Posted on 08/31/2005 6:07:35 AM PDT by Jalapeno
No Text. Just Headline off Chronicle Website.
"As Army engineers struggled without success to plug New Orleans' breached levees with sandbags and water continued to rise, Texas officials have worked out a plan to bring more than 23,000 refugees from the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome"
Who agreed to this? Bill White, the mayor of Houston? They are very close to the biggest medical center in the world but how are they going to transport 20,000 to Houston?
It sure will. I guess this means they have that part of 'The Plan' worked out. Now all they have to figure out is how to get them there.
NEW ORLEANS — As Army engineers struggled without success to plug New Orleans' breached levees with sandbags and water continued to rise, Texas officials have worked out a plan to bring more than 23,000 refugees from the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome.
The Houston Chronicle has learned refugees trapped in the Superdome will be bused to the Astrodome in Houston under plans being put together by state and local officials, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said today.
Kathy Walt said Texas still hasn't received a formal request from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who also could be seeking alternatives to the Astrodome. But, Walt added, the Louisiana secretary of state requested Texas's help in a phone call late last night or early this morning.
Walt said arrangements were being made for more than 400 buses to transport the refugees, who have been without power or adequate sanitary facilities since the hurricane struck New Orleans on Monday.
Officials from both states and Harris County were discussing logistics in a conference call early this morning, Walt said. She said that the governor's office has been told the Astrodome's events schedule has been cleared through December.
Texas officials also have been talking with Jefferson County officials about using the Ford Center in Beaumont for longterm shelter for refugees, Walt said.
Louisiana's governor said today the situation was worsening and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city. "The challenge is an engineering nightmare," Blanco said on ABC's Good Morning America. "The National Guard has been dropping sandbags into it, but it's like dropping it into a black hole."
As the waters continued to rise in New Orleans, four Navy ships raced toward the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, and Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region. The Red Cross reported it had about 40,000 people in 200 shelters across the area.
Officials said the death toll from Hurricane Katrina had reached at least 110 in Mississippi, while Louisiana put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics.
Blanco acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," she said.
To repair one of the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, officials late Tuesday dropped 3,000-pound sandbags from helicopters and hauled dozens of 15-foot concrete barriers into the breach. Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said officials also had a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole.
Riley said it could take close to a month to get the water out of the city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert.
Blanco said she wanted the Superdome evacuated within two days. The air conditioning inside the Superdome was out, the toilets were broken, and tempers were rising in the sweltering heat. "Conditions are degenerating rapidly," she said. "It's a very, very desperate situation."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories — boats the agency uses to house its own employees.
A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats.
"I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction by air Tuesday.
All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.
"Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos."
Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said.
On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting was in full view of police and National Guardsmen.
Officials said it was simply too early to estimate a death toll. One Mississippi county alone said it had suffered at least 100 deaths, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.
Several of dead in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds Monday. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.
Blanco asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.
"That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild."
Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. Officials said it could be weeks, if not months, before most evacuees will be able to return.
Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage.
Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown warned that structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in floodwaters made it unsafe for residents to come home anytime soon. The sweltering city of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be out for weeks.
Katrina, which was downgraded to a tropical depression, packed winds around 30 mph as it moved through the Ohio Valley early today, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes.
The remnants of Katrina spawned bands of storms and tornadoes across Georgia that caused at least two deaths, multiple injuries and leveled dozens of buildings. A tornado damaged 13 homes near Marshall, Va.
Chronicle staffer Clay Robison and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lots of those people have relatives. Many are students or tourists. They need to go HOME, not to another stadium!!
Buses prepared to bring Superdome refugees to Astrodome
From staff and wire reports
NEW ORLEANS — As Army engineers struggled without success to plug New Orleans' breached levees with sandbags and water continued to rise, Texas officials have worked out a plan to bring more than 23,000 refugees from the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome.
The Houston Chronicle has learned refugees trapped in the Superdome will be bused to the Astrodome in Houston under plans being put together by state and local officials, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said today.
Kathy Walt said Texas still hasn't received a formal request from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who also could be seeking alternatives to the Astrodome. But, Walt added, the Louisiana secretary of state requested Texas's help in a phone call late last night or early this morning.
Walt said arrangements were being made for more than 400 buses to transport the refugees, who have been without power or adequate sanitary facilities since the hurricane struck New Orleans on Monday.
Officials from both states and Harris County were discussing logistics in a conference call early this morning, Walt said. She said that the governor's office has been told the Astrodome's events schedule has been cleared through December.
Texas officials also have been talking with Jefferson County officials about using the Ford Center in Beaumont for longterm shelter for refugees, Walt said.
Louisiana's governor said today the situation was worsening and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city.
"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," Blanco said on ABC's Good Morning America. "The National Guard has been dropping sandbags into it, but it's like dropping it into a black hole."
As the waters continued to rise in New Orleans, four Navy ships raced toward the Gulf Coast with drinking water and other emergency supplies, and Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region. The Red Cross reported it had about 40,000 people in 200 shelters across the area.
Officials said the death toll from Hurricane Katrina had reached at least 110 in Mississippi, while Louisiana put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics.
Blanco acknowledged that looting was a severe problem but said that officials had to focus on survivors. "We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," she said.
To repair one of the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain, officials late Tuesday dropped 3,000-pound sandbags from helicopters and hauled dozens of 15-foot concrete barriers into the breach. Maj. Gen. Don Riley of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said officials also had a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 500-foot hole.
Riley said it could take close to a month to get the water out of the city. If the water rises a few feet higher, it could also wipe out the water system for the whole city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert.
Blanco said she wanted the Superdome evacuated within two days. The air conditioning inside the Superdome was out, the toilets were broken, and tempers were rising in the sweltering heat. "Conditions are degenerating rapidly," she said. "It's a very, very desperate situation."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories — boats the agency uses to house its own employees.
A helicopter view of the devastation over Louisiana and Mississippi revealed people standing on black rooftops, baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats.
"I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after touring the destruction by air Tuesday.
All day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters plucked bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops and attics. Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 3,000 people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.
"Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos."
Looting broke out in some New Orleans neighborhoods, prompting authorities to send more than 70 additional officers and an armed personnel carrier into the city. One police officer was shot in the head by a looter but was expected to recover, authorities said.
On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting was in full view of police and National Guardsmen.
Officials said it was simply too early to estimate a death toll. One Mississippi county alone said it had suffered at least 100 deaths, and officials are "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.
Several of dead in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water as Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds Monday. Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there, too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms to hit the United States in decades.
Blanco asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.
"That would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly, gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will rebuild."
Across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million residents remained without electricity, some without clean drinking water. Officials said it could be weeks, if not months, before most evacuees will be able to return.
Emergency medical teams from across the country were sent into the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm damage.
Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown warned that structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in floodwaters made it unsafe for residents to come home anytime soon. The sweltering city of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity could be out for weeks.
Katrina, which was downgraded to a tropical depression, packed winds around 30 mph as it moved through the Ohio Valley early today, with the potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly tornadoes.
The remnants of Katrina spawned bands of storms and tornadoes across Georgia that caused at least two deaths, multiple injuries and leveled dozens of buildings. A tornado damaged 13 homes near Marshall, Va.
Chronicle staffer Clay Robison and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Any decent talent in this trade?
Pretty much. I've gotta believe that the folks there are getting pretty damn sick of stadiums.
Not all of LA is underwater, why don't they move them to another part of the state (they may not leave Houston, once they come). Or set up tent city in another part of the state.
Sorry, but is this a joke?
The 'Stros get 23,000 Louisianans, and New Orleans gets Craig Biggio and a levee to be named later.
What will happen is most of these people will stay in Houston permanently because they will have nowhere else to go. They have lost everything and will tryt to make new lives for themselves.
Is there a vacated military base that can be used to house these people in the months ahead?
And when the Astros return home where next...the Alamo Dome, then the Metro Dome, then the King Dome?
The Astros don;t play there anymore.
Still sounds like a Twilight Zone episode...doomed to roam from Dome to Dome.
They will probably let the students and tourists leave once they get to Houston.
Lots of those people have relatives. Many are students or tourists. They need to go HOME, not to another stadium!!
But there is the logistics of getting out of the stadium and to whatever destination. I'll guess if the person is able to go elsewhere they won't be stopped from doing so, but evidently many have no other place to go and their home is most certainly not available.
If they can bus them to this other place I'm sure nobody will imprison them against their will if they can then make other arrangements to stay with friends or relatives.
It sounds like a good idea to me. They need a fairly large place with working bathrooms, etc. They can always reassess but they need to get these people out of the Superdome.
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