NEW ORLEANS, 7 September 2005 — With a major levee break finally plugged, engineers struggled to pump out the flooded city yesterday as authorities braced for the horrors the receding water is certain to reveal. “It’s going to be awful and it’s going to wake the nation up again,” the mayor warned.
Mayor Ray Nagin said after an aerial tour that about 60 percent of the city was under water, down from 80 percent during the darkest hours last week.
“We are starting to see some significant progress. I’m starting to see rays of light,” he said.
Nagin said it would take three weeks to remove the water and another few weeks to clear the debris. It could also take up to eight weeks to get the electricity back on.
Still, he warned that what awaits authorities below the toxic muck would be gruesome. A day earlier, he said the death toll in New Orleans could reach 10,000.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, began sending paratroopers from the Army’s storied 82nd Airborne Division to New Orleans to use small boats, including inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in flooded sections of the city.
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, division commander, said about 5,000 paratroopers would be in place by yesterday.
The Army Corps of Engineers began pumping the water out after closing a major gap in a key levee that burst during Hurricane Katrina and swamped 80 percent of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city.
Efforts to evacuate holdouts were stepped up, with boat rescue crews and a caravan of law enforcement vehicles from around the country searching for people to rescue.
“In some cases, it’s real easy. They’re sitting on the porch with their bags packed,” said Joe Youdell of the Kentucky Air National Guard. “But some don’t want to leave and we can’t force them.”
Nagin warned: “We have to convince them to leave. It’s not safe here. There is toxic waste in the water and dead bodies and mosquitoes and gas. We are pumping about a million dollars’ worth a gas a day in the air. Fires have been started and we don’t have running water.”
Early yesterday, fire broke out at a big house in the historic Garden District — a neighborhood with lots of antebellum mansions. National Guardsmen cordoned off the area as firefighters battled the blaze by helicopter.
At the same time, the effort to get the evacuees back on their feet continued on several fronts.
Patrick Rhode, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said evacuees would receive debit cards so that they could begin buying necessary personal items. He said the agency was going from shelter to shelter to make sure that evacuees received cards quickly and that the paperwork usually required would be reduced or eliminated.
“We’re eliminating as much red tape as humanly possible,” Rhode said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
The Air Force late Monday concluded its huge airlift of elderly and serious ill patients from New Orleans’ major airport. A total of 9,788 patients and other evacuees were evacuated by air from the New Orleans area.
Local officials bitterly expressed frustration with the federal government’s sluggish response as the tragedy unfolded.
“Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today,” Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, said on CBS’ “The Early Show.”
“So I’m asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don’t give me the same idiot.”
In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the storm, St. Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.
“If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, US teams should be here faster than that,” Stone said. Pointing to two large oil refineries, “When they’re paying $5 to $6 a gallon for gas, they’re going to realize what this place means to America.”
The frustrations were also felt along the Mississippi coast, where people who have chosen to stay or are stuck in demolished neighborhoods scavenge for necessities.
Some say they will stay to rebuild their communities. Others say they would leave if they could get a ride or a few gallons of gasoline.
But all agree that — with no water or power available, probably for months — they need more help from the government just to survive.
