Louisiana State Police officers stop a car in downtown New Orleans, Friday, Sept. 2, 2005. The occupants of the car were searched and then let go. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Brett Coomer)
Posted on 09/02/2005 10:10:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW ORLEANS - To cries of "Thank you, Jesus!" and catcalls of "What took you so long?," a National Guard convoy packed with food, water and medicine rolled through axle-deep floodwaters Friday into what remained of New Orleans and descended into a maelstrom of fires and floating corpses.
"Lord, I thank you for getting us out of here!" Leschia Radford shrieked amid a throng of tens of thousands of storm victims outside the New Orleans Convention Center.
More than four days after the storm hit, the caravan of at least three-dozen camouflage-green troop vehicles and supply trucks arrived along with dozens of air-conditioned buses to take refugees out of the city. President Bush also took an aerial tour of the ruined city, and answered complaints about a sluggish government response by saying, "We're going to make it right."
In what looked like a scene from a Third World country, some people threw their arms heavenward and others nearly fainted with joy as the trucks and hundreds of soldiers arrived in the punishing midday heat.
But there were also profane jeers from many in the crowd of nearly 20,000 outside the convention center, which a day earlier seemed on the verge of a riot, with desperate people seething with anger over the lack of anything to eat or drink.
"They should have been here days ago," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah!"
"We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy added. "I say burn this whole ... city down."
The soldiers' arrival-in-force came amid angry complaints from the mayor and others that the federal government had bungled the relief effort and let people die in the streets for lack of food, water or medicine.
"The people of our city are holding on by a thread," Mayor Ray Nagin warned in a statement to CNN. "Time has run out. Can we survive another night? And who can we depend on? Only God knows."
By nightfall Friday, the mayor's tone had changed. Nagin returned from a meeting with President Bush a picture of calm.
"I feel much better. I feel like we've gotten everyone's attention, and hopefully they'll continue to do what they're doing," he said Friday, leaning against a railing in lobby of a hotel that houses his temporary lodgings and command post.
A day earlier, the mayor erupted in tears during a radio interview and told the government to "get off your asses and let's do something."
The president took a land and air tour of hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and admitted of the relief effort: "The results are not enough." Congress passed a $10.5 billion disaster aid package, and Bush quickly signed the measure.
What were perhaps the first signs of real hope for recovery came on a day that was ushered in with a thunderous explosion before daybreak and scattered downtown building fires that only confirmed the sense that New Orleans was a city in utter collapse.
The explosion at a warehouse along the Mississippi River about 15 blocks from the French Quarter jostled storm refugees awake and sent a pillar of acrid gray smoke over a city that the mayor has said could be awash with thousands of corpses. Other large fires fire erupted downtown.
With a cigar-chomping general in the convoy's lead vehicle, the trucks rolled through muddy water to reach the convention center. Flatbed trucks carried huge crates, pallets and bags of relief supplies, including Meals Ready to Eat. Soldiers in fatigues sat in the backs of open-top trucks, their rifles pointing skyward.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the military presence helped calm a jittery city.
"They brought a sense of order and peace, and it was a beautiful sight to see that we're ramping up," she said.
"We are seeing a show of force. It's putting confidence back in our hearts and in the minds of our people. We're going to make it through."
The governor also said refugees in the convention center should be evacuated Saturday.
Guardsmen carrying rifles also arrived at the Louisiana Superdome, where a vast crowd of bedraggled people — many of them trapped there since the weekend — stretched around the entire perimeter of the building, waiting for their deliverance from the heat, the filth and the gagging stench inside the stadium.
"The cavalry is and will continue to arrive," said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, commander of the National Guard. He said 7,000 Guardsmen would be in the city by Saturday.
But another commander warned it may yet be days more before evacuations from the convention center begin, because the first priority is bringing in food and water.
"As fast as we can, we'll move them out," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore said. "Worse things have happened to America," he added. "We're going to overcome this, too. It's not our fault. The storm came and flooded the city."
Within minutes of the soldiers' arrival at the convention center, they set up six food and water lines. The crowd was for the most part orderly and grateful for the first major supply convoy to reach the arena.
Diane Sylvester, 49, was the first person through the line, and she emerged with two bottles of water and a pork rib meal. "Something is better than nothing," she said as she mopped sweat from her brow. "I feel great to see the military here. I know I'm saved."
Angela Jones, 24, began guzzling her water before she even cleared the line.
"Like steak and potatoes!" she said of the cool water. "I didn't think I was going to make it through that."
A rag shielding her from the searing heat and a cart holding her only belongings, 70-year-old Nellie Washington asked: "What took you so long? I'm extremely happy, but I cannot let it be at that. They did not take the lead to do this. They had to be pushed to do it."
With Houston's Astrodome already full with 15,000 storm refugees, that city opened two more giant centers to accommodate an additional 10,000. Dallas and San Antonio also had agreed to take refugees.
One group of Katrina's victims lurched from one tragedy to another: A bus carrying evacuees from the Superdome overturned on a Louisiana highway, killing at least one person and injuring many others.
At the broken levee along Lake Pontchartrain that swamped nearly 80 percent of New Orleans, helicopters dropped 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into place to seal off the waters. Engineers also were developing a plan to create new breaches in the levees so that a combination of gravity and pumping and would drain the water out of the city, a process that could take weeks.
Law and order all but broke down in New Orleans over the past few days. Storm refugees reported being raped, shot and robbed, gangs of teenagers hijacked boats meant to rescue them, and frustrated hurricane victims menaced outmanned law officers. Police Chief Eddie Compass admitted even his own officers had taken food and water from stores. Officers were walking off the job by the dozens.
Some of New Orleans' hospitals, facing dwindling supplies of food, water and medicine, resumed evacuations Friday. Rescuers finally made it into Charity Hospital, the city's largest public hospital, where gunfire had earlier thwarted efforts to evacuate more than 250 patients.
Behind, they left a flooded morgue where residents had been dropping off bodies. After it reached its capacity of 12, five more corpses were stacked in a stairwell. Other bodies were elsewhere in the hospital.
Administrator Don Smithburg said his numbed staff was forced to subsist on intravenous sugar solutions.
"Some of them are on the brink of unable to cope any longer," he said.
___
Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill, Allen G. Breed, Brett Martel and Mary Foster.
Louisiana State Police officers stop a car in downtown New Orleans, Friday, Sept. 2, 2005. The occupants of the car were searched and then let go. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Brett Coomer)
Ingrates should be the last to get anything from anyone. The entire episode is sickening.
This AP article is also on the wire as
Relief begins to pour in
sickening is watching what ABC has put on as a news program tonight in place of 20/20
It is nothing less than scurrilous and scandalous in their use of the scenes in NO the last few days..
NBC and CBS's shows tonight pale in comparison to this crap.
Somebody needs to take the matches out of this guy's MRE.
Hurricane Katrina survivors collect food and water during food distribution at the New Orleans Convention Center, September 2, 2005. After five days of surviving Hurricane Katrina, the heat, shootings and other unrest, thousands at the Convention Center were given food and water by the U.S. National Guard. (Jason Reed/Reuters)
A U.S. National Guardsmen wheels an elderly woman from the New Orleans Convention Center, September 2, 2005. After five days of surviving Hurricane Katrina, the searing heat, shootings and other unrest, thousands at the Convention Center were given food and water by the U.S. National Guard. (Jason Reed/Reuters)
In this photograph provided by the White House, first lady Laura Bush visits with people affected by Hurricane Katrina at the Cajundome at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana Friday, September 2, 2005. (AP Photo/The White House Photo, Krisanne Johnson)
U.S. National Guardsmen march past the New Orleans Convention Center September 2, 2005. After five days of surviving Hurricane Katrina, the searing heat, shootings and other unrest, thousands at the Convention Center were given food and water by the U.S. National Guard. REUTERS/Jason Reed
U.S. President George W. Bush tours Hurricane Katrina damage done around the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, while flying in Marine One, September 2, 2005. Authorities are still struggling to evacuate thousands of people from hurricane-battered areas as food and water are scarce and looters raided local businesses. Bush said it would take years to recover from the devastation to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. REUTERS/Larry Downing
U.S. President George W. Bush (L) makes a statement beside Louisiana's Democratic Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco after touring Hurricane Katrina damage in New Orleans, Louisiana, September 2, 2005. Authorities are still struggling to evacuate thousands of people from hurricane-battered areas as food and water are scarce and looters raided local businesses. Bush said it would take years to recover from the devastation to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. REUTERS/Larry Downing
You just can't say enough good things about the American military. I don't care what the America/Military haters in the DemocRATic party and their toadies in the MSM say, those people are awesome. God Bless Our Troops! They are America's finest and symbolize all the good things about America.
pathetic is what ABC did in a race segment on 20/20 tonight, just saw it and Blacks will always bear a burden that only they can jettison, the MSM sure won't allow that if they can help however, imo..
The slow response was because they are mostly black was the mantra.
Those offering their 'opinions' are nothing less than race baiters taking advantage of this disaster to further their own misguided agendas.
The MSM has no one to blame as they slowly bleed their own credibility and act as nothing more as whores for the left and their agenda.
What ABC put out there were a bunch of folks who felt slighted because of race. It was nothing less than disgraceful , imo.
UP Yours Stossel and Vargas and Winton Marsalis as well.
darn..I messed that post up
Doogle
Has anyone heard if the CANNABILISM reported today by Randall Robertson, liberal black activist and president of Transafrica, is true?
Sure. Weren't all of the supplies, trucks and ANG piled up on the outskirts of NO?
No?
I think 96 hours to get the organization, logistical assets and manpower in place to have a meaningful impact was very good. Very fast. Considering that the supplies had to brought in from all over the country to Southern Louisiana.
Too bad more of the residents didn't heed the evacuation order and leave before Katrina made landfall.
I have heard rumors of voodoo being carried on in New Orleans.
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