As levee is fixed Nagin bitches, Blanco shuns Bush
D. Wells
"We're starting to make the kind of progress that I kind of expected
earlier," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said
Blanco pretends she didn't receive notification about Bush's visit
when the WH left messages for her all day yesterday.
I think the obvious problem here is the Louisiana government is so
anti-Bush that they've shot their own feet off in this relief effort.
Levee Repair Fixed as New Orleans Mayor Makes Direst Death Prediction
Yet
By Doug Simpson Associated Press Writer
Published: Sep 5, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) - A week after Hurricane Katrina, engineers
plugged the levee break that swamped much of the city and floodwaters
began to recede, but along with the good news came the mayor's direst
prediction yet: As many as 10,000 dead.
Louisiana officials said Monday afternoon that sheets of metal and
repeated helicopter drops of 3,000-pound sandbags along the 17th
Street canal leading to Lake Ponchartrain succeeded in plugging a
200-foot-wide gap, and water was being pumped from the canal back into
the lake. Once the canal level is drawn down about two feet, Pumping
Station 6 can start pumping water out of New Orleans on a limited
capacity.
Some parts of the city showed slipping floodwaters as the repair
neared completion, with the low-lying Ninth Ward dropping more more
than a foot. In downtown New Orleans, some streets were merely wet
rather than swamped.
"We're starting to make the kind of progress that I kind of expected
earlier," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said even before the plug of the
break, which opened up a day after the hurricane and flooded 80
percent of the city up to 20 feet deep.
The good news came as many of the 460,000 residents of suburban
Jefferson Parish waited in a line of cars that stretched for miles to
briefly see their flooded homes, and to scoop up soaked wedding
pictures, baby shoes and other cherished mementoes.
"A lot of these people built these houses anticipating some flood
water but nobody imagined this," sobbed Diane Dempsey, a 59-year-old
retired Army lieutenant colonel who could get no closer than the water
line a mile from her Metairie home. "I'm going to pay someone to get
me back there, anything I have to do."
"I won't be getting inside today unless I get some scuba gear," added
Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner who waited for a ride to visit
his one-story home that had water lapping to the gutters.
Katharine Dastugue was overjoyed to find that floodwaters had gone
across her lawn but stopped just inches from her doorstep. As she
stood waiting for a boat to take her in, she made a list of thing she
hoped to salvage before being forced to leave again Wednesday.
"If I can just get my kids' baby photos," she said. "You can't replace
those." flooding, and thousands of homes were damaged.
In New Orleans, Nagin upticked his estimate of the probable death toll
in his city from merely thousands to telling NBC's "Today" show: "It
wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000."
As law enforcement officers and even bands of private individuals -
including actor Sean Penn - launched a door-to-door boat and air
search of the city for survivors, they were running up against a
familiar obstacle: People who had been trapped more than a week in
damaged homes yet refused to leave.
"We have advised people that this city has been destroyed," said
Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley. "There is nothing here for them and no
reason for them to stay, no food, no jobs, nothing."
Riley, who estimated fewer than 10,000 people were left in the city,
said some simply did not want to leave their homes - while others were
hanging back to engage in criminal activities, such as looting.
Nagin said the city had the authority to force residents to evacuate
but didn't say if it was taking that step. He did, however, detail one
heavy-handed tactic: Water will no longer be handed out to people who
refuse to leave.
In another effort of "encouragement," a Louisiana State Police SWAT
team, armed with rifles, confronted two brothers at their home in the
Uptown section of New Orleans, leaving one sobbing.
"I thought they were going to shoot me," said 23-year-old Leonard
Thomas, weeping on his front porch. "That dude came and stuck the gun
dead at my head."
One officer, who did not give his name, said his team tried to make
sure that the two men understood that food and water is becoming
scarce and that disease could begin spreading.
Even though almost a third of New Orleans' police force was missing in
action, a caravan of law enforcement vehicles, emblazoned with emblems
from across the nation and blue lights flashing, poured into the city
to help establish order on the city's anarchic streets and give police
a much-deserved break.
Four hundred to 500 officers on New Orleans' 1600-member force were
unaccounted for, police officials said. Some lost their homes. Some
were looking for families. "Some simply left because they said they
could not deal with the catastrophe," Riley said. Officials said
officers were being cycled off duty and given five-day vacations in
Las Vegas and Atlanta, where they would also receive counseling.
At a news conference, the leader of the National Guard effort declared
the city was largely free of the lawlessness that plagued it in the
days following the hurricane. And he angrily lashed out at a reporter
who suggested search-and-rescue operations were being stymied by
random gunfire and lawlessness.
"Go on the streets of New Orleans - it's secure," said Army Lt. Gen.
Russel Honore. "Have you been to New Orleans? Did anybody accost you?"
Hopeful signs of recovery were accompanied by President Bush's second
visit to Louisiana that exposed a continued rift between state and
federal officials over the slowness of a relief effort. The first
significant convoy of food, water and medicine didn't arrive in New
Orleans until four full days after the hurricane, and the mayor and
others said some survivors died awaiting relief.
The Times-Picayune, Louisiana's largest newspaper, published an open
letter to Bush, called for the firing of every official at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
At a stop in Baton Rouge, Bush said all levels of the government were
doing their best, and he pledged again: "So long as any life is in
danger, we've got work to do. Where it's not going right, we're going
to make it right."
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has refused to sign over National Guard
control to the federal government and has turned to a Clinton
administration official, former Federal Emergency Management Agency
chief James Lee Witt, to help run relief efforts.
Blanco, a Democrat, was not informed of the timing of Bush's visit,
nor was she immediately invited to meet him or travel with him. In
fact, Blanco's office didn't know when Bush was coming until told by
reporters. As reporters saw the governor sitting on the runway for a
flight to Houston to visit evacuees early Monday, her staff tracked
down the details and her trip was rescheduled so that she could meet
the president.
While the New Orleans refugees were mostly poor and black, Jefferson
Parish brought the storm's destruction to a much wider economic
cross-section. The sprawling parish stretches from Grand Isle on the
Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain in the north, and includes some
of the metropolitan area's most exclusive neighborhoods.
In the enclave of Old Metairie, the rows of palatial, six-bedroom
homes sustained little structural damage but had some of the worst
flooding. Only a few windows were broken and the live oaks survived
but the water rippled up the knobs at front doors and completely
covered Mercedes-Benzes, pickup trucks and BMWs in garages.
Many residents were happy that the storm spared their homes, but angry
that the failure of the levee system left them swamped. Some were
considering a lawsuit against the federal government for having a
levee that could survive no more than a Category 3 hurricane.
"That's what so devastating, that goddamned levee breaking," said
Bobby Patrick, a resident of neighborhood now living in Houston. "My
home didn't lose a shingle but it's got six feet of water in it."
Since the storm, rumors had swirled that looters had crossed over the
parish line and began breaking into evacuated homes in Jefferson. Many
were relieved to return home Monday to find their belongings
untouched.
Walter Zehner found his front yard full of foul-smelling floodwater
and a broken lock on his door from rescuers looking for stranded
survivors, but nothing missing. "It could have been a lot worse," he
said.
Across the neighborhood, residents took what items they could fit in a
boat. One woman loaded up her boat with her collection of cashmere
sweaters, her cat and the 1957 Leica camera that belonged to her
grandfather. A man packed his pickup truck with his silverware, his
wife's clothes and a cherished animal figurine.
Unlike the poor in New Orleans, these refugees had other places to go.
And few here planned to stay through what could be a long recovery.
With police checkpoints on ever major streetcorner and ID checks for
parish residents, even looting was not a major concern.
Said personal trainer Rod McClave: "I'm more concerned about them
damaging my stuff just for the hell of it."
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