Rescuers start grim body count

2005-09-03 21:37

Louisiana - Relief workers have opened a morgue and are collecting and identifying what are expected to be thousands of decaying corpses left by Hurricane Katrina, officials said on Saturday.

But senior US officials still declined to give a body count, saying they were still concentrating on rescuing and evacuating survivors.

"We are starting to take care of and receive those bodies that have been found," said Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Brown reacted angrily when he was pressed by reporters on why, five days after the hurricane struck, and after officials said thousands of people were likely killed, there was still no official death toll.

"It amazes me that you want to focus so much on the body counts," Brown said, adding that the time to count bodies would come later.

Relief workers and military officers meanwhile pressed ahead with a mass evacuation of refugees left homeless when a storm surge swallowed up 80% of New Orleans.

Brigadier Mark Graham of US Northern Command said 35 000 people had now been evacuated from the city in 788 bus journeys and 55 airlifts.

At the start of the operation military brass believed there were between 60 000 and 80 000 people that needed to be rescued.

But as the evacuation effort ramped out, people poured out of apartments and hotels, or waded out of flooded neighbourhoods, making accurate figures on those still needing help impossible to tally.

FEMA teams alone had plucked 7 000 people off roofs and out of floods, said Brown.

Those figures are in addition to thousands of people rescued by coastguard helicopters and boat crews and by Agriculture and Fisheries rescue teams.

Amtrak, the US national rail network has also run its first train out of central New Orleans carrying 600 people, Brown said.

- AFP