Katrina: Thousands may be dead
2005-08-31 20:34
Brett Martel
New Orleans - The mayor of New Orleans said on Wednesday that Hurricane Katrina probably killed thousands of people in the city.
"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, mayor Ray Nagin said.
Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."
The frightening prediction came as army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, while authorities drew up plans to move about 25 000 storm refugees out of the city to Houston in a huge bus convoy and all but abandon flooded-out New Orleans.
Governor Kathleen Blanco said the situation was desperate and there was no choice but to clear out.
"The logistical problems are impossible and we have to evacuate people in shelters," the governor said.
"It's becoming untenable. There's no power.
"It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic essentials."
Not counting the dead
The Pentagon, meanwhile, began mounting one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in US history.
American Red Cross workers from across the country converged on the devastated region in the agency's biggest relief operation to date.
The death toll from Hurricane Katrina has reached at least 110 in Mississippi alone.
But Louisiana has put aside the counting of the dead to concentrate on rescuing the living, many of whom were still trapped on rooftops and in attics.
A full day after the Big Easy thought it had escaped Katrina's full fury, two levees broke and spilled water into the streets on Tuesday, swamping an estimated 80% of the bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city, inundating miles and miles of homes and rendering much of New Orleans uninhabitable for weeks or months.
"We are looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in," Nagin said on ABC's Good Morning America, "and the other issue that's concerning me is we have dead bodies in the water".
"At some point in time the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue."
Water levels have equalised
With the streets awash and looters brazenly cleaning out stores, authorities planned to move at least 25nbsp;000 of New Orlean's storm refugees - most of them taking shelter in the dank and sweltering Superdome - to the Astrodome in Houston in a vast exodus by bus.
Around midday, officials with the state and the army corps of engineers said the water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalised.
Water had stopped rising in New Orleans, and even appeared to be falling, at least in some places.
But the danger was far from over.
The corps said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 1 350kg sandbags on Wednesday into the 150m gap in the failed floodwall.
But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 4.5m highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
Officials said they were also looking at a more audacious plan: finding a barge to plug the 150m hole.
Engineering nightmare
"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," the governor said on ABC's Good Morning America.
Dozens of fishermen from up to 320km away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out of flooded neighbourhoods.
On some of the few roads that were still passable, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief.
Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.
In one east New Orleans neighbourhood, refugees were being loaded onto the backs of moving vans like cattle, and in one case emergency workers with a sledgehammer and an axe broke open the back of a mail truck and used it to ferry sick and elderly residents.
Police officers were asking residents to give up any guns they had before they boarded buses and trucks because police desperately needed the firepower.
Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a motel said they were being shot at overnight.
- AP