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.
DAVE MARTIN / AP
A
makeshift tomb at a New Orleans street corner conceals a body that
had been lying on the sidewalk for days in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina.
|
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."
Meyer witnessed a mass rescue from a neighborhood east of central New
Orleans which has been inundated by at least five to six feet of water.
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."
Evacuations continued late Sunday as Coast Guard helicopters picked up
refugees from a dry stretch of Interstate 10 where they had been dropped
off by rescue boats.
"We're not satisfied to leave, but they say it's going to be three or
four months, so we need to go somewhere where we can have a life," said
Tommy McDaniel, 38.
One of the last groups taken out Sunday was a family of six that
included 3-year-old twins. The Coast Guard planned to resume evacuation
flights Monday morning.
Earlier in the evening, a civilian helicopter crashed near the Danziger
Bridge, but the two people on board escaped with only cuts and scrapes,
according to Mark Smith of the state office of emergency preparedness.
In Sunday's confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to help plug the
breech in the 17th Street Canal were traveling across the 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.
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.
