police to remove survivors
- From: myal <dumaree@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 16:06:19 +1000
http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/world/national/2005/09/06/katrina_tuesday20050906.html
New Orleans water going down, police to remove survivors Last Updated Tue, 06 Sep 2005 19:14:39 EDT CBC News
Water levels in New Orleans slowly lowered on Tuesday as engineers got some of the massive pumps working again.In some areas flood levels were said to have dropped about 30 cm. Mayor Ray Nagin said 60 percent of the city was now under water, an improvement from last week when 80 percent of the city was flooded.
Rescue workers use boats and helicopters to search a flooded neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005 in New Orleans. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, Pool)
The toxic floodwaters -- with chemicals, poisons and untreated human waste -- will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain without treatment. "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.
Rescuers pulled out more survivors of Hurricane Katrina to try to empty New Orleans.
As emergency teams began to take control of the city, the mayor pleaded with people who survived the hurricane and have insisted on staying in their homes to get out now. "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."
Oil floating on the toxic waters could mingle with flaming gas leaks. "If these two unite, God bless us," Nagin 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.
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.
It will 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 Tuesday.
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.
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.
Eight days after Katrina tore in 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.
A house in Long Beach, Miss. (AP Photo/Starkville Daily News, Joe Evens)
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.
In Washington, President Bush pledged to conduct his own invesitgation into what went wrong in the initial respone to Katrina, but resisted 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 White house is likely to ask for $40 to $50 billion in relief aid for new emergency budget request.
"If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible?" -- Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed calls for a commission, like the one that examined the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to study how the hurricane response went wrong.
U.S. oil prices fell Tuesday as industrialized countries prepared to release oil from emergency stocks and some U.S. refineries began to resume operations.
Nearly 100,000 people have registered on the Red Cross Web page set up to help trace missing family members.
Utility companies and the U.S. Department of Energy said nearly 1 million homes still have no electricity.
The insurance industry share of the clean-up bill could reach $50 billion US.
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