Troops Order Citizens To Leave Cit
Some of those they encountered were tired, beaten and ready to come out. Many more apparently were self-selected survivalists: determined not to let go of what little was certain in their lives in exchange for so much uncertainty ahead.
“I got my own place,” said a defiant Robert Thomas in the city’s historic Treme neighborhood. “I ain’t sharing it with no freaking body.” If he agreed to leave the city, “Where the hell I’m gonna be after that?”
“They are trying to get this neighborhood for the rich people,” said a man calling himself Chief Al sitting on a stoop at St. Claude Avenue and St. Phillip Street.
Yet there were no reports of what police and military authorities have promised since mid-week: that soon stern encouragement will shift to evacuation by force.
Kansas National Guard Maj. Gen Ron Mason said the National Guard helped bring out more than 650 willing people between Wednesday and Thursday morning from neighborhoods ravaged by flooding from Hurricane Katrina Aug. 29.
In many ways, Thursday seemed to be a day of small victories: Water continued to drain away. Some downtown hotels struggled toward life. A weak but discernible commercial pulse began to beat in the city’s suburbs.
In Baton Rouge, officials closed the makeshift hospital that sprung up on the floor of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center at Louisiana State University. In 10 days volunteer doctors and nurses treated 6,000 debilitated patients rushed by helicopter and ambulance from New Orleans area rooftops and other places.
Water levels continued to recede around the metropolitan area. Some drained through gaps deliberately punched in levees, sluicing back into surrounding waterways that have fallen back to pre-storm levels. In addition the region’s pumping capacity, still a feeble remnant of its original power, continued to suck at stagnant standing water.
St. Bernard Parish officials reported two feet of water remaining in the government center in Chalmette, which once was flooded up to the second floor.
However, fires continued to break out, although in fewer number. Fire Supt. Charles Parent said three unidentified multi-story buildings burned down at Dillard University on Wednesday.
The day saw 11 fires, six of which were inaccessible from the ground, said Parent.
Yet in the context of the horrors of the last week, 11 fires was a good day, he said. Firefighters were heartened by the fact that water pressure has begun to return for the first time, said Parent.
Still, there were intimations that the dreadful next phase, that of body recovery, is coming nearer.
Bob Johannessen, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said officials have 25,000 body bags on hand. “We don’t know what to expect,” he said.
Teams set up body recovery points in St. Bernard Parish and at the intersection of I-10 and 1-610. Bodies would be carefully logged in, personal effects catalogued and the precise global posititioning coordinates of their places of recovery carefully recorded.
They are to be shifted to a special federal emergency mortuary in St.. Gabriel, where sophisticated techniques would be deployed to make an identification.
Authorities said it promised to be daunting: Many bodies have decomposed. Many were too poor to have dental records useful in identification. Many belong to families who will have to be found after being scattered in haste across the country.
Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations Director Walter Maestri estimated Hurricane Katrina may have killed 200 there.
Many bodies may be trapped in the poor, blue-collar subdivision of Lincolnshire and Westminster in Marrero. Water rose to four feet in those areas, where many residents did not have the means to evacuate, he said.
Crews may begin body retrieval Friday and Saturday in Marrero and in flooded neighborhoods around Airline Drive, he said.
In a nationally televised speech President Bush promised to cut through red tape to rush relief to New Orleans and the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coasts.
"The government is going to be with you for the long haul," he said.
U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, told WWL television rebuilding the city could cost more than $200 billion. “It’s important to talk about the big number up front,” he said.
The president asked that Sept. 16 be treated as a national day of prayer and remembrance.
Vice President Dick Cheney visited the area. He toured the flooded Lakeview neighborhood with Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Sen. David Vitter, R-La. He said he was impressed with the Army Corps of Engineers’ repair work at the breeched 17th St. Canal. He said new taxes are not the answer to billions in relief the region will require.
In Kenner, the New Orleans City Council granted Mayor Ray Nagin unprecedented emergency spending and borrowing power to deal with the crisis.
Five council members – all but Councilmen Jay Batt and Eddie Sapir – convened its first post-Katrina meeting at Louis Armstrong International Airport, a city-owned outpost outside the city in Kenner. Sapir was en route back to the city from out of town, and Batt had already scheduled a conflicting caravan back to his partially flooded district.
The council suspended normal waiting periods and slashed at other procedural safeguards to give Nagin more executive power. Three council members disclosed that they had lost their homes. Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis said her brother, Elliot Willard Jr., is missing.
Council members made clear they expect to see local businesses and local residents drafted into the rebuilding effort facing the city – the better to rebuild its middle class.
“Don’t pimp us,” Council President Oliver Thomas warned. “Help us rebuild.”
As he spoke, workers at major downtown hotels like the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, the Windsor Court and the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel hustled to bring them back into commerce, perhaps as housing centers for relief crews and construction workers.
“We’ll be up in a couple of weeks,” said Kevin Ryan, regional vice president of operations for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns the Sheraton. “We want to get people back to work and make sure we rebuild the city as fast as we can.”
St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis said up to 60,000 displaced residents are free to return beginning Friday, although many will have to show identification before being admitted to damaged neighborhoods.
Thousands of homes in flood-damaged Slidell are not yet fit for habitation, he said.
Davis said he has asked federal authorities for 20,000 housing units for homeless families.
But conditions generally are improving rapidly, Davis said. Power has been restored to a third of the parish and most roads are open. More businesses are coming back every day, he said.
In Jefferson Parish, isolated signs of life began to spread across the West Bank.
A few stores opened for business here and there west of the Harvey Canal. Three-fourths of Gretna reported it had electrical power. The sewerage treatment plant was working and the city had water, although a boil order was still in effect, said Police Chief Arthur Lawson.
Meantime, conditions are improving rapidly in Kenner and Harahan on the East Bank, Maestri said.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said officials hoped to open the parish by Sept. 30; he and other parish officials urged residents to stay out, if possible.
Jefferson residents were allowed into the parish on a look-see basis earlier in the week. But Broussard said those electing to stay would not be forced out – although they faced hardships with widespread power outages, water that still must be made safe by boiling, shortages of food and gasoline and a generally shattered economy.
With reporting by Jarvis deBerry, Michele Krupa, Becky Mowbray, John Pope, Manuel Torres and the Associated Press.
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