New Orleans evacuation suspended as shots fired

The evacuation of Hurricane Katrina refugees from the Superdome in New Orleans was suspended today after shots were fired at a military helicopter, an ambulance official overseeing the operation said. No immediate injuries were reported.

“We have suspended operations until they gain control of the Superdome,” said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome.

He said that military would not fly out of the Superdome either because of the gunfire and that the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control.

“That’s not enough,” Zeuschlag. “We need a thousand.”

He said that shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak.

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 that 100 people were on the landing pad, and some of them had guns.

“He was frightened and would not land,” Zeuschlag.

He said medics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of people with guns at the Superdome.

Shortly before the evacuation was halted, National Guard troops in armoured vehicles poured into New Orleans to curb the city’s growing lawlessness, as the governor in nearby Mississippi vowed to deal with looters in his state as “ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.”

About 10,000 National Guard troops from around the country were ordered to shore up security, rescue and relief operations along the hurricane-battered Gulf of Mexico coast.

“The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people,” said Mississippi Gov Haley Barbour on NBC’s Today show. “We’re trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.”

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin also ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and stop thieves who were becoming increasingly hostile.

“They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas – hotels, hospitals, and we’re going to stop it right now,” Nagin said.

President George w. Bush said Thursday the federal government has launched the most massive relief effort in history to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, pledging to reach thousands of victims that still needed to be rescued. 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 a new, more comfortable home at the Astrodome in Houston.

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. The first of 500 busloads of people arrived early Thursday at the Astrodome, another domed sports arena.

Bush expressed sympathy for those who were still suffering but also said there should be “zero tolerance” for breaking the law during an emergency situation.

In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

“There are physical threats to safety from roving bands of armed individuals with weapons who are threatening the safety of the hospital,” said spokesman Steven Campanini. He estimated there were about 350 employees in the hospital and between 125 to 150 patients.

Tempers were starting to flare across the devastated region. Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus. One officer was shot in the head and a looter was wounded in a shoot-out. Both were expected to survive.

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets – even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Yesterday, Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city will not be functional for two or three months and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

Asked how many people died in the hurricane, Naglin said: “Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.” The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.

If the mayor’s death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation’s deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in US history.

Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 – the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east – pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings.

On some of the few roads that were still open, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.

Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm’s way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.

The floodwaters streamed into the city’s streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80% of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.

Around midday Wednesday, officials with the state and the Army Corps of Engineers said the water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain had equalised, and even appeared to be falling. But the danger was far from over.

The Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 150-metre gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot (4.5-meter) highway barriers to the site because the city’s waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

The full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days – in part, because some areas in both coastal Mississippi and Louisiana are still unreachable, but also because authorities’ first priority has been reaching the living.

In Mississippi, for example, ambulances roamed through the passable streets of devastated places such as Biloxi, Gulfport, Waveland and Bay St Louis, in some cases speeding past corpses in hopes of saving people trapped in flooded and crumbled buildings.

State officials said Nagin’s guess of thousands dead seemed plausible.

Lt Kevin Cowan of the state Office of Emergency Preparedness said it is too soon to say with any accuracy how many died. But he noted that since thousands of people had been rescued from roofs and attics, it could be assumed that there were lots of others who were not saved.

“You have a limited number of resources, for an unknown number of evacuees. It’s already been several days. You’ve had reports there are casualties. You all can do the math,” he said.

On the flooded streets of New Orleans, dozens of fishermen from up to 200 miles away floated in on caravans of boats to pull residents out.

One of those rescued was 40-year-old Kevin Montgomery, who spent three days shuttling between the attic of a one-story home and a canopy he built on the roof. Every once in a while, Montgomery would see a body float by. But he cannot swim and had to fight the urge to wade in and tie them down.

“It was terrible,” he said. “All I could do was pass them by and hope that God takes care of the rest of that.”

Although the Bush administration decided to release crude oil from the federal petroleum reserves after Katrina knocked out 95% of the Gulf of Mexico’s output, petrol prices surged above 3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

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.

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.

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.