Chaos as law breaks down in city

FIGHTS and fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome yesterday and anger and unrest mounted as New Orleans descended into chaos.

National Guardsmen in armoured vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.

“We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” the Rev Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Centre, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they had been dropped off and given nothing.

The evacuation of people from the New Orleans Superdome was disrupted yesterday after shots were reportedly fired at a military helicopter and fires broke out outside the arena.

Lieutenant Colonel Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard said the military temporarily suspended operations, because fires set outside the arena were preventing buses from getting close enough.

He said tens of thousands of people started rushing out of other buildings when they saw buses pulling up and hoped to get on.

But the immediate focus was on evacuating people from the Superdome, and the other refugees were left to mill around.

With more than a thousand people feared dead, some refugees that had been staying in increasingly deteriorating conditions at the Louisiana Superdome sports arena began arriving by bus at the Houston Astrodome.

Conditions at the Superdome had become horrendous: there was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.