Katrina's aftermath

note that many of the ads have a "*****KATRINA VICTIMS ONLY*****" tag, either in the header or in the body. I wonder how much identity fraud is going to happen.

My friend Tony and I spoke at work back on Sunday about looting; We were astonished that no one had really started to yet. Logically, all the electricity is going to be cut off, everything is going to flood, and the tapes are all going to be destroyed. If you're poor, and you're stuck in your home for what sounds to be perhaps the next month and a half, without any chance of even GOING OUTSIDE, yeah, big surprise that there is looting.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 2:36 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>that's not going to happen. the coast guard is going to rescue and evacuate as many people as it can, and the ones who aren't rescued will die.<

Well, consider that as part of the looters vision. Shit, if you're gonna die, might as well get some stuff first. I know that if I was going to die, and I was trapped in a house surrounded by sewage, gas, and oil, running through some increasingly deep water for some free smokes and some nice clothes to die in wouldn't be such a horrible idea. Not like anyone is going to miss it.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 2:47 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

Everyone was OTM when they called New Orleans the Bangladesh of America for like, I dunno, the last 20 years up to about 2 hours ago. They should have stayed with that.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 3:17 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

But they chose to spend their money elsewhere as well. Who built the Superdome? There's some sense of self responsibility as well here, seeing as they live there.

>SELA was started 10 years ago. something was done.<

"started". So no one realized until 1995 that maybe, just maybe, a big city filled with people all under the sea level that existed solely because there were pumps and levees might be in trouble in case it has a hurricane?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 31st, 2005 11:42 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

It was spread across every media outlet. TV, radio, print. The only way to miss it would be to have been blind and deaf; basically someone in a coma or a lower state of consciousness…

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 9:56 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>HELLO most folks were TOO FUCKING POOR TO LEAVE! <

Lots of people were too poor to leave or own vehicles, but if you own a house, you have a car and you can go. I've yet to hear a single family pulled from a home today say "well, we just couldn't leave because we don't have the money". Honestly now: do you believe that New Orleans is so poor that 10-20% of its citizens are completely incapable of transporting themselves or finding transportation from others out of the city? That they're so completely impoverished, that they only have access to their local neighborhood?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:02 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

There are people that don't own TVs OR radios OR have access to newspapers OR have neighbors and family members to tell them to get out? Where are these people living in America? Especially in a huge urban enviroment like New Orleans?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:10 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>there are people who are extremely poor and don't have complete media access. and maybe they only know similar people.<

In a city? I call bullshit. The only people living completely off the grid in this country (at least the vast majority of them) are doing so in highly rural areas, and even they have communication equipment of some kind. The number of people without a transistor radio in the US is in the fractions of 1 percent, and somewhere around 95% of all households own a TV. If these people are taking a bus to work, they're going to hear the call for evacuation from the Emergency Preparedness System that, in the state of Louisiana, like ALL states, has to provide information regarding evacuation once such an order is issued, somewhere, at some time. I wouldn't be surprised to know that there were cops driving down the street telling people to leave their homes either, and giving people information to go to the Superdome or elsewhere, especially since BUSES were set up to bring people there.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:20 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

Of course, its more realistic to imagine that virtually everyone who stayed (about a quarter of the population) is too poor to afford a vehicle and too socially inept to have any contact with family or friends in the area who could transport them out. But please, go on and mock actual facts over wild speculation, because god knows its the more sensible thing to do.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 11:47 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

I'm sorry. I should just blame the Louisiana government for not being able to get everyone out in time and keeping everyone stupid, because that was clearly their intention. I'll buy that 60% of that remaining 300,000 were there because they were too poor to get out, but no more than that.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:14 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

If you want to believe that every single poor person in the city of New Orleans couldn't get out because they lacked the means to, plus about 10-15% over the poverty line, that's fine with me. Believe whatever you'd like.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:20 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>so all who remained in New Orleans were stupid.<

That's a fantastic strawman to come up with and throw at me.

Of course not. Probably a good percentage were though. Probably near half. I'm not stupid. I saw the people lining up into the Superdome just like everyone else.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:23 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

even if the people who responded were legit katrina victims, i'm not trusting enough to let strangers into my home and i wonder if the folks who are are thinking it through.

oh, a moment of levity on an other horrid day. what was the going rate per gallon at your station, blount?

say, to go along wiht something Tombot mentioned yesterday, if/when we finally do hit recession next year, they now have another excuse why it happened("that dad-blamed hurricane's fault!")

it was this way in nyc too. some people were back to work by the 12th; nearly everyone who had an office to go to was back to work by the 13th. life as we were used to it was fucked up for a little while but we managed to get on with things. all told, most of our inconveniences were pretty minor.

ha! that's a great visual -- get a picture if you can.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9133876/displaymode/1107/s/1/framenumber/10/var1/btn_9

the coverage of this event, at least on basic channels (which is all I've got) has been infuriating to me, here in L.A. After 9/11 there was a solid week of coverage, with little else in the way of programming. here, the news remains a half-hour long, Oprah is giving makeovers, and other than a show like Nightline, there's nothing more than a lot of furrowed brows and shaking heads from the newscasters: "So awful, hmm. Now Rob Fukazaki with sports!"

I'm not sure anyone understands the scope of it. No one I know has brought the topic up in conversation. I've brought it up, but it seems like a bit of unpleasantness that no one has much to say about, as opposed to 9/11, where everyone I knew busted out their old security blankets and stayed in lockdown for three days, glued to the TV set.

NO VOTE FOR YOU: NEW ORLEANS. According to Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights, not a single vote has been counted in 40 precincts throughout New Orleans. On a conference call to reporters, Ms. Arnwine just said that all the electronic machines in those precincts have broken down.

and

In summary, what I saw today (the Election Day) in Louisiana, the state that is supposed to go for George Bush, is a very encouraging sign for Kerry-Edwards ticket. A high turnout amongst the minorities and college kids may favor Kerry-Edwards ticket. We will never know how many crossover votes will come to Kerry-Edwards’ side. However, if minority and core democratic voters along with freshly registered voters would cast their votes, then the ideologue president, George Bush would become a one-term president. That is my thought on the Election Day.

strange... it's all anyone i know can talk about. but my friends and relatives are news junkies.

9-27-04
Is John Kerry Taking the Black Vote for Granted? (Of Course, He Is)
By Mike Davis

Mr. Davis is the author of Dead Cities: And Other Tales as well as Ecology of Fear and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See, among other books.

--

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.

Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population -- blamed for the city's high crime rates -- across the Mississippi river. Historic Black public-housing projects have been razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely evicted for offenses as trivial as their children's curfew violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist theme-park New Orleans -- one big Garden District -- with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits.

But New Orleans isn't the only the case-study in what Nixonians once called "the politics of benign neglect." In Los Angeles, county supervisors have just announced the closure of the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital near Watts. The hospital, located in the epicenter of LA's gang wars, is one of the nation's busiest centers for the treatment of gunshot wounds. The loss of its ER, according to paramedics, could "add as much as 30 minutes in transport time to other facilities."

The result, almost certainly, will be a spate of avoidable deaths. But then again the victims will be Black or Brown and poor.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States seems to have returned to degree zero of moral concern for the majority of descendants of slavery and segregation. Whether the Black poor live or die seems to merit only haughty disinterest and indifference. Indeed, in terms of the life-and-death issues that matter most to African-Americans -- structural unemployment, race-based super-incarceration, police brutality, disappearing affirmative action programs, and failing schools -- the present presidential election might as well be taking place in the 1920s.

But not all the blame can be assigned to the current occupant of the former slave-owners' mansion at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The mayor of New Orleans, for example, is a Black Democrat, and Los Angeles County is a famously Democratic bastion. No, the political invisibility of people of color is a strictly bipartisan endeavor. On the Democratic side, it is the culmination of the long crusade waged by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to exorcise the specter of the 1980s Rainbow Coalition.

The DLC, of course, has long yearned to bring white guys and fat cats back to a Nixonized Democratic Party. Arguing that race had fatally divided Democrats, the DLC has tried to bleach the Party by marginalizing civil rights agendas and Black leadership. African-Americans, it is cynically assumed, will remain loyal to the Democrats regardless of the treasons committed against them. They are, in effect, hostages.

Thus the sordid spectacle -- portrayed in Fahrenheit 9/11 -- of white Democratic senators refusing to raise a single hand in support of the Black Congressional Caucus's courageous challenge to the stolen election of November 2000.

The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, steers a straight DLC course toward oblivion. No Democratic presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy's run in 1968 has shown such patrician disdain for the Democrats' most loyal and fundamental social base. While Condoleezza Rice hovers, a tight-lipped and constant presence at Dubya's side, the highest ranking, self-proclaimed "African American" in the Kerry camp is Teresa Heinz ((born and raised in white-colonial privilege).

This crude joke has been compounded by Kerry's semi-suicidal reluctance to mobilize Black voters. As Rainbow Coalition veterans like Ron Waters have bitterly pointed out, Kerry has been absolutely churlish about financing voter registration drives in African-American communities. Ralph Nader -- I fear -- was cruelly accurate when he warned recently that "the Democrats do not win when they do not have Jesse Jackson and African Americans in the core of the campaign."

In truth, Kerry, the erstwhile war hero, is running away as hard as he can from the sound of the cannons, whether in Iraq or in America's equally ravaged inner cities. The urgent domestic issue, of course, is unspeakable socio-economic inequality, newly deepened by fiscal plunder and catastrophic plant closures. But inequality still has a predominant color, or, rather, colors: black and brown.

Kerry's apathetic and uncharismatic attitude toward people of color will not be repaired by last-minute speeches or campaign staff appointments. Nor will it be compensated for by his super-ardent efforts to woo Reagan Democrats and white males with war stories from the ancient Mekong Delta.

A party that in every real and figurative sense refuses to shelter the poor in a hurricane is unlikely to mobilize the moral passion necessary to overthrow George Bush, the most hated man on earth.

This article first appeared on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, a long time editor in publishing, the author of The End of Victory Culture, and a fellow of the Nation Institute.

yeah, i'm hoping they didn't catch it as bad as Biloxi/Gulfport.

Alright, so its obvious you have an agenda because I felt like, say, waiting for a moment of clarity before rushing to blame and to politicize the issue. Fine.

>so all who remained in New Orleans were stupid.<

That? Wasn't me. And its the closest thing you seem to have to "prove" that I had any intention of running down these people. Matter of fact, looking back, I don't even know what the alternate viewpoint to mine was, other than perhaps "everyone in New Orleans is there because were incapable of leaving," and I'm not sure how that's any less speculatory than my opinion (that large groups of people who could have left stayed). But perhaps I shouldn't speculate/reply to other's speculation or think about the disaster(unless of course, I want to dicuss rising gas prices, compare it to a nuclear bomb going off, blame the president, or wonder what book/album cover best represents the tragedy).

One of my friends is down in New Orleans, as his National Guard unit was activated for the emergency. I'm trying to get in contact with him.

This morning i'm bringing my parents from the BR airport into the hills of Tangipahoa Parish to see if the house is still standing. (Their car is stuck at the airport in New Orleans.)There won't be power in that area possibly for 6 to 8 weeks, but if the house is still standing, no big deal.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer a place to stay, as our apartment is little more than a monk's cell. My parents are hesitant even to try to stay here, but we shall see.

Is there anything else i can do? Call anyone?

anyhow,

white shoe polish. if it helps to picture me as gomer pyle right now go right ahead.

actually, that's not the fictional character i think of

http://terminus.powerblogs.com/files/terminus-clerks.jpg
(i can't find a graphic of "I ASSURE YOU WE'RE OPEN")

I mentioned this on another thread, but it looks like thankfully most of my friends and acquaintances in the N.O. music scene are safe, having either evacuated or (more disturbingly) stayed in 4th floor or higher apartments and hotels. One musician from the H0t 8 Brass Band is missing and one is in the New Orleans Parish Prison.

My band is in the process of putting together a benefit show to raise some money and send some instruments out to New Orleans musicians who had to leave theirs behind, I'll post the details on ILX when it's confirmed.

“This isn’t like having two feet of water in your basement,” she said, holding back tears. “Everything is destroyed. I am just so lucky to have been born here and to have had the experience of New Orleans."

Jamal said he will move his family to Texas as a result of this disaster.

The buses filled with refugees enroute to the Astrodome in Houston from the Louisiana Superdome have been suspended for unknown reasons, CNN is reporting this morning.

as are all the famous music hot spots of the city.

Not so - Donna's Bar & Grill on Rampart & St. Anne's is still on dry ground!

Rescuers 'had to push the bodies back with sticks'
By Trymaine D. Lee

Lucrece Phillips’ sleepless nights are filled with the images of dead babies and women, and young and old men with tattered T-shirts or graying temples, all of whom she saw floating along the streets of the Lower 9th Ward.

The deaths of many of her neighbors who chose to brave the hurricane from behind the walls of their Painter Street homes shook tears from Phillips’ bloodshot eyes Tuesday, as a harrowing tale of death and survival tumbled from her lips.

"The rescuers in the boats that picked us up had to push the bodies back with sticks," Phillips said sobbing. "And there was this little baby. She looked so perfect and so beautiful. I just wanted to scoop her up and breathe life back into her little lungs. She wasn’t bloated or anything, just perfect."
A few hours after Phillips, 42, and five members of her family and a friend had been rescued from the attic of her second-story home in the 2700 block of Painter Street, she broke down with a range of emotions. Joy, for surviving the killer floods; pain, for the loss of so many lives; and uncertainty, about the well-being of her family missing in the city’s most ravaged quarters.

In a darkened lobby of the downtown Hyatt hotel turned refuge, she hugged an emergency worker closely; a handful of his sweaty blue T-shirt rippling from each of her fists.

She had barely gotten out a fifth thank you when the emergency worker whispered into her ear that "it was going to be OK," and that "it was our job to save lives."

Phillips’ downstairs neighbor, Terrilyn Foy, 41, and her 5-year-old son, Trevor, were unable to escape, Phillips said. By late Monday the surging waters of Lake Pontchartrain had swallowed the neighborhood. The water crept, then rushed, under the front door, Phillips said, then knocked it from its hinges. In less than 30 minutes, Phillips said, the water had topped her neighbors’ 12-foot ceiling and was gulping at hers.

"I can still hear them banging on the ceiling for help," Phillips said, shaking. "I heard them banging and banging, but the water kept rising." Then the pleas for help were silenced by the sway of the current, she said.

Phillips and her family -- her daughter and niece, 20 and 18; an uncle, 40, and his wife, 35, along with their 2-year-old daughter and a friend, 45 -- rushed to the attic for safety. The water was rising and death seemed near, she said. Her back was hurting from the two bones she’d recently had fused during surgery for a car wreck she had in 2003. The group had been up there for hours, and they were growing more frantic as each moment passed. The water kept rising. They saw it inching up.

Phillips said they didn’t want to die like little Trevor or his mother or the others who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave the neighborhood in the face of Katrina. So they pounded, kicked and pulled at the wooden boards in the roof till something gave way. The boards around a vent near a trestle gave way. When the din of boat propellers seemed near, they screamed and waved shirts from the roof. Finally the din got closer and they could see from the broken-out vent men in a boat. A few got in, and then another boat arrived and picked up the others.
Officials early Tuesday said 1,200 stranded residents had been rescued in the city. Later in the day that estimate rose to more than 3,000.

Parents, siblings missing

The seven of them were safe, but Phillips had still not heard from her mother or father out in east New Orleans. Both were 62 years old and both refused to evacuate. Her mother and father’s 13 siblings from across the city also chose the four walls of home over evacuating out of town or trekking to the Superdome. For Phillips, evacuation seemed too costly. She and her family evacuated for Hurricane Dennis earlier in the summer. The few days in Houston cost her $1,200.

Phillips had not heard from any of them by late Tuesday, as nearly 90 percent of the city was underwater. Several other family members, most from outside Louisiana and in town since Aug. 21 for a family reunion, had also not been accounted for. After spending money for weeks, eating out, buying gifts and enjoying the Crescent City, "they figured they would stay until after Labor Day."
"I know this storm killed so many people," Phillips said. "There is no 9th Ward no more. No 8th or 7th ward or east New Orleans. All those people, all them black people, drowned."

She hadn’t slept for days. The faces of the dead haunted her waking moments, badgering her not to forget them.

‘No respect’

Like so many other survivors, Phillips and family were picked from the flood and dropped off downtown, which was slogged with thigh-high waters, but had the Superdome and some hotels giving solace to refugees.

By early Tuesday evening, officials estimated that about 20,000 people were packed inside the Superdome. Most were hopeless, hungry and increasingly desperate, witnesses and officials agreed. Rumors of murder, rape and deplorable conditions were circulating.

"After all we had been through, those damn guards at the Dome treated us like criminals," Phillips said. "We went to that zoo and they gave us no respect."
The family slogged down Poydras Street to the Hyatt. The hotel didn’t have electricity or water, and nearly every glass window on the Poydras side had been blown out by the hurricane, but it was secure. Ranking officials from City Hall across the street had been evacuated there, including Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass.

But there was no real solace for the weary woman or her family. Phillips said she had to contend with not knowing whether her mother or father or extended family had survived. And she’s still haunted by the deaths she saw with her own eyes.

I guess I am more sad than mad now.

they reported that someone shot at a helicopter and that's why they stopped evacuating.

Not enough power workers to fix outages
By KEITH DARCÉ
Business writer

The 6,000 power line workers currently assembled in southeastern
Louisiana won’t be nearly enough to restore power to the 990,000 utility customers who are still without electricity in metropolitan New
Orleans, the region’s electricity suppliers said Wednesday.

But getting more workers to the area might be impossible until late this week because many utility crews from neighboring states are still restoring power to southern Florida, which was hit surprisingly hard by Katrina, said Chanel Lagarde, spokesman for Entergy Corp., the state’s largest power supplier.

“There are severe limits on resources at this point,” he said. “We are told that the utilities in Florida are expected to wrap up later this week. Many of those (workers) will come directly here or to the east” in coastal Mississippi and Alabama.
The atmosphere of near-anarchy in New Orleans is another major concern, said Arthur Wiese Jr., vice president of corporate communications for Entergy.

“We can’t send workers out and put their lives in jeopardy,” he said late Wednesday afternoon from one of the company’s storm command centers in Jackson, Miss. “Once we have facilities back operating, we have to know that our workers can get to work safely.

“We are as alarmed as anyone over the chaos in the city. It is a very serious question,” Wiese said.

Those problems further validated earlier predictions by Entergy managers that many people in the hardest-hit parts of the state could be without electricity for a month or more.

Flooding and road blockage from debris remained the most immediate barriers to repair crews moving into the most damaged parts of the region.

A main transmission line running 25 miles between Madisonville and Bogalusa suffered catastrophic damage, with at least 18 miles requiring repairs, said Mark Segura, vice president of transmission and distribution services for Pineville-based Cleco Corp.

Transmission lines connect power plants to community substations and supply electricity to large numbers of customers.

Even so, by Wednesday night Entergy had restored power to 181,829 customers in Louisiana and Mississippi, mostly in areas not affected by flooding, Wiese said. “We are making good progress where we can get access.”

All of the region’s power and telephone companies were struggling to restore services in the wake of Katrina.

Nearly every customer of New Orleans-based Entergy and Pineville-based Cleco in metropolitan New Orleans remained without power Wednesday night, for the second day since the storm ripped through the region.

Communication was another problem, for utility workers as well as everyone else in southeastern Louisiana. Telephone services, over both wired and wireless networks, remained sporadic and, in some cases in Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, completely dead.

Nearly 81,000 wired phone lines were dead in southeastern Louisiana, said BellSouth Corp., the state’s largest phone service provider. And more phone lines were expected to fail as backup generators at communications terminals that survived the storm ran out of fuel.

BellSouth reported several key breaks in the company’s fiber-optic line system, the backbone of its communications network.

Work crews focused on repairing major cables, firming backup power to switching centers and restoring phone service to emergency personnel, local officials and hospitals, the Atlanta-based company said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“We are doing everything possible to assess the extensive damage this destructive storm has caused,” said Bill Oliver, president of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations.

Call volume created its own problems in the parts of the network that were working. Many people trying to make calls to and from the region were met with busy signals or messages saying that circuits were busy.

Wireless phone networks experienced similar troubles.

Cingular Wireless lost at least 700 antennas, or cell sites, throughout the region, according to a company operator.

Verizon Wireless also lost portions of its network, but spokesman Patrick Kimball couldn’t say how many towers were down in the region. “Strangely enough, some cell sites are still operating on rooftops,” he said.

Wireless services were improving in Baton Rouge, Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., where crews had easier access to damaged facilities, Kimball said. But damaged equipment in much of metropolitan New Orleans remained unreachable, he said.

“The situation could improve in certain cases and it could worsen in others. It’s such a fluid situation, it’s hard to tell,” he said.

Most of the electricity and phone companies had storm operations centers outside the metropolitan area.

Managers with Entergy, which supplies electricity to 1.2 million customers in Louisiana, are orchestrating the historic power grid restoration effort from command centers in Baton Rouge and Jackson, Miss.

Nearly all of the company’s employees who rode out the storm in the Hyatt Regency Hotel next to the Superdome in downtown New Orleans evacuated the city Tuesday when floodwaters continued rising in the Central Business District and other conditions in the city deteriorated. The hotel, which also served as the command center for city officials, suffered major damage during the storm.

Dan Packer, chief executive officer of Entergy’s utility in New Orleans, remained at the hotel with Mayor Ray Nagin and a handful of city officials. At 5 p.m., 693,156 Entergy customers in southeastern Louisiana, or more than half of its customer base in the state, were in the dark. Some 21,636 more were without power in central Mississippi.

With 1.1 million Entergy customers losing electricity at the peak of the storm, the outage more than quadrupled the severity of the previous high outage event for the company, which came in June with Tropical Storm Cindy, Lagarde said.

All 88,000 Cleco customers in the parishes of St. Tammany and
Washington remained without power, Cleco spokeswoman Fran Phoenix said.

He certainly has an agenda. it is for you to sit on a thick glass dildo and spin slowly around. Send pictures as proof. kthxbye

uhm, maybe we should de-google the thread.

TOO LATE!

pentagon says orders to send national guard troops still haven't reached a lot of, um, national guard troops. they are still waiting for the go ahead.

Terry Ebbert, the city’s homeland security director, said police
received numerous reports of armed groups of marauders robbing scores of people throughout the hard-hit parts of the city. Authorities were unable to patrol the most lawless areas of the city, and it appeared police had little chance of investigating much of the unchecked crime.

Refugees find Dome an intolerable refuge
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer

The Superdome resembled a scene from the Apocalypse on Wednesday morning, with thousands of refugees trapped in a hellish environment of short tempers, unbearable heat and the overwhelming stench of human waste.

Evacuees told horror stories of assaults and the apparent suicide of a man who leapt from a balcony. Although none of the accounts could be confirmed by authorities, many refugees offered remarkably similar accounts.

A sense of desperation overtook those stuck at the Dome as they waited in vain to hear where they might be taken next. Later in the day, authorities announced a plan to begin bringing ill evacuees to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, from which they would be taken by bus to shelters and hospitals elsewhere.
The Houston Astrodome was preparing to take in thousands more, who were expected to start arriving by busloads this morning.

Throughout the day, frustration boiled over into anger and fear. Occasional skirmishes broke out outside the building, where people sought shade from a brutally hot sun under the Dome’s narrow eave.

"They’re treating us like crap," said Tina Wilson of Mid-City as others chimed in with amens. "They have us living like not even pigs."

Cleo Fisher of the Bywater sat atop a concrete cylinder in waist-deep water on Poydras just outside the Dome. Fisher, 86, said he left because he didn’t have heart medications he wouldn’t survive without.

Medical technicians were unsympathetic, he said, leaving him no choice but to try to get out and get help. He wasn’t faring well outside either – in fact, he was rescued from drowning by two passers-by after falling off the pier he sat on, he said.

"It’s worse than being in prison in there," he said. "They don’t have nothing for me."

Others were leaving because of concerns about their safety. The Dome situation had deteriorated noticeably from earlier days, as new swarms of refugees and rescuees arrived. On Wednesday morning, running water to the building was lost – as it was throughout the city – making the already overwhelming bathrooms downright noxious.

As people stood in long lines to receive rations of water and pre-made military meals, they put their shirts over their noses to block out the odor. Once word got around that some areas of the city near the Mississippi River remained dry, some refugees decided to leave.

"It’s chaotic, and it smells," said barbershop owner Ted Mitchell, who after three nights in the Dome was leaving – and contemplating walking back to his flooded home near Canal and Broad streets. "It’s worse than the Depression. That place is not fit for people to be living in."

"They’re treating people like prisoners in there," said Shelton Alexander as he left the Dome for the thigh-high waters of Poydras Street. "It’s so hot in there, and people are s—ting on the floors."

Tensions ran high between the Louisiana National Guardsmen assigned to secure the building and those they were protecting, with some people upset over what they felt was an inability to keep order and others saying they felt soldiers were too brusque.

Those crowded outside the Dome along a security line jeered and yelled at a guardsman after he shoved a man to the pavement who had ignored his order not to go back in without clearing a checkpoint accessible only by the deep water on Poydras Street.

Evacuees also vented their anger at city officials, in particular Mayor Ray Nagin, who many said they felt should have put in an appearance at the Dome in a show of sympathy.

"Ray Nagin should come speak to these people," said Julie Joseph, who huddled in a bleacher seat with friends who nodded in agreement. "To be the mayor … he should have come in here. We got people who lost family members."

Even some of the police officers and military members assigned to the Dome – none of whom wanted to speak on the record – said they felt the situation was being poorly managed, if it was being managed at all.

"This plan was no plan," said one cop, shaking his head.

The hellish confines stood in stark contrast to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New Orleans Centre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could get in lounged in relative comfort.

A few blocks farther away, guests were being fed "foie gras and rack of lamb" for dinner, according to a photographer who stayed there, while the masses, most of them poor, huddled in the Dome.

While many were angry at what they perceived as third-class treatment, others were simply glad to be alive – or perhaps too numbed by tragedy to feel anything like anger.

"I’m sorry for the ones not here today," said Byron Price of Bywater, who came to the Dome just before the storm hit. "But thank God for the soldiers and police protecting us. It’s going to be all right."

Delia Crumby, crouched by a wall outside the Dome, said was rescued by a Louisiana Wildlife & Fisheries boat after her Lower 9th Ward home flooded. She and her brother, who had recently had a stroke, holed up in the attic after the levee breach.

Her brother didn’t make it.

"I don’t really know what he died from," she said. "He just died up in the attic with me."

She pleaded with an outsider to call her sister in New Jersey to tell her that she was all right. The news about her brother would have to wait.

Superdome Evacuation Halted Amid Gunfire

By MARY FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
Published September 1, 2005, 8:30 AM CDT

NEW ORLEANS -- The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were reported fired at a military helicopter and arson fires broke out outside the arena. No injuries were immediately reported.

The scene at the Superdome became increasingly chaotic, with thousands of people rushing from nearby hotels and other buildings, hoping to climb onto the buses taking evacuees from the arena, officials said. Paramedics became increasingly alarmed by the sight of people with guns.

Richard Zeuschlag, chief of the ambulance service that was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome, said it was suspending operations "until they gain control of the Superdome."

Shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak, he said.

He said the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to restore order.

"That's not enough," said Zeuschlag, whose Acadian Ambulance is based in Lafayette. "We need a thousand."

Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said the military -- which was handling the evacuation of the able-bodied from the Superdome -- had suspended operations, too, because fires set outside the arena were preventing buses from getting close enough to pick up people.

Tens of thousands of people started rushing out of other buildings when they saw buses pulling up and hoped to get on, he said. But the immediate focus was on evacuating people from the Superdome, and the other refugees were left to mill around.

Zeuschlag said paramedics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of people with guns at the Superdome. He also said that during the night, when a medical evacuation helicopter tried to land at a hospital in the outlying town of Kenner, the pilot reported 100 people were on the landing pad, some with guns.

"He was frightened and would not land," Zeuschlag.

Earlier Thursday, the first busload of survivors had arrived at the Houston Astrodome, where air conditioning, cots, food and showers awaited them.

"We are going to do everything we can to make people comfortable," Red Cross spokeswoman Margaret O'Brien-Molina said. "Places have to be found for these people. Many of these people may never be able to rebuild."

Astrodome officials said they would accept only the 25,000 people stranded at the Superdome -- a rule that was tested when a school bus arrived from New Orleans filled with families with children seeking shelter.

At first, Astrodome officials said the refugees couldn't come in, but then allowed them to enter for food and water. Another school bus also was allowed in.

The Astrodome is far from a hotel, but it was a step above the dank, sweltering Superdome, where the floodwaters were rising, the air conditioning was out, the ceiling leaked, trash piled up and toilets were broken.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said the 40-year-old Astrodome is "not suited well" for such a large crowd long-term, but officials are prepared to house the displaced as long as possible. New Orleans officials said residents may not be able to return for months.

The Astrodome's schedule has been cleared through December. The dome is used on occasion for corporate parties and hospitality events, but hasn't been used for professional sports in years.

In New Orleans, the refugees had lined up for the first buses, some inching along in wheelchairs, some carrying babies. Almost everyone carried a plastic bag or bundled bedspread holding the few possessions they had left. Many had no idea where they were heading.

"We tried to find out. We're pretty much adrift right now," said Cyril Ellisworth, 46. "We're pretty much adrift in life. They tell us to line up and go, and we just line up and go."

The Astrodome's new residents will be issued passes that will allow them to leave and return as they please, something that wasn't permitted in New Orleans. Organizers also plan to find ways to help the refugees contact relatives. ___

Associated Press writers Wendy Benjaminson in Baton Rouge, La., and Pam Easton in Houston contributed to this report.

I'm betting 7-8%.

I'd guess 20%+, which seems to be about how many stayed there. Do keep in mind, Alan, that the metro area only had 48 hours to evacuate and they needed a full 72.

Christ, those Hattiesburg pictures. My friend evacuated there from NOLA and she left Hattiesburg to Arkansas because the city was pretty heavily damaged. I thought they would be!

BREAKING NEWS

President Bush to travel to region devastated by Hurricane Katrina, White House says. Details soon.

...I've got a bad feeling about this...