NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans turned much of its attention Sunday to
gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in
perhaps thousands of corpses. "It is going to be about as ugly of a
scene as I think you can imagine," the nation's homeland security
chief warned.
As authorities struggled to keep order, police shot
eight people, killing five or six, after gunmen opened fire on a group
of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs,
authorities said.
Air and boat crews searched flooded neighborhoods for survivors,
and federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave
for their own safety.
To expedite the rescues, the Coast Guard requested through the
media that anyone stranded hang out brightly colored or white linens
or something else to draw attention. But with the electricity out
though much of the city, it was not known if the message was being
received.
With large-scale evacuations completed at the Superdome and
Convention Center, the death toll was not known. But bodies were
everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on
highways and medians and hidden in attics.
"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human
Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday on CNN, echoing
predictions by city and state officials last week. The U.S. Public
Health Service said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison,
expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
In the first official count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana
emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had
verified 59 deaths 10 of them at the Superdome.
"We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff said on "Fox
News Sunday." "We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding
in houses, got caught by the flood. ... It is going to be about as
ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine."
Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said
they did not want to evacuate.
"That is not a reasonable alternative," he said. "We are not going
to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans
for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The
flooded places, when they're de-watered, are not going to be
sanitary."
In Sunday's bridge confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to
help plug the breach in the 17th Street Canal were traveling across
the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire,
said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Police
shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police
Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured,
authorities said.
Meanwhile, a civilian helicopter crashed Sunday evening near the
bridge. The two people on board escaped with only cuts and scrapes,
according to Mark Smith of the state office of emergency
preparedness.
In addition to the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty
about their families, New Orleans' police have had to deal with
suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the
department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died Saturday, according to
Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.
"I've got some firefighters and police officers that have been
pretty much traumatized," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "And we've already had
a couple of suicides, so I am cycling them out as we speak. ... They
need physical and psychological evaluations."
The strain was apparent in other ways. Aaron Broussard, president
of Jefferson Parish, dropped his head and cried on NBC's "Meet the
Press."
"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's
responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard
nursing home, and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming,
son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, `And yeah, Momma, somebody's
coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's
coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday.
Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' and she drowned Friday
night. She drowned on Friday night," Broussard said.
"Nobody's coming to get her, nobody's coming to get her. The
secretary's promise, everybody's promise. They've had press
conferences I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut
up and send us somebody."
Hundreds of thousands of people already have been evacuated,
seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and other states. The first group
of refugees who will take shelter in Arizona arrived Sunday in
Phoenix. With more than 230,000 already in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry
ordered emergency officials to begin preparations to airlift some of
them to other states that have offered help.
What will happen to the refugees in the long term was not known.
Back in New Orleans, walk-up stragglers at the Convention Center
were checked by Navy medics before they were evacuated. Lt. Andy
Steczo said he treated people for bullet wounds, knife wounds,
infections, dehydration and chronic problems such as diabetes.
"We're cleaning them up the best we can and then shipping them
out," Steczo said.
One person he treated was 56-year-old Pedro Martinez, who had a
gash on his ankle and cuts on his knuckle and forearm. Martinez said
he was injured while helping people onto rescue boats. "I don't have
any medication and it hurts. I'm glad to get out of here," he said.
In a devastated section on the edge of the French Quarter, people
went into a store, whose windows were already shattered, and took out
bottles of soda and juice.
A corpse of an elderly man lay wrapped in a child's bedsheet
decorated with the cartoon characters Batman, Robin and the Riddler.
The body was in a wooden cart on Rampart Street, one shoe on, one shoe
off.
Rene Gibson, 42, driving a truck while hunting for water and ice,
said people are not going to leave willingly. "People been (here) all
their life. They don't know nothing else," he said.
Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French
Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration.
Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar
slung over his back, said: "It's New Orleans, man. We're going to
celebrate."
In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner
of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street a business area with antique
shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since
at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with
blankets or plastic.
By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body,
holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a
cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."
___
Associated Press reporters Jim Litke, Dan Sewell and Mary Foster
contributed to this report.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
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