse, Carter replied, “it stinks everywhere, Blood.”
Now this, this is how you focus on the living. You leave them stranded in outrageous heat, without water and food or medical care, alongside the bodies of the dead, in conditions that are just hopping up and down to kill them.
Dan Craig, director of recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it could take up to six months to get the water out of New Orleans, and the city would then need to dry out, which could take up to three more months.
A Saks Fifth Avenue store billowed smoke Saturday, as did rows of warehouses on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where corrugated roofs buckled and tiny explosions erupted. Gunfire — almost two dozen shots — broke out in the French Quarter overnight.
In the French Quarter, some residents refused or did not know how to get out. Some holed up with guns.
As the warehouse district burned, Ron Seitzer, 61, washed his dirty laundry in the even dirtier waters of the Mississippi River and said he didn’t know how much longer he could stay without water or power, surrounded by looters.
“I’ve never even had a nightmare or a beautiful dream about this,” he said as he watched the warehouses burn. “People are just not themselves.”
In other developments:
· Federal officials are chartering three Carnival Cruise ships to shelter people displaced by Katrina. The Ecstasy, Sensation and Holiday will be pulled from regular use for six months. They’ll shelter as many as seven thousand people.
· The Air Force said it is sending 300 airmen from Iraq and Afghanistan to deal with hurricane emergencies.
· The American Red Cross is working to reunite families separated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The agency has activated the Family Links Registry, which is accessible by telephone or the Internet.
Evacuees living in shelters, hotels or with family members or friends are being encouraged to call 1-877-568-3317 to let people know where they are. Evacuees also can register by visiting
www.redcross.org.
Every life is precious, and so we’re going to spend a lot of time saving lives, whether it be in New Orleans or on the coast of Mississippi. George Bush, 9/2/2005, a full four days after Hurricane Katrina, one day at least after the three-day golden window of opportunity survivors are acknowledged as having for rescue, while people were dying in New Orleans where Homeland Security had refused to admit the Red Cross to provide food and aid because,”the American Red Cross…presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.”
Every life is precious. That’s what distinguishes us from the enemy. George Bush, 10/1/2004
Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality…More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. George Bush, 9/11/2002
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