WASHINGTON, 8 September 2005 — New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin yesterday ordered all remaining persons in the city to leave or risk being evacuated by force, as the toxic waters flooding the city’s streets threatened to cause a major health disaster.
To the estimated 10,000 residents still believed to be holed up in the ruined city, the mayor had a blunt new warning: Get out now — or risk being taken out by force.
Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the US military to force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to leave.
Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said that forced removal of citizens had not yet begun. “That’s an absolute last resort,” he said.
Nagin’s order targets those still in the city unless they have been designated as helping with the relief effort.
The move — which supersedes an earlier, milder order to evacuate made before Hurricane Katrina stuck on Aug. 29 — comes after rescuers searching New Orleans found hundreds of people ignoring repeated urgings to leave.
As pumps began draining water back into Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, Louisiana officials warned that after flooding the city, the brackish brew is now polluted with raw sewage, bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides and toxic chemicals. Officials added that although two large oil spills, from damaged storage tanks, were now under control, thousands of other smaller spills continued to coat floodwaters in New Orleans.
The pumping began after the Army Corps of Engineers used hundreds of sandbags and rocks over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80 percent of this below sea level city.
The toxic floodwaters receded inch by inch, only five of New Orleans’ normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating, the Army Corps of Engineers said.
The time needed to drain the city will depend on the condition of the pumps — especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from time to time.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush continued to resist calls to fire Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who is a political appointee by the president. Sharp criticism against Brown began last week when he said he was unaware of a crisis at the New Orleans Convention Center, news of which had been televised for days.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., reiterated her calls for FEMA to be made autonomous from the Department of Homeland Security and for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the disaster, saying neither Congress nor the administration should do it.
“I don’t think the government can investigate itself,” she told NBC’s “Today” show yesterday, two days after visiting refugees at the Astrodome in Houston.
Hurricane Katrina is also jeopardizing Bush’s agenda for cutting taxes and reducing the deficit.
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, postponed plans to push for a vote on repealing the estate tax, a move that would benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of households, and cost more than $70 billion a year in lost tax revenue.
House and Senate leaders are also discussing their pre-hurricane plan to cut $35 billion over the next five years for programs like Medicaid, students loans, food stamps and welfare payments. Those cuts would harm Bush and the Republican lawmakers who are already trying to deflect criticism that the federal government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina’s poorest victims.
