Urban Warfare in America

[Guest BlackJesus]

[img]http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.impact/vert.coastguard.ap.jpg[/img][img]http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.impact/vert.busline.ap.jpg[/img]
[u]Relief workers confront 'urban warfare'
Violence disrupts evacuation, rescue efforts in New Orleans
Thursday, September 1, 2005[/u]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Violence disrupted relief efforts Thursday in New Orleans as authorities rescued desperate residents still trapped in the flooded city and tried to evacuate thousands of others living among corpses and human waste.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said his agency was attempting to work "under conditions of urban warfare."

Police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from armed miscreants roaming seemingly at will.

Officers warned a CNN crew to stay off the streets because of escalating danger, and cautioned others about attempted shootings and rapes by groups of young men.

"This is a desperate SOS," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said in a statement Thursday afternoon, with thousands of people stranded at the city's convention center with no food, water or electricity -- and fading hope.

Residents expressed growing frustration with the disorder evident on the streets, raising questions about the coordination and timeliness of relief efforts.

"Why is no one in charge?" asked one frustrated evacuee at the convention center. "I find it hard to believe."

Government officials insisted they were putting forth their best efforts and pleaded for patience, saying further help was on the way.

One displaced resident at the Louisiana Superdome issued a warning to authorities who may be headed to the stadium, where up to 30,000 people sought refuge after Monday's Hurricane Katrina and now await evacuation to Texas by bus.

"Please don't send the National Guard," Raymond Cooper told CNN by telephone. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first."

He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

"They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

Elsewhere, groups of armed men wandered the streets, buildings smoldered and people picked through stores for what they could find.

Charity Hospital, one of several facilities attempting to evacuate patients, was forced to halt the effort after coming under sniper fire.

Recovery efforts also continued Thursday in Mississippi, where Katrina smashed entire neighborhoods and killed at least 185 people.

"We got hit by the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told CNN Thursday.


[u]'Thousands' dead[/u]
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco gave the grim news that "thousands" of people died in the hurricane and its aftermath in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, though she said no official count had been compiled.

Brown said those who ignored the city's mandatory evacuation order bore some responsibility.

"I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," he told CNN.

Stranded people remained in buildings, on roofs, in the backs of trucks or gathered in large groups on higher ground, with little knowledge of when -- or if -- help would come.

Despite the deteriorating conditions in the city, hurricane survivors from neighboring Plaquemines Parish have started streaming into the city, according to Nagin.

"We are overwhelmed and out of resources, but we welcome them with open arms and will figure this out together," the mayor said in a written statement.

Police officers told CNN that some of their fellow officers had simply stopped showing up for duty, cutting manpower by 20 percent or more in some precincts.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday that 4,200 National Guard troops trained as military police will be deployed in New Orleans over the next three days, which he said would quadruple the law enforcement presence in the city.

Pentagon officials said the first contingent of 100 military police officers would arrive at Louis Armstrong International Airport at 10 p.m. (11 p.m. ET) -- [u]combat-ready[/u] for immediate deployment in New Orleans.


[u]'Unsanitary and unsafe'[/u]
Blanco said Thursday she has requested the mobilization of 40,000 National Guard troops to restore order and assist in relief efforts.

A humanitarian catastrophe unfolded at the convention center, where thousands of increasingly frustrated people waited for help amid dead bodies, feces and garbage.

Numerous bodies could be seen, both inside and outside the facility, and one man died of a seizure while a CNN crew was at the scene.

A National Guard helicopter dropped food and water Thursday afternoon, although the amount was far short of enough to meet the needs of the throngs that had gathered.

Nagin advised those gathered at the center to march over the Crescent City Connection bridge to the west bank of the Mississippi River to find relief in neighboring Jefferson Parish.

"The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies," said Nagin, adding that officials did not expect to have enough buses for evacuations.

Brown told CNN Thursday evening that federal officials only found out about the convention center crisis earlier in the day, and that he had since directed that "all available resources" be made available there.

Boat rescue teams looking for Katrina survivors told CNN they had been ordered to stand down Thursday by FEMA officials concerned about security.

However, FEMA issued a statement from Washington denying it had suspended operations, though the agency conceded there had been "isolated incidents where security has become an issue."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the Coast Guard has rescued about 3,000 people from flooded areas in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes.

At the city's airport, a field hospital set up by FEMA was "overwhelmed" with patients, a medical team commander said.

Equipment normally used to move luggage was instead ferrying patients to a treatment center and to planes and buses for evacuation.

"I do not have the words in my vocabulary to describe what is happening here," said Ozro Henderson. "'Catastrophe' and 'disaster' don't explain it."

Outside the Superdome, throngs of people waiting for a bus ride to Texas completely covered an outside plaza, where they waited in the heat and rain.

Buses ferried displaced residents to Houston's Astrodome, which will serve as a shelter until FEMA can come up with more permanent housing.

"We're finding more and more people coming out of the woodwork," Brown said. "They're appearing in places we didn't know they existed."

Blanco said more school buses would be brought in from across Louisiana to increase the pace of the evacuation.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it expected to complete the sealing off of the 17th Street Canal, where a flood-control levee breached. (Recovery efforts)

[Guest BlackJesus]

[u]Sniper fire halts hospital evacuation
Gunmen fire at medical workers and patients at Charity Hospital
Thursday, September 1, 2005[/u]


NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The evacuation of patients from Charity Hospital was halted Thursday after the facility came under sniper fire twice.

A physician at the hospital said that despite the incidents staff members and patients were eager to get out after three days with no water and electricity and sparse food rations.

"A single sniper or two snipers shouldn't have to shut down a hospital evacuation for two hours now," Dr. Ruth Berggren told CNN. "I look outside, I'm not seeing any military."

Berggren's husband, Dr. Tyler Curiel, witnessed both incidents.

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard [troops], wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy. "

The first incident happened around 11:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. ET) as Curiel and his National Guard escorts headed back to the hospital after dropping off several patients at nearby Tulane Medical Center to be evacuated by helicopter.

Charity shares a helipad with Tulane Medical Center, which is across the street.

They were traveling in a convoy of amphibious vehicles, and Curiel said the vehicle behind him was targeted.

About an hour later, another gunman opened fire at the back of Charity Hospital.

"We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,' " Curiel said. "We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

The National Guard soldiers told staff to get away from the windows, and evacuations were halted.

Berggren, an infectious disease specialist at Charity Hospital, said that since then she had heard nothing about resuming evacuations.

She said about 200 patients still need to be evacuated. All of the patients in intensive care have been evacuated.

Charity Hospital has no electricity and no water, and the only food available is a couple of cans of vegetables and graham crackers.

Evacuations by boat were halted after armed looters threatened medics and overturned one of their boats.

Widespread looting and random gunfire have been reported across New Orleans. Police told CNN that groups of armed men roamed the streets overnight.

Officers told CNN they lacked manpower and steady communications to properly do their jobs -- and that they needed help to prevent the widespread looting and violence now prevalent in the city.

____________________________________


[u]Louisiana wants 40,000 troops
FEMA defends response; Congress considers $10.5 billion bill
Thursday, September 1, 2005[/u]

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) -- Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said Thursday she has requested the mobilization of 40,000 National Guard troops to restore order and assist in relief efforts in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

She said that by Friday 12,000 National Guard members will have arrived in Louisiana and that sheriff's deputies from as far away as Michigan are on the way.

"They have been issued an oath of office and now have arrest powers in the state of Louisiana," she said.

Blanco said she also has requisitioned hundreds of buses from state schools to get the evacuees out of the city.

The work to help survivors continued Thursday as FEMA Director Michael Brown defended the pace of rescue efforts, calling the catastrophe "ongoing."

"This disaster did not end the day Katrina made landfall," Brown told CNN.

The breach at New Orleans' 17th Street Canal is under repair, and engineers expect to close the front of the canal at Lake Pontchartrain by Thursday evening, said Walter Baumy of the Army Corps of Engineers there.

There are accessibility problems with a second breach, he said.

Only when those breaches are closed can the process of draining the city begin.

Blanco described the project Wednesday as an "engineering nightmare."

State officials now say "thousands" of people have died in flooded New Orleans and its surrounding parishes, but no official count has been compiled, Blanco said.

Meanwhile, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued a "desperate SOS," saying that violence and lawlessness have overtaken the city, and hope is fading for the tens of thousands of starving survivors still stranded.

Sniper fire has prevented Charity Hospital from evacuating its patients. The hospital has no electricity or water, food consists of a few cans of vegetables, and the patients had to be moved to upper floors because of looters.

Thursday afternoon, rain began to fall on the thousands of people gathered under an overhang at the city's convention center. A National Guard helicopter dropped MREs -- meals ready to eat -- and some water bottles.

CNN's Chris Lawrence described "many, many" bodies, inside and outside the facility on New Orleans' Riverwalk. "There are multiple people dying at the convention center," he said.

[Guest BlackJesus]

[u]Chaos Erupts in New Orleans
Eric Gay / AP
MSNBC
10:51 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 2005[/u]


NEW ORLEANS - As parts of hurricane-flooded New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, storm victims were raped and beaten, fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were fired on.

“This is a desperate SOS,” Mayor Ray Nagin said.

Congress rushed to provide a $10.5 billion down payment in relief aid for Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina as President Bush ordered new action to minimize disruptions in the nation’s energy supplies. The Senate approved the measure Thursday night, and the House will convene at noon on Friday to speed the measure to Bush’s desk.

Amid the lawlessness in New Orleans, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced plans to deploy 1,400 additional National Guard personnel each day for the next several days.

Anger mounted across the ruined city, as thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims grew increasingly hungry, thirsty and tired of waiting for buses to take them out.

“We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing — no food, no water, no medicine.

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.

“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.”

In hopes of defusing the unrest at the convention center, Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city’s unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam at the convention center appeared to make leaving difficult.

Meantime, a frenzied rescue effort was under way up and down the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama, where seaside communities built on resort and casino business were flattened.


[u]Chaos hinders aid attempts[/u]
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.

National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city underwater.

In a statement to CNN, Nagin said: “This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don’t anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we’re running out of supplies.”

Later in the day, in a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, President Bush asked Congress to consider “expeditiously” an emergency request for $10.5 billion, as “supplemental appropriation for the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense.”

“Residents of the Gulf Coast States affected by the hurricane have lost loved ones, have lost homes, and have been displaced from their communities. My Administration is committed to ensuring that they will have the full support of the Federal Government,” Bush's letter said.

Some rescue operations suspended
Across New Orleans, rescuers themselves came under attack from storm victims.

“Hospitals are trying to evacuate,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center.

“At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, ‘You better come get my family,”’ Ben-Iesan said.

Some Federal Emergency Management rescue operations were suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington. “In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back,” he said.

Outside the convention center, sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry people broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water, juice and whatever else they could find.

[u]‘It’s like they're punishing us’[/u]
An old man lay dead on a chaise longue as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket. 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. “I buried my dog.” He added: “You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military, but you can’t get them down here.”

The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

People chanted, “Help, help!” as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies and covered it with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

“It’s like they’re punishing us,” said John Murray, 52.


[u]Superdome evacuation restarts[/u]
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos as well.

Huge crowds hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door — a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.

At the front of the line, policemen and guardsmen watched and handed out water as tense, exhausted crowds struggled onto buses. At the back end of the line, people jammed against police barricades in the rain. Luggage, bags of clothes, pillows, blankets were strewn in the puddles.

Many people had dogs, and they cannot take them on the bus. A police officer took one from a little boy, who cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he didn’t know what would happen to the dog.

Later in the day, the state of Texas agreed to take in 50,000 more refugees from Hurricane Katrina, bringing the total to at least 73,000. Gov. Rick Perry announced plans to house 25,000 each in San Antonio and Dallas.

[u]Cracking down on disorder[/u]
A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving at the Superdome for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally arrived.

Col. Henry Whitehorn, head of state police, said authorities are working on establishing a temporary jail to hold people accused of looting and other crimes. “These individuals will not take control of the city of New Orleans,” he said.

The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home — the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away.

But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it was too dangerous for his pilots.

The military continued the evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military helicopter was fired on.

President Bush asked congressional leaders on Thursday for an initial $10.5 billion to step up disaster relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, a government official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the $10.5 billion would cover disaster relief costs for just the “next few weeks.”

Bush made the request by phone to congressional leaders. He will submit more funding requests as disaster assessments are complete, the official said.

[u]
City official laments 'national disgrace'[/u]
Meantime, Terry Ebbert, head of the city’s emergency operations, warned that the evacuation at the Superdome had become an “incredibly explosive situation,” and he bitterly complained that FEMA was not offering enough help.

“This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace,” he said. “FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans.”

On Wednesday, Nagin, the New Orleans' mayor, offered the most startling estimate of the disaster’s magnitude: Asked how many people died in his city, he said: “Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.”

If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths.

Katrina would also be the nation’s deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of 480,000 was ordered cleared over the weekend.

The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again, and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

[Nati Ice]

i know for a fact that several local chapters of the guard have been called up for immediate service...

if a mother fucker shoots on relief workers, then he should be disposed of, its really that simple, a time of a catastrophe and martial law is not a time to deal with these people... catch them and dispose of their threat

now i cant think of what fucking reasoning a person would have for stealing non-essential items much less why in the hell these pieces of shit are firing upon relief workers, but really i dont care, arrest the looters/ beat their asses and get rid of the worthless wastes of life who are threatening the lives of the relief workers

[Guest steggyD]

What has begun?

[Guest BlackJesus]

[color="red"][u][b]A FEW COMMENTS ABOUT THIS [/color][/b][/u]

[color="blue"][b]--> Let's be real here.... the people who are disproportionatley affected are the Poor, the elderly, and Minorities (who also make up the majority of the poor in New Orleans)..... yes they claim that there were evacuation orders, but if you do not own a car and are poor how the fuck were you supposed to evacuate.... and where were you supposed to go? Hotels were not just going to open up for you and let you in for free. Free evacuations should have been provided for those poor who could not afford to get out of town and they were not.

--> this for all intensive purposes was a "privatized" evacuation. Individuals were on there own to evacuate, and now reports are coming out that employers were making their low skilled workers stay until the last day to work, and they were saying that they would have to be back after the hurricane (missed like they initially thought it would). I have seen several stories today on the news of people who said their shitty job told them that if they evacuated they would be fired.... so Mr CEO leaves on his private jet.... and leaves the poor, old, and black people working in the kitchenuntil the last minute.... thus they can't get out and now are trapped

--> The poor in these areas also did not have Hurricane insurance and most likely no savings unlike the more wealthy patrons who left. Thus the guy with 10 K in the bank can now relocate till the city is back up and running.... but what is a family that was living month to month supposed to do? There shitty small house is now gone, they might not have any family, and they are broke. Plus their shitty job at the Fast food place doesn't exist because the Mcdonalds washed away.... there is no work right now to earn money and no jobs for them elsewhere.

--> I believe this further shows why the US should not be overmeddling in foriegn affairs and spending billions playing Ceaser overseas.... because when something like this happens.... we are spread thin and can not even save our own people. It is estmated to cost 30 billion to fix New Orleans... but we have already dropped 200 Billion In Iraq.... and for what.... what has it gotten us? (I know what it got certain Oil CEO's)

--> This also worries me because I believe we have an incompetent leader in the White House. Instead of taking a chopper down to see the damage.... he has Air force one fly overhead and glances down at the rubble...... Then showing that we are truly dealing with a mongoloid fucktard... it was reported that he commented "oh look a Church survived"
Are you fucking kidding me !!!! that is where his mind is.... athough it is not surpising since he believes Jesus made him president......[/color]

--> I am also worried about Americans not giving as much money as they normally would because of the reports of looting. Also I don't believe that the majority of white Americans give as generously when it is predominatley Black victims --- (see Africa for proof)..... the News stories I can already tell are fishing for remote stories about Whites because they are worried about over trumping that it is predominatley a minority catastrophe in New Orleans = (the people that didn't have the $ to leave)

--> To me this is a clear example of the wider issues that Plague the poor in America..... In the richest nation on the history of the Earth where CEO's make 450 times what their workers make, and our top 5 Billionaires have 20 % of the Worlds wealth... we have still have many who don't have a single dollar in the bank, and who if there house blows away are left with absolutley nothing at their disposal. They also were let down in my opinion at free evacuations and plans to get them out if a disaster hits..... The irony here is that many of white America is probably only now realizing wow... some of our cities have a lot of poor black people.... but it took a catastrophe to get them on the news[/b]

[Guest steggyD]

Let me comment here. In my opinion, evacuation of the city would be a local decision. I believe that the City and State failed here. They should have done more to get people to safety before the hurricane hit. Not everything should be put on the federal government.

[Chris Henrys Dealer]

[quote][b]NATIONAL GUARD HAVE SHOOT TO KILL ORDERS[/b]

National Guard have shoot-to-kill orders to deal with armed gangs
Police are avoiding duty as bullet-riddled bodies come to light


THOUSANDS of National Guardsmen poured into New Orleans yesterday with shoot-to-kill orders as armed gangs continued to terrorise a city awash with rotting bodies and toxic waste.
Still in the city, too, were tens of thousands of dehydrated and desperate residents and flooded hospitals, which reported scores of deaths on wards with no electricity or medicine.

Ray Nagin, the city’s mayor, said conditions were appalling and getting worse, and gave warning of thousands more deaths. “The people of our city are holding on by a thread. Time has run out. Can we survive another night? Only God knows.”

After a night in which police stations and hospitals came under sniper fire, the estimated 40,000 people still stranded in New Orleans — most without food or water for three days — were rocked by an explosion at a chemical depot a mile from the centre. Throughout the day, an acrid grey cloud covered the city, adding to the post-apocalyptic scene.

Bodies began rotting on main streets, gunmen continued to fire on troops and rescue helicopters, and police officials said that many officers had stopped reporting for duty, cutting manpower by 20 per cent.

One New Orleans police officer wept as he described seeing bodies riddled with bullets, and the top of one man’s head shot off. He said some looters were armed with AK47 rifles, and compared the situation with Somalia, with police outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks. “It’s a war-zone, and they’re not treating it like one,” he said, referring to the federal Government.

Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said: “We are working under conditions of urban warfare.”

Mike Leavitt, the Health Secretary, acknowledging that thousands of people were living among excrement, without food or water, said: “We have a recipe for disease.”

Alan Gould, waiting to be evacuated, said: “We’ve got small children and sick and elderly people dying every day, small children being raped and killed, people running around with guns. I’m scared for my life, my wife and my five-year-old daughter’s life.”

Many expressed anger and incredulity that it had taken nearly five days to get troops on the ground, and the city’s officials lambasted President Bush for what they called a woefully slow and inadequate response. A growing political crisis for Mr Bush was aggravated by Dennis Hastert, the Republican Speaker in the House of Representatives, who said that it was a waste of money to rebuild New Orleans because it sat below sea level. “It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” he told a newspaper in Illinois. He later retracted his comments.

The Pentagon said that 14,000 National Guard troops were on the ground along the Gulf Coast, with 30,000 expected in coming days. “These troops are battle-tested. They have M16s and are locked and loaded,” Kathleen Blanco, the Governor of Louisiana, said.

Lieutenant-General Steven Blum, of the National Guard, said the 7,000 guardsmen arriving in Louisiana would be dedicated to restoring order to New Orleans. He said half of them had just returned from overseas assignments and were “highly proficient in the use of lethal force”. He pledged to “put down” the violence “in a quick and efficient manner”.

Although thousands were evacuated to the Houston Astrodome sports arena, another 30,000 refugees remained in the fetid and body-strewn New Orleans convention centre. Soldiers began to arrive at lunchtime, bringing food and water.

An effort to evacuate patients and staff from Charity Hospital, in the city centre, was suspended after it came under sniper fire. In other hospitals, doctors worked around the clock to keep patients alive without oxygen, insulin and other medicines. Some patients died in parking lots as they waited to be taken to helicopters.

At the city’s airport, a field hospital was overwhelmed by patients. Conveyor belts normally used to move luggage were instead ferrying the sick to a treatment centre and to aircraft and buses for evacuation.

“I do not have the words in my vocabulary to describe what is happening here,” Ozro Henderson, a medical team commander, said. “Catastrophe and disaster don’t tell it.”

The rhythm and blues singer Fats Domino, reported missing on Thursday, was taken to safety by a rescue boat after flood waters engulfed his home. Domino, who had refused to leave the city, may have been taken to the Superdome.[/quote]

[url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1762644,00.html"]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11...1762644,00.html[/url]