By Jason ReedWed Aug 31, 7:55 PM ET
Authorities struggled on Wednesday
to evacuate thousands of people from hurricane- battered New
Orleans as food and water grew scarce and looters raided
stores, while President Bush said it would take years to
recover from the devastation.
But the waters that have flooded the historic jazz city
since Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore on Monday at last
stopped rising.
More than 78,000 people were in emergency shelters and tens
of thousands of homes and businesses were beyond repair, Bush
said after flying over the scene of the disaster in Air Force
One earlier in the day.
State governors ordered 10,000 additional National Guard
troops to the stricken area -- in part to quell the rampant
looting -- bringing the total to 21,000.
Katrina may have killed hundreds of people in Louisiana and
Mississippi when it hit the U.S. Gulf coast with 140 mph (225
kph) winds and a 30-foot (9-meter) wall of water that inundated
miles of coastline, trapping people in attics and on rooftops.
"We are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in
our nation's history," Bush said after returning early to the
White House from his Texas vacation to oversee recovery
efforts.
"This recovery will take a long time. This recovery will
take years."
U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland, who oversaw
the Asian tsunami relief effort, said Katrina could easily
dwarf the devastation of other recent natural disasters in
terms of economic costs.
Egeland called Katrina one of "the largest, most
destructive natural disasters ever," and offered U.N
assistance.
The U.S. military set out to staunch the flow of water into
New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain through breaches in the
levee system that holds water out of the city, much of which
sits below sea level.
FLOWING OUT
Two days after Katrina struck, water finally stopped
flowing into the city and started flowing out, a senior
official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.
"It's not a significant decrease but it's not rising any
more," said Al Naomi, a senior project manager with the Corps.
"It will still take a while to get the water out of the city.
A fleet of prison buses arrived at the storm-battered
Superdome stadium to transport 23,000 refugees to the Houston
Astrodome 350 miles away.
Some people waded through 3 feet (1 meter) of water to get
into the dome, where the lights were dim, the water out and the
toilets overflowing, so they might join the convoy. Military
and civilian helicopters landed alongside the facility.
Stranded people were running out of food and water and
growing desperate. Some pushed shopping carts filled with their
belongings along freeways; one cart held a young girl who had
passed out. Others asked an onlooker for food and water.
Looting erupted as people broke into stores to grab
supplies, television sets, jewelry, clothes and computers.
"It's a lot of chaos right now," Louisiana state police
Director H.L. Whitehorn said.
Katrina's death toll was more than 200 in one Mississippi
county alone, and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record) said she had heard at
least 50 to 100 people were dead in New Orleans. But efforts to
count the dead took a back seat to assisting survivors.
On his way to Washington from Crawford, Texas, Bush's Air
Force One dipped low enough for the president to view the
destruction as the plane flew over stricken areas. His
administration declared a public-health emergency as officials
feared outbreaks of disease.
The administration also said it would release oil from the
nation's strategic reserves to offset losses in the Gulf of
Mexico, where the storm had shut down production.
The U.S. Coast Guard said at least 20 oil rigs and
platforms were missing in the Gulf, either sunk or adrift.
U.S. crude-oil prices eased below $70 per barrel, but
analysts said they expected retail gasoline prices to vault
well over $3 a gallon in most parts of the country as early as
this weekend.
Louisiana officials said 3,000 people had been rescued, but
many more waited to be picked up in boats that cruised flooded
streets or helicopters that buzzed overhead.
"I'm alive. I'm alive," shouted a joyous woman as she was
ferried from a home nearly swallowed by the flood.
RAGING WATERS
New Orleans flooded after the raging waters of Lake
Pontchartrain tore holes in the levees that protect the city,
then slowly filled it up.
Attempts had failed on Tuesday to plug a 200-foot
(60-meter-) gap with sandbags and concrete barriers, but
officials said they would keep trying. The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers planned to try to fill the breach with giant
3,000-pound (1,400-kg) sandbags.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated it would be 12 to 16
weeks before residents could return. The floods knocked out
electricity, contaminated the water supply and cut off most
highway routes into the city.
A million people fled the New Orleans area before Katrina
arrived. But former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy estimated 80,000
were trapped in the city.
In Biloxi, Mississippi, some corpses were under too much
rubble to safely collect, and two lay partly exposed to the hot
sun in the remnants of a seaside apartment building.
"We don't know what we're going to do with them. It just
leaves you numb," said hearse driver Jakel Marshall.
The U.S. military was sending a hospital ship and two
helicopter-carriers to assist two other Navy ships already
conducting rescues in the area.
Amid the looting, gun-toting citizens took to the streets
to try to restore order. A store owner put up a sign reading:
"You loot, I shoot."
Authorities intent on rescuing flood victims let the
looting go unstopped at first, but Nagin told CNN that
authorities were "bringing it under control as we speak."
Katrina knocked out electricity to nearly 5 million people
in four states, utility companies said, and restoring power
could take weeks.
(Additional reporting by Paul Simao in Mobile, Alabama)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050831/ts_nm/weather_katrina_dc&printer=1;_ylt=Arwt89TWwA_nOUFYSb6lCKxg.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
