Celine Dion slams authorities
2005-09-05 08:37
Los Angeles - An emotional Celine Dion rounded on US authorities over their slow rescue effort in hurricane-crippled New Orleans, while actor Sean Penn's personal crusade to save victims took on water on Sunday.
Movie star and political activist Penn, 45, was in the collapsing city to aid stranded victims of flooding sparked by Hurricane Katrina, but the small boat he was piloting sprang a leak.
The outspoken actor had planned to rescue children waylaid by the deadly waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.
When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to paddle themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.
Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."
But with the boat loaded with members of the Oscar-winner's entourage, including his personal photographer, one bystander taunted: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?"
Penn's ill-fated mercy mission came after Canadian diva Dion, famed for her theme song from the watery epic Titanic, became extremely upset as she spoke of the plight of the survivors who had to wait for up to five days to be rescued.
"I open the television, there's people still there, waiting to be rescued, and for me it's not acceptable," she said on CNN television's "Larry King Live" late on Saturday.
Delayed relief effort
"I know there's reasons for it, I'm sorry to say, I'm being rude, but I don't want to hear those reasons," she said of the delayed relief effort that has prompted virulent criticism of the US government.
Dion has donated one million dollars to the victims of the storm that wrought catastrophe on the US Gulf Coast after hitting on Monday and sparking a deadly flood of the US jazz capital of New Orleans.
Dion also slammed authorities for arresting looters in the city that became a hellish haven of crime and violence after the storm laid waste to its infrastructure and services, saying rescue should be the only priority.
"How come it's so easy to send planes in another country to kill everyone in a second, to destroy lives?" Dion said in an angry reference to the US-led war in Iraq.
Crooner and actor Harry Connick Junior, who hails from New Orleans and visited the stricken city last week, said he was horrified by the sight of the scores of bodies at the city's convention centre.
Connick criticised the fact that troops and the aid columns only made it into the city on Friday, four days after the storm, saying his friend, singer Charmaine Neville, had commandeered an abandoned city bus to help evacuate refugees, he told King.
"And I'm thinking, if Charmaine Neville can get on a bus and drive a bus out with sick people, you know, well, we can't get a barge to park back up on the Mississippi behind the convention centre and get these people out?"