[Mb-civic] A City of Despair and Lawlessness - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A City of Despair and Lawlessness
Thousands Stranded in New Orleans; Troops Pour In

By Sam Coates and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 1 -- Federal and local authorities struggled Thursday 
to regain control of this ruined and lawless city, where tens of 
thousands of desperate refugees remained stranded with little hope of 
rescue and rapidly diminishing supplies of food and drinking water.

The chaos that has gripped New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina showed 
signs Thursday of spreading to Baton Rouge and along the storm-ravaged 
Gulf Coast, as weary refugees continued their slow and confused exodus 
to higher ground. Fresh waves of National Guard troops began pouring 
into the region in an attempt to quell the unrest, but large swaths of 
New Orleans and other sodden areas remained essentially ungoverned.

By the end of the day, the American Red Cross announced that its 
hurricane shelters were full, with an estimated 76,000 refugees at 
facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas 
and Arkansas. The official death toll in Mississippi climbed above 100, 
and Louisiana officials repeated warnings that thousands could be dead 
in New Orleans. The Energy Department said about 1.8 million customers 
remained without power due to Katrina.

Those left behind in the Crescent City, including many with diabetes and 
other worsening health conditions, clung to rooftops, gathered on 
overpasses and bridges, and huddled on islands of dry ground, waiting 
for help that never came. Parents carried small children, and grown 
children carried their elderly parents through the flotsam. Corpses 
floated in fetid waters and lay amid the crowds of refugees. Helicopters 
airlifted hundreds of seriously ill patients to a makeshift field 
hospital at the city's airport.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090100533.html?referrer=email
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050902/ee0925d2/attachment.htm