NEW ORLEANS — The last bedraggled refugees were rescued from the
Superdome on Saturday and the convention center was all but cleared,
leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and
frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.
ERIC GAY/AP
National Guard troops help Hurricane Katrina victims evacuate from the
convention center in New Orleans. After days of waiting, hunderds
of people were evacuated from the city by bus and helicopter
Saturday.
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No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how
many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are
everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled
on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
The last refugees at the Superdome and the convention center climbed
aboard buses Saturday bound for shelters, but the dying goes on.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expected the death toll to
reach the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S.
Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison,
expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
Touring the airport triage center, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
R-Tenn., a physician, said "a lot more than eight to 10 people are dying
a day."
Most were those too sick or weak to survive. But not all.
Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten to
death and another commit suicide at the Superdome. Womack was beaten
with a pipe and being treated at an airport triage center, where bodies
were kept in a refrigerated truck.
"One guy jumped off a balcony. I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady
about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn't leave," he
said.
Blanco says much is being demanded from the people of Louisiana
Three babies died at the convention center from heat exhaustion, said
Mark Kyle, a medical relief provider.
But some progress was evident. The last 300 refugees at the Superdome
were evacuated Saturday evening, eliciting cheers from members of the
Texas National Guard who had been standing watch over the facility for
nearly a week as some 20,000 hurricane survivors waited for rescue.
The convention center was "almost empty" after 4,200 people were
removed, according to Marty Bahamonde, a spokesman for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
At the convention center, where earlier estimates of the crowd climbed
as high as 25,000, thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings
to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had
been stuck at the convention center for five days, was among those who
filed past corpses to reach the buses.
"Anyplace is better than here," she said.
"People are dying over there."
Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was
covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter,
where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days,
his stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets
around the convention center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting
away the dead.
A once-vibrant city of 480,000 people, overtaken just days ago by
floods, looting, rape and arson, was now an empty, sodden tomb.
The exact number of dead won't be known for some time. Survivors were
still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city.
President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf
Coast on Saturday.
"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were
there," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.
The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos
were those without the resources to escape - and, overwhelmingly, they
were black.
"The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a
man-made disaster," said Phillip Holt, 51, who was rescued from his home
Saturday with his partner and three of their aging Chihuahuas. They left
a fourth behind they couldn't grab in time.
Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from the city, seeking
safety in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry warned Saturday that his enormous state was
running out of room, with more than 220,000 hurricane refugees camped
out there and more coming.
Emergency workers at the Astrodome were told to expect 10,000 new
arrivals daily for the next three days.
In Washington, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced that
more than 10,000 people had been flown out of New Orleans in what he
called the largest airlift in history on U.S. soil. He said the flights
would continue as long as needed.
Thousands of people remained at Louis Armstrong New Orleans
International Airport, where officials turned a Delta Blue terminal into
a triage unit. Officials said 3,000 to 5,000 people had been treated at
the triage unit, but fewer than 200 remain. Others throughout the
airport awaited transport out of the city.
"In the beginning it was like trying to lasso an octopus. When we got
here it was overwhelming," said Jake Jacoby, a physician helping run the
center.
Airport director Roy Williams said about 30 people had died, some of
them elderly and ill. The bodies were being kept in refrigerated trucks
as a temporary morgue.
At the convention center, people stumbled toward the helicopters,
dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be
carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were
being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her
nurse's 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The
pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and
the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
"They're good to see," LaGarde said, with remarkable gusto as she waited
to be loaded onto a gray Marine helicopter. She said they were sent by
God. "Whatever He has for you, He'll take care of you. He'll sure take
care of you."
LaGarde's nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a
clean adult diaper in more than two days. "I just want to get somewhere
where I can get her nice and clean," she said.
Around the corner, a motley fleet of luxury tour buses and yellow school
buses lined up two deep to pick up some of the healthier refugees.
National Guardsmen confiscated a gun, knives and letter openers from
people before they got on the buses.
"It's been a long time coming," Derek Dabon, 29, said as he waited to
pass through a guard checkpoint. "There's no way I'm coming back. To
what? That don't make sense. I'm going to start a new life."
Hillary Snowton, 40, sat on the sidewalk outside with a piece of white
sheet tied around his face like a bandanna as he stared at a body that
had been lying on a chaise lounge for four days, its stocking feet
peeking out from under a quilt.
"It's for the smell of the dead body," he said of the sheet. His
brother-in-law, Octave Carter, 42, said it has been "every day, every
morning, breakfast lunch and dinner looking at it."
When asked why he didn't move further away from the corpse, Carter
replied, "it stinks everywhere, Blood."
Dan Craig, director of recovery at the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, said it could take up to six months to get the water out of New
Orleans, and the city would then need to dry out, which could take up to
three more months.
A Saks Fifth Avenue store billowed smoke Saturday, as did rows of
warehouses on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where corrugated
roofs buckled and tiny explosions erupted. Gunfire - almost two dozen
shots - broke out in the French Quarter overnight.
In the French Quarter, some residents refused or did not know how to get
out. Some holed up with guns.
As the warehouse district burned, Ron Seitzer, 61, washed his dirty
laundry in the even dirtier waters of the Mississippi River and said he
didn't know how much longer he could stay without water or power,
surrounded by looters.
"I've never even had a nightmare or a beautiful dream about this," he
said as he watched the warehouses burn. "People are just not themselves."
Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill, Robert Tanner, Melinda
Deslatte, Brett Martel and Mary Foster contributed to this report.
