Friday, September 2, 2005

Eric Gay / Associated Press A SWAT team drives past flood victims at the Convention Center in New Orleans. Officers dispatched to cool hostilities outside the building were overwhelmed by an angry crowd, the police chief said.

New Orleans thugs rape, loot and shoot

By Adam Nossiter / Associated Press

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NEW ORLEANS -- An explosion jolted residents awake early today, illuminating the pre-dawn sky with red and orange flames over the city where corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts.

Congress was rushing through a $10.5 billion aid package, the Pentagon promised 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting.

City officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response following the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. President Bush planned to visit the region to tamp down the criticism that he engineered a too-little, too-late response.

"They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.

"They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed."

At 4:35 a.m. today, an explosion rocked a chemical storage facility near the Mississippi River east of the French Quarter, said Lt. Michael Francis of the Harbor Police. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown.

Francis did not have any other information about the explosions and did not know if there were any casualties.

It was the opening strike in yet another day of sadly deteriorating conditions.

Thursday saw tens of thousands being evacuated by bus to Houston from the hot and stinking Superdome. Fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses. The looting continued.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco called the looters "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq have landed in New Orleans.

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."

At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses.

Nearby, about 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans Convention Center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. Evacuees swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.

Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle. The man was arrested.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people."

FEMA director Michael Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.

A day after Mayor Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, " 'Go to hell -- it's every man for himself.' "

To make matters worse, the chief of the Louisiana State Police said he heard of instances of New Orleans police officers turning in their badges.

"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Col. Henry Whitehorn said.