First Steps to Alleviate Squalor and Suffering at Convention Center

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

A Coast Guard helicopter preparing Friday to rescue people from a flooded house in New Orleans.

First Steps to Alleviate Squalor and Suffering at Convention Center
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 2 - Riding on the running board of a big white van, the city's highest-ranking police officer rolled up Friday afternoon to deliver the first scrap of good news that the 20,000 people holed up here in the squalid convention center had heard for nearly a week.

"We've got food and water coming," shouted the police superintendent, P. Edwin Compass III, microphone in hand. "We've got buses that are going to take you out of here."

The unannounced arrival of Mr. Compass, in a crisp navy-blue uniform, was a sudden and even surreal turn at this dank outpost of suffering, filled to bursting with the people who had flocked here days earlier to escape the floods of Hurricane Katrina, only to become a trapped horde of the hungry, the filthy and, here and there, the dead.

Soft applause and cheers rippled in a rising and falling wave as Mr. Compass proceeded along the mile-long terrace front of the convention center, crammed 10-deep with exhausted men, women and children. "Thank God!" an elderly woman gasped.

But some kept silent, any joy or relief tempered by skepticism that Mr. Compass and the city would deliver on one more set of promises. Others cursed, deeply resentful that they had been left to survive by their wits in the cavernous - at night, pitch-dark - convention center without food, water or protection from the thieves and thugs who they said had terrorized them.

One angry man shouted over the applause, "It's about time!" A woman ran alongside Mr. Compass's van, shrieking at him: "We're ready to go now. We don't need no food. Get us out of here!"

Standing at the curb, Glenda Cloud, 50, said: "They can keep their food. We've got people dying in here."

Meals were served, and Mr. Compass said that as night was falling, military helicopters lifted off with some of the most seriously ill storm victims. He said buses would arrive on Saturday for those without serious health problems.

Just how many had died was not clear, though the breadth of the horror was in plain sight. On the sidewalk, a woman with short gray hair lay dead on her side, legs drawn up toward her belly. The elderly woman whose corpse had become a recurring image Thursday on the television news still lay slumped, a day later, in her wheelchair. Young and old swooned in the hot, fetid air.

Also unclear was the extent of the violence that had been visited on the captive crowd. Although many repeated stories they had heard of rapes and killings, no refugees or officials could corroborate them.

But perhaps the biggest question was how this foul scene came to exist in the first place, right in the center of the city, less than a mile from the Superdome and just south of the French Quarter, in a neighborhood frequented by tourists - many of whom ended up here after their hotels became uninhabitable.

On Tuesday, when the city's levees burst, one of the few remaining structures on dry land was this center - officially the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center - a huge, hangar-like building on high ground near the Mississippi River.

Many refugees said they had come here after hearing directives on the radio that they do so, because the Superdome and other shelters were already filled. But Kenya Smith, head of intergovernmental relations for New Orleans, said Friday that the convention center was never designated an official shelter.

Mr. Smith said that hotels, had apparently sent guests here under the impression that it was. At the convention center, he said, the refugees were told - he was not sure by whom - that FEMA would send buses to take them from the city.

Yet federal officials were not even aware there was a crowd at the convention center for three days into the crisis, according to Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Brown told network television interviewers on Thursday night that federal officials had learned about the refugees just that day.

"Don't you guys watch television?" Ted Koppel asked him on "Nightline." "Our reporters have been reporting about it for more than just today."

Mr. Brown, who indicated that officials had heard word of the problem earlier but were too busy dealing with refugees at the Superdome to confirm it , said, "We learned about it factually today that that's what existed."

Mr. Compass, the police superintendent, indicated in an interview on Thursday that his department had been well aware of the crowd at the center. Some people had been brought here after being rescued from the floodwaters, he said, but "most people just went in there" on their own.

He said many tourists took shelter here - along with perhaps 100 armed thugs. "The tourists are walking around there and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon," Mr. Compass said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Compass said he sent eight squads of 11 men each to take control of the convention center, but the first squad made it only 30 feet inside before being rushed by more than 50 people.

The lawlessness was sometimes welcome. On Friday morning, some young men broke into the kitchen of the Marriott Hotel, across the street from the center, fixed a gigantic batch of scrambled eggs, grits and bacon and served it to storm victims.

Henrietta Glover, 61, a former preschool teacher, said, "We have some Robin Hood figures who have gone out and found milk and food for us and fixed food for us."

Just before the police superintendent arrived, a convoy of 17 police and military vehicles, some with lights flashing and sirens wailing, sped past the convention center in an apparent show of force. Several military helicopters also hovered over the building.

Shortly after Mr. Compass spoke to the refugees, 1,000 members of the National Guard and 60 police officers, armed with loaded shotguns and automatic rifles, took up positions on a grassy median running along the center of Convention Center Boulevard.

The mere presence of the security forces had a calming effect on many refugees, who said they had been shaken by cries for help on some nights from what they took to be victims of rapes and assaults.

"We heard people, men and women screaming," said Chantell Jones, 19. "But no one got up to help because we were scared for our own lives."

Other refugees found the arrival of the police and military anything but calming. They said they felt that the police, in their attempts to gain control of the convention center, and the National Guard members, had been as menacing and terrifying as the civilians who sporadically fired guns inside and outside the center, often setting off stampedes.

"The police would draw their rifles and guns down on us," said Emily Baker, 56. "They were very afraid of us."

Ms. Baker said the police also came in one night and "took two white people out of here" in what she interpreted as a selective rescue. "It was our first time seeing the police here," she said. It was not immediately possible to obtain comment from the police in a city without electricity and with little phone service.

Rapunzel Weaver, 45, a cook, said she had been sobbing for days because she worried that her stay might drag on endlessly. She said she stopped crying after Mr. Compass arrived. "This is the first we have heard from him," she said, "and I believe him."

The refugees said they had been told several times since Tuesday, sometimes by police officers in squad cars, that buses were on the way to evacuate them. But the buses never came.

"We've been lied to so much," said Raymond Whitfield, 51, who works at a coffee processing plant.

Soon after the armed troops moved into position, other soldiers began bringing in military meals. Some also pitched tents for what looked like a medical station. And already, some lawyers were circulating through the storm victims, promising to find compensation for them with a class-action lawsuit against city and state officials. Carl Richardson, 45, a truck driver, said he added his name to a list of potential plaintiffs being compiled by a well-dressed man and a woman partner.

Mr. Richardson said he was not especially looking for money. "If I get a little apology, I'll be happy," he said. "I'm a diabetic and I haven't had anything to eat in five days. I've gotten by, with a little orange juice that I scrounged from a co-worker who brought a little food with her."

Christopher Drew contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., for this article.

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Stuff happens.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times


United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

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The Desperate Cry Out for Loved Ones Still Lost

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A woman's body was sprawled in the water Friday near the Superdome in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

September 3, 2005
The Desperate Cry Out for Loved Ones Still Lost
By SHAILA DEWAN

BILOXI, Miss., Sept. 2 - Amber Wyrick sat alone in a temporary office set up by the Harrison County coroner, wiping at tears. Five days after the storm, she had yet to hear word about her 1-year-old son, Danny, who was with his father when Hurricane Katrina hit. His house was gone.

"I feel like in my heart I would know if something was wrong with him," Ms. Wyrick said. But she started to cry again. "It's just not knowing that hurts so bad."

Scores of people here have a relative or friend whose fate is unknown. While Internet message boards have linked many on the outside seeking news, those on the coast have no access to any form of communication more reliable than a message in a bottle. People have lost not only their telephone service, but also their addresses.

As rescue workers struggled to inspect hard-to-reach areas, anxiety was mounting. Only half of Bay St. Louis and Waveland, two of the most damaged areas, had been canvassed, said Joe Spraggins, the Harrison County director of emergency management, at a morning briefing. Forty-five percent of Biloxi had been searched. So little of Diamondhead and Pearl River had been accessible that the Federal Emergency Management Agency rated them as zero percent searched, Mr. Spraggins said.

There were 105 confirmed deaths in Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River and Hancock Counties.

So desperate are people to communicate that when a T-Mobile office in Gulfport put out a sign that said "free calls," 1,500 people lined up over two days, the managers said. There was tearful call after tearful call, with one relieved mother even insisting that her daughter pass the phone to a T-Mobile employee so she could thank him. But by Friday, the office had run out of fuel for the generator that powered its signal tower.

One woman, an evacuee from New Orleans, said she was trying to reach her family so they could come get her. Another man was trying to tell his mother, a stroke victim, that he had made it through the storm.

Thousands of calls have poured in to a toll-free number set up by The Sun Herald, a local newspaper, which has published items like "Mary Hudson, looking for half brother, fire chief Tommy Stone," or "Sylvia Hickey, Mobile, Alabama, is fine." But that avenue is inaccessible to many, because the power is out and telephone and cellphone service come only in blips.

Luanne Thompson, 38, said she had no idea where her infant son might be; he had been in a New Orleans hospital after surgery. "All I know is what I'm hearing on the radio, and I'm hearing they're evacuating everyone," she said. "Over there they gave me an 800 number for the Red Cross, but other than that I don't know who to call."

A spokeswoman for the American Red Cross said the toll-free phone line was not yet staffed. But, she said, there was a place on the organization's Web site for families to reconnect.

Calls by a reporter to more than 20 hospitals across the South located Ms. Thompson's baby, Sonny Ray Thompson, at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. "We didn't know how we were going to find his mother," said his nurse, Adrienne Arnold.

Ms. Wyrick lost her house to the hurricane and only narrowly rescued her other three children, 2, 3 and 5, in a boat.

Her search for her youngest son began with a trip to Gulf Port Estates in Ocean Springs, where Danny's father had lived. But deputies stopped her, telling her the area had been demolished. She was not satisfied. "I tried to find a way around them, I can't lie," she said. "I kept telling my father-in-law, 'Just drop me off, let me go, I'll walk.' "

She checked shelters along the coast and visited the police every hour. On Friday, someone directed her to a "family assistance center" run by the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a division of FEMA. After filling out an eight-page form that asked for information about dental records and identifying marks, Ms. Wyrick learned that the information would go only to the county coroner, not to shelters and other places where missing people might have gone.

Cotton Howell, the regional commander of the mortuary team, said that the specialists who run the centers had not arrived and that communications systems were not in place to share information with other relief agencies.

There was also the problem of locating families who made reports to tell them if a body had been found. They were asked to provide their current location, possible future contact information and the name of a relative outside the disaster area.

"People who come in for missings don't have a fixed address, so we have to ask much deeper questions," Mr. Howell said.

Some of those searching were themselves missing. "My boss had accounted for everyone but me," said Marla Hemphill, an administrator at Northrop Grumman, who had come in to report that she suspected her sister, who lived in Biloxi and refused to evacuate and leave her pets, might be dead. Like so many others, she had gone to inspect the damage herself. The roof of her sister's house had collapsed, Ms. Hemphill said, and the house had a terrible odor.

"The front porch was still there with a table with a coffee cup on it," Ms. Hemphill said. "But the whole house slid backwards."

Some people outside the disaster area have been so worried they have simply gotten in their cars and made the trip. Charles D. Widgeon, 48, and his brother Charles W., 38, saw their brother on television after the storm and came from Columbus, Ga., to find him. "We've been to every shelter; none of them have a check-in list," the elder Mr. Widgeon said. "At the hospital, they don't even know who all they got in there."

For two days, they drove around, he said Thursday night, finding only their brother's car. By then, they themselves needed to be rescued. "We're out of gas and out of money," Mr. Widgeon said. They had spent the night in a shelter and were waiting for their mother, driving from Columbus, to come pick them up.

Some people coped with the uncertainty by throwing themselves into the recovery effort. "My brother stayed on the beach," said John Boudreaux, who was helping run a shelter at Orange Grove Elementary in Gulfport, with a shrug that suggested he knew that many others shared his predicament. "I don't know if he's dead or alive."

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta for this article.

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As White House Anxiety Grows, Bush Tries to Quell Political Crisis

Pool photo by Dennis Brack President Bush with Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Michael Chertoff, homeland security chief. September 4, 2005 As White House Anxiety Grows, Bush Tries to Quell Political Crisis By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ADAM NAGOURNEY WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - Faced with one of the worst political crises of his administration, President Bush abruptly overhauled his September schedule on Saturday as the White House scrambled to gain control of a situation that Republicans said threatened to undermine Mr. Bush's second-term agenda and the party's long-term ambitions. In a sign of the mounting anxiety at the White House, Mr. Bush made a rare Saturday appearance in the Rose Garden before live television cameras to announce that he was dispatching additional active-duty troops to the Gulf Coast. He struck a more somber tone than he had at times on Friday during a daylong tour of the disaster region, when he had joked at the airport in New Orleans about the fun he had had in his younger days in Houston. His demeanor on Saturday was similar to that of his most somber speeches after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," said Mr. Bush, slightly exaggerating the stricken land area. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable." The president was flanked by his high military and emergency command: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Mr. Bush spoke, Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser, listened on the sidelines, as did Dan Bartlett, the counselor to the president and Mr. Bush's overseer of communications strategy. Their presence underscored how seriously the White House is reacting to the political crisis it faces. "Where our response is not working, we'll make it right," Mr. Bush said, as Mr. Bartlett, with a script in his hand, followed closely. His speech came as analysts and some Republicans warned that the White House's response to the crisis in New Orleans, which has been widely seen as slow and ineffectual, could further undermine Mr. Bush's authority at a time when he was already under fire, endangering his Congressional agenda. Mr. Chertoff said Saturday: "Not an hour goes by that we do not spend a lot of time thinking about the people who are actively suffering. The United States, as the president has said, is going to move heaven and earth to rescue, feed, shelter" victims of the storm. The White House said Mr. Bush would return to Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, scrapping his plans for a Labor Day address in Maryland. The rest of Mr. Bush's schedule next week was in flux. The White House also canceled a major visit to Washington next week by President Hu Jintao of China. In a statement issued on Saturday, the White House said both Mr. Hu and Mr. Bush had agreed that "in the present circumstances, it was best not to have" the meeting, which would have demanded much of the president's attention over the next days on growing difficulties between the United States and China over trade frictions, North Korea's nuclear program and China's military buildup. The last-minute overhaul of the president's plans reflected what analysts and some Republicans said was a long-term threat to Mr. Bush's presidency created by the perception that the White House had failed to respond to the crisis. Several said the political fallout over the hurricane could complicate a second-term agenda that includes major changes to Social Security, the tax code and the immigration system. "This is very much going to divert the agenda," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican with ties to the White House. "Some of this is momentary. I think the Bush capital will be rapidly replenished if they begin to respond here." Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale University, said: "The possibility for very serious damage to the administration exists. The unmistakable conclusion one would draw from this was this was a massive administration failure." And Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, urged Mr. Bush to quickly propose a rebuilding plan for New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, arguing that an ambitious gesture could restore his power in Congress. "If it's done right, it adds energy to the rest of his agenda," Mr. Gingrich said. "If it's done wrong, it swamps the rest of his agenda." The silence of many prominent Democrats reflects their conclusion that the president is on treacherous political ground and that attacking him would permit the White House to dismiss the criticism as partisan politics-as-usual, a senior Democratic aide said. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, disputed the notion that Mr. Bush's long-term political viability was endangered and said Saturday that he was confident the administration would be able to push ahead successfully with its second-term agenda. "There are a number of priorities, and we will address all of them," he said. For all the enormity of the destruction and the lingering uncertainty about how many years it will take to "rebuild the great city of New Orleans," as Mr. Bush said in his remarks on Saturday, some Republicans suggested that the impact could prove fleeting in this age of fast-moving events, and that Mr. Bush's visit to the region on Friday had helped some in addressing concerns about his response. "Next Tuesday the Roberts hearings start, and that's going to occupy a significant part of the daily coverage," said Richard N. Bond, a former Republican chairman, referring to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. But others said the damage could prove enduring, and they warned that the inevitable battery of official investigations into what went wrong could further erode support for the war in Iraq if it turned out that the deployment of National Guard units to Iraq had contributed to the slow response. They said any thought that memories of New Orleans will fade would be checked by gas prices that spiked as Louisiana refineries shut down, particularly given that there was already evidence that rising gas prices were hurting Mr. Bush's political standing. Beyond that, some Republicans said the perception among some blacks that the White House had been slow to respond because so many victims were poor and African-American undercut what had been one of the primary initiatives of the new Republican chairman, Ken Mehlman: making an explicit appeal for support among black voters, a constituency that has traditionally been overwhelmingly Democratic. "Given the racial component of this, and given the current political environment, there certainly seems to be a high level of risk to this story," said a Republican Party official, who, citing the concern among party officials about the criticism, would only discuss the question on the condition of not being identified. But Mr. Bush, reflecting concern within the White House about the president's standing among blacks, notably said in his radio address that "we have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters all along the Gulf Coast, and we will not rest until we get this right and the job is done." Both Republicans and Democrats noted that the reaction to the crisis has been nothing like what happened after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when both parties joined in a bipartisan show of unity in the face of a clear and identifiable outside threat. Hurricane Katrina struck at a time, they said, when Mr. Bush was already in a weakened state, with his approval rating in many national polls at the lowest level of his presidency and his political capital in Washington diminishing. The shifting dynamics on Capitol Hill was clear as Congress returned to Washington to allocate billions of dollars for the relief effort. Congressional leaders suggested that the White House needed to reconsider its legislative agenda. "This is not going to help Social Security," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois. "And it was already on its last legs." Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip, said it would be a mistake to abandon efforts to reduce the estate tax, arguing that was precisely what the economy needed to grow. But he said he thought the White House might reconsider what it wanted this fall. "I think the administration needs to be thinking about what their agenda is for the fall," he said. "And I'm sure there will be some re-evaluation." Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting for this article. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Back to Top

Looting chaos hits New Orleans relief effort

An armed policeman guards a truck loaded with fuel from potential looters in New Orleans (REUTERS/Jason Reed)

September 01, 2005

Looting chaos hits New Orleans relief effort
By Philippe Naughton, Times Online

President Bush called for a "zero tolerance" policy against looters and profiteering today as New Orleans descended into lawlessness.

Three days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the US Gulf Coast, armed gangs are roaming virtually unchecked through the flooded southern city, diverting police from the vital task of rescuing tens of thousands of residents trapped without food, power or fresh water.

Officials were even forced to suspend the evacuation of almost 25,000 flood refugees from the New Orleans Superdome after shots were fired at Chinook army helicopters overseeing the loading of people onto a fleet of prison buses.

In a television interview this morning Mr Bush defended himself from charges that his own response to the crisis was tardy - he only broke off from a holiday at his Texas ranch yesterday - and that the war in Iraq had left America unable to tackle emergencies at home.

The Pentagon said it would send an extra 10,000 National Guardsmen into Mississippi and Louisiana, bringing the force to more than 18,000, and had ordered an amphibious assault ship back from the Gulf to help with the relief operation.

"We've got the resources necessary to do two separate things," Mr Bush told ABC. "I hope people don't play politics during this time. This is a natural disaster the likes of which this country may not have seen before. What we need to do is to come together as a nation... there will be ample time for politics."

Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, said last night that thousands had probably died in the floods brought by the storm - although that appears to be largely a guess since bodies are still not being routinely collected or counted.

Mr Nagin 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," he said.

Tempers also were starting to flare along the rest of the Gulf Coast strip. Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, shot and killed his sister in a row over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus and a truck carrying medical supplies for a hospital.

Chris Ayres, a Times reporter, travelled from the devastated Mississippi town of Biloxi to Mobile, Alabama, and said: "There is a feeling of total lawlessness which is quite frightening. There is a feeling that there are no property rights, no rights at all. Along the road people have broken into abandoned hotels and are just living there.

"But the scenes at the petrol stations are the most unsettling. People are getting really annoyed and some petrol stations, especially those closest to the coast, have posted armed guards. Things are getting out of hand."

Authorities are trying to evacuate all civilians from New Orleans, where an estimated 80,000 people ignored an order to leave last week ahead of Katrina's arrival.

A large proportion of those are being housed at the Superdome sports stadium, where toilets are backed up and the air unbreathable, and are due to be taken to the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away, in a fleet of almost 500 prison buses.

Before that operation was suspended, the first buses left overnight - although the first bus to arrive in Houston was one that had been hijacked by a group of desperate refugees.

More than 100 people, and probably several hundred, died in neighbouring Mississippi, where the epicentre of the hurricane hit. If Mr Nagin's estimate proves true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which have been 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. But security problems were clearly preventing police, fire officers and other rescue workers from getting to people in need as the Deep South came to resemble the Wild West.

Just outside New Orleans, gunmen held up a supply truck carrying food, water, medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, prompting officials to ask police and the US Coast Guard to help evacuate a working 203-bed hospital.

Some of the most graphic descriptions of the chaos have come from a blog run by employees of Directnic, a domain name registrar, who have stayed in the city to keep the company's servers going. One, who described himself as a security expert, wrote: "It is a zoo out there though, make no mistake. It's the wild kingdom. It's Lord of the Flies.

"That doesn't mean there's murder on every street corner. But what it does mean is that the rule of law has collapsed, that there is no order, and that property rights cannot and are not being enforced. Anyone who is on the streets is in immediate danger of being robbed and killed. It's that bad."

The same blog, at www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor, reported that dozens of New Orleans police officers had simply abandoned their posts.

Asked whether he understood the looters' motivation, Mr Bush replied: "I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting, or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving, or insurance fraud."

Mr Bush is to visit New Orleans and other affected areas on Friday and had asked his father, the first President Bush, and Bill Clinton, his predecessor, to head fundraising efforts. "I want people to know there's a lot of help coming," he said.

The President has been sharply criticised in the past 24 hours for his response to the crisis so far. A New York Times editorial this morning said that Mr Bush's Rose Garden address last night was "one of the worst speeches of his life".

The newspaper said the President had simply read out a "long laundry list" of the items sent to the Gulf Coast. "He advised the public than anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end," it added.

Other critics drew a direct link between the stumbling response to the New Orleans disaster and the cost of the war in Iraq, including Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan.

"There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guards available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting," Mr Roberts wrote in the Counterpunch newsletter.

"The situation is the same in Mississippi. The National Guard and helicopters are off on a fools' mission in Iraq."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Clinton, wrote in the online magazine Salon.com that the Bush Administration had cut federal funding for New Orleans flood controls by 44 per cent since 2001 - despite a Federal Emergency Management Agency report that year that identified New Orleans flooding as one of three major threats to the United States, alongside a terror attack on New York City and an earthquake in San Francisco.

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Mourning My New Orleans
Our family has lived there for a century. Where will we go now?
By Josh Levin
Updated Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005, at 1:23 PM PT

I have to keep reminding myself that this is the same patch of land where I went to school and played baseball and had dinner with my grandparents every Friday night. Every time some new, awful report bubbles up—of prisoners rioting, of looters menacing Children's Hospital, of water so high there aren't roofs to wave a white flag from, of people lying on the interstate waiting for someone to tell them where to go and what to do—New Orleans seems more like a scene out of 28 Days Later than a place where people ever lived and worked and raised their families.

A little more than 48 hours after Katrina strafed the city, I'm starting to mourn a place that's not quite dead but seems too stricken to go on living. The promises early yesterday that breached levees would be patched with airlifted sandbags came to nothing. The exhausted-looking mayor reported last night that the sandbag-dropping helicopters didn't show up. So much for deus ex machina.

Local television stations, now streaming their broadcasts online, plead with people who aren't watching: You will be arrested if you're found on the street in Plaquemines Parish. Don't drink the water in St. Tammany until you've boiled it for a good long while. On the Times-Picayune's message boards, supplications stack up unanswered: "Looking for Gary," "Looking for Teldrich," "Carole & Monte DAVIS???" I search for the names of friends who stayed behind and don't find them. I'm sure they're riding it out somewhere, on a second floor without electricity or water to drink or in a shelter with thousands of others, but it's impossible to reach them. The cell phones are dead and all the circuits are busy anyway.

As the endlessly looping aerial footage shows little more than a giant lake with highway overpasses peeking out, I'm glad I wasn't there and terrified I never will be again. A friend from high school told me he took the scenic route out of town on Sunday morning so he could remember the places he needed to remember: Molly's at the Market, the Warehouse District, the Uptown JCC, the corner of St. Charles Avenue where he drank his first beer. I squint at the screen, searching for some kind of landmark to say goodbye to, but the only thing that's recognizable is the Superdome, which now looks like a potato with the skin peeled off to reveal the rotten insides.

As I watch my hometown slowly drown on CNN, it's hard to keep track of all the things to feel guilty about. I'm ashamed that my family has lived in New Orleans for 100 years yet I don't know the city well enough to figure out what they're showing on the helicopter flybys. There are so many canonical things—eating at Galatoire's, listening to traditional jazz at Preservation Hall, visiting the Cabildo—that I somehow never got around to doing. Even with the cracked levees threatening to spill Lake Pontchartrain over the entire East Bank of New Orleans, the French Quarter, the Garden District, and Uptown (where my parents live) will most likely survive because they're on relatively high ground. The poorest neighborhoods, though, are the lowest-lying ones. Places like Treme and the Lower Ninth Ward are full of people without the means to have gotten themselves out; the ones left behind had the least to lose but lost whatever they had.

I'm grateful that my parents and grandparents and aunt and uncles and cousins got out in time, but I'm worried about what they'll go back to once the water recedes and the fallen oaks get cleared. I'm more worried that they won't go back at all.

My father and his father and his father all grew up in New Orleans and went to medical school there and stayed in town to practice medicine. But for all its multigenerational families, New Orleans is—or maybe was—a place where a third of the people live below the poverty line and where the job market has been stagnant for decades. The gentrification of Marigny and Bywater in the last few years brought hope that the urban renewal that had come to so many other cities might not pass by New Orleans entirely. Those neighborhoods are now underwater. The city will get rebuilt no matter what, if only for the oil and gas industries. But who all is going to be there?

I don't remember much of what I did when I went down to visit my folks a few months ago: ate some fried seafood at some hole in the wall, went to my grandparents' house, probably walked under the canopy of oak trees in Audubon Park. Maybe it's a heartless thing to say when there are still people down there in the muck, but it's tragic to think of all those beautiful trees, in the park and on the Uptown streets that I drove through every day, toppled and on the ground, waiting to be chopped into bits and trucked away. There are friends' houses that will no doubt be so much flotsam, neighborhood restaurants that won't serve another oyster po' boy, bars where the jukebox won't ever play Allen Toussaint or Ernie K-Doe again.

With the water in the city still rising, there are rumors floating that they might have to dynamite the levees to get the water flowing back to Lake Pontchartrain. Maybe the only way to save it is to blow part of it up and start over. Next time, I'll make sure to remember everything.

Josh Levin is a Slate assistant editor. You can e-mail him at sportsnut@slate.com.

New Orleans' Nightmare
By Eric Umansky
Posted Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005, at 3:25 AM PT

Everybody leads with the increasingly apocalyptic situation in New Orleans, where food, water, and social order are all dwindling. The mayor ordered nearly all police to stop search-and-rescue efforts and move to the city center to combat massive looting. No one knows how many people are left in the city—officials guessed between 50,000 and 100,000—but whoever is still there has to leave, said the mayor: "The city will not be functional for two or three months."

That time frame, of course, is just a guess, and it may be optimistic. The local head of the Army Corps of Engineers told the Los Angeles Times that clearing the city of water will take three to six months—and that's assuming good weather. The official said some parts of New Orleans are under 30 feet of water. "The news cameras do not do it justice," he said. "And I'm worried the worst is yet to come."

On what may be the other hand, the Times–Picayune, which abandoned its offices but is publishing online, says floodwaters appear to have gone down just a bit overnight.

Asked by a reporter to clarify the number of deaths in New Orleans, the mayor said, "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." Many of the papers play that up, USA Today most prominently with the LAT and New York Times not far behind. That seems unwise. The mayor may well be right—common-sense suggests he is—but as the mayor himself intimated, he was just guesstimating. Even he doesn't know if he's right. The Washington Post is more careful, noting that other officials "urged caution in attempting to estimate the number killed."

That's actually suggestive of a larger problem: The papers are playing up officials' assessments as if the authorities are as informed as usual—a kind of authority fetish. The problem is that officials aren't that informed; they can barely keep in touch with each other. As the LAT mentions in passing, Louisiana's governor couldn't get Army and other officials on the phone. The NYT seems to have a particularly strong faith in the oraclelike abilities of officialdom, announcing across the top on Page One: "BUSH SEES LONG RECOVERY FOR NEW ORLEANS." Does that tell us a damn thing?

Everybody notes the beginning of the evacuation of the Superdome, where an estimated 25,000 people are waiting to be bused to Houston's mothballed Astrodome. The NYT dubs New Orleans' stadium a "surreal vault of horrors." "It's worse than a prison," said one resident. "Here you get no water, no toilets, no lights." There were also reports of a shooting and rapes. (Most of the papers play the rapes as rumor, but the NYT seems to quote a witness).

The situation was also desperate at hospitals, where 2,500 critically ill patients are waiting to be evacuated. "We have no power, no water, no toilets, and we don't have fuel to operate our generators," said a hospital administrator. The LAT mentions that at one hospital, armed looters forced doctors to give up narcotics.

Some looters were roaming around town in a forklift. In the few dry spots, there were carjackings by men wielding machetes. One resident told USAT of a message spray-painted in front of a store: "Don't try. I am sleeping inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer."

Authorities tried and failed to close the biggest levee breach. Apparently, the Army Corps of Engineers considered one solution yesterday then changed tacks, leaving no progress for now and local officials enraged. The Wall Street Journal says the Corps "lacked critical equipment." The Journal adds that poor planning and preparation have been an all-around problem, with guidelines for federal-local coordination "incomplete."

Slate's Jack Shafer points out what the papers have been hesistant to: Most of those left in New Orleans are black and poor.

Mississippi's Harrison County is still getting little help but doesn't seem to be as uniformly chaotic as New Orleans. The LAT says looters "swarmed" through stores in Gulfport. But the Post, citing officials, says overall the filching has not been "widespread." Some smaller towns have yet to be seen by rescuers. "We know there are people in other parts of the county who are alive and could be rescued and have not been," said one official.

Gas futures picked up again yesterday, while the NYT plays up sporadic reports of long lines for gas around the country. "I hate to be an alarmist," said one analyst. "But we're in a situation without much precedent." It's not just about oil. The Gulf Coast is one of the U.S.'s biggest transport hubs. As the Post emphasizes, there have been price spikes in the futures market for everything from lumber to coffee.

President Bush announced he will release some crude from the Strategic Oil Reserve. But, as TP suggested might happen, the markets yawned. As the NYT puts it, "[T]he problem is not any immediate shortage of crude oil," it's the lack of refining power, which USAT warns is not limited to gasoline. Jet fuel is also made in the currently out-of-commission refineries. If they're not back online in a week or two, the airports in Atlanta, D.C., and elsewhere might run out of fuel.

The NYT goes heavy with all the help the feds have ponied up, including sending 30,000 reservists. But the LAT mentions this: "The Navy hospital ship Comfort sailed from Baltimore Wednesday headed to New Orleans, but is not expected to arrive for seven days." Could the Comfort and other resources have been prepositioned?

A piece inside the Post suggests that the toxin-filled water now covering New Orleans has basically turned the city into the world's biggest Superfund site. "This is the worst case," said one top EPA analyst. "There is not enough money in the Gross National Product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area."

A Knight Ridder piece focuses on and others mention the administration's apparent skimping on (non-terrorism-related) disaster preparedness. Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers, facing budget cuts, stopped major work on the levee system for the first time in 37 years. The Journal says that in 2002 the president fired the head of the Corps after the official pushed for a new flood-control program. (The WSJ plays it as cause and effect; whether that's the case ...) New Orleans' Times-Picayune once had a series looking at the lack preparation for a direct hit.

Everybody fronts the hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis killed in yesterday's stampede at a Shiite religious procession at a bridge in Baghdad. Estimates varied between 650 and 950 killed. A few hours earlier, terrorists had launched a mortar attack on part of the crowd, killing seven, but the stampede was apparently set off by a rumor of a suicide bomber. Most were trampled, but some, including many women and children, jumped or were pushed into the Tigris River.

The WP notices that while the stampede happened in a heavily Sunni neighborhood, many residents rushed to help the Shiite victims. Sunni groups, including some openly sympathetic to the insurgency, offered condolences and gathered aid.

Two GIs in Iraq were killed in separate attacks. In total, 74 GIs and Marines were killed in August, the third-highest monthly toll of the war.

What Happens to Flooded Houses?

What Happens to Flooded Houses?
Can their owners ever move back in?
By Daniel Engber
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005, at 3:12 PM PT

Eighty percent of New Orleans remains underwater today, and rescue teams continue to collect survivors from the tops of their submerged homes. What will happen to these flooded houses—will their owners ever move back in?

It depends on the severity of the flooding. For homes that are completely underwater or that are flooded to the upper floors, the cost of repair will probably exceed the cost of moving. At the very least, the interior finishes of a waterlogged house must be stripped and replaced. High water can also damage the wiring, gas lines, furnace, and septic system, as well as furniture and appliances.

Wind and water can cause a house's structural components—the struts, studs, and foundation—to shift or warp. Tilting walls or a shifted roof also suggest dangerous structural damage that could signal an imminent collapse. Flood victims should check the foundations of their homes for cracks before venturing inside.

Inside the house, ceilings may sag under the weight of trapped water or soggy drywall. Wet floorboards bend and buckle, and the roof may leak or break altogether. Flooding in the basement can be especially dangerous; if the water is removed too quickly, pressure from the soaked earth outside can push inward and crack the foundation walls.

Brick and masonry houses will suffer less exterior damage than those made of wood. In all types of housing, though, flooding will most likely destroy the interior walls. Soaked wallboard becomes so weak that it must be replaced, as do most kinds of wall insulation. (The higher the water gets, the more interior walls must be replaced.) Studs will eventually dry out and return to their original shape, but any plywood in the walls is likely to swell and peel apart. Water can also dissolve the mortar in a chimney, which creates leaks and thus a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning once the heat comes back on.

Structural hazards account for only one category of water damage. Floods often deposit dirt and microorganisms throughout the house. Silt and sediment can create short circuits in the electrical system as gunk collects in walls and in the spaces behind each switch box and outlet. Appliances, furnaces, and lighting fixtures also fill with mud, making them dangerous to use.

Anything that gets soaked through with water may contain sewage contaminants or provide a substrate for mold. A long-lasting flood provides more time for the mold to grow and requires more cleanup after the fact. Carpets have to be thrown away, along with mattresses, bedding, and most upholstered furniture. Kitchen items, clothes, washing machines, and dryers must be disinfected with bleach, and all surviving interior surfaces should be cleaned to prevent mold growth. Standing water in a house can also serve as a breeding ground for insects and other animals.

Bonus Explainer: What about flooded cars? A car that has been completely submerged will be considered "totaled" by most insurance companies. But that doesn't mean you can't fix it up. Floodwater must be drained from the engine, transmission, brakes, and fuel system, and bits of mud must be cleaned out. Problems will also arise if too much water mixes with the oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, or antifreeze. The small electronic parts under the hood and in the dashboard are especially susceptible to water damage. Controls for door locks, windows, and interior climate tend to be difficult to clean.

Next question?

Explainer thanks Martin L. King of the Association of Specialists in Cleaning & Restoration.

Daniel Engber is a writer in New York City and a featured member of www.cryingwhileeating.com

Police and Owners Begin to Challenge Looters

Higher Death Toll Seen; Police Ordered to Stop Looters

Pat Sullivan/Associated Press

Volunteers early this morning setting up cots on the floor of the Astrodome in Houston, where more than 20,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina will be temporarily housed

September 1, 2005
Higher Death Toll Seen; Police Ordered to Stop Looters
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
and RALPH BLUMENTHAL

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - Chaos gripped New Orleans on Wednesday as looters ran wild, food and water supplies dwindled, bodies floated in the floodwaters, the evacuation of the Superdome began and officials said there was no choice but to abandon the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, perhaps for months.

President Bush pledged vast assistance but acknowledged, "This recovery will take years."

For the first time, a New Orleans official suggested the scope of the death toll. Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the hurricane might have killed thousands in his city alone, an estimate that, if correct, would make it the nation's deadliest natural disaster since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which killed up to 6,000 people.

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others hidden from view in attics and other places, Mayor Nagin told reporters. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

As survivors struggled with a disaster that left damage of up to $25 billion, a gargantuan relief effort began. Ships, planes, helicopters and convoys of supplies and rescue teams converged on the Gulf Coast, and Pentagon officials said 30,000 National Guard and active-duty troops would be deployed by this weekend in the largest domestic relief effort by the military in the nation's history.

With police officers and National Guard troops giving priority to saving lives, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores for food, clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often in full view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of carjackings, apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were reported, as were a number of shootings.

On Wednesday night, Mayor Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers, most of the city's force, to turn from search and rescue to stopping the looting.

"They are starting to get closer to the heavily populated areas - hotels, hospitals - and we're going to stop it right now," he said in a statement issued to The Associated Press.

New Orleans, a city of 500,000, mostly below sea level and reliant on levees along the Mississippi River running south of it and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, was a nightmarish waterworld that Mr. Nagin said would have to be abandoned while the levees were repaired and the city drained.

He called for a "total evacuation," adding: "We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months."

Total recovery appeared to be far more remote. Officials of the Army Corps of Engineers said that it would be weeks or months before the city could be pumped dry and that it would take years to rebuild its thousands of homes and businesses, its streets, highways and other infrastructure, an investment that could cost billions of dollars and perhaps never recover the rich cultural heritage of New Orleans.

One paradox, experts said, was that the destruction of a city that has always been vulnerable to water might provide an opportunity to rebuild it to make it more secure, with stronger buildings and with levees capable of withstanding the strongest storms. The present levees are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane; Hurricane Katrina was Category 4, one short of the highest category.

As flooding ravaged a city already 80 percent under water, Army engineers tried to plug breached levees in canals leading from Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans, struggling to move sandbags and concrete barriers into two gaping holes, of 300 and 100 feet in length. The existence of a third gap of 100 feet was disclosed on Wednesday, and officials called the repair task an engineering nightmare.

But in an otherwise dismal picture of wreckage and despair, Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, offered a glimmer of hope. He said the city's flooding seemed to be stabilizing.

"The water isn't going to get higher," Colonel Ebbert said.

With the level of Lake Pontchartrain down several feet, the lake and its feeder canals had reached a point of equilibrium with the water in the city, he said.

For thousands of people trapped in New Orleans it was little consolation. Hundreds were still huddled on rooftops or isolated on patches of ground, where they have awaited rescue for two days without food or water. An armada of small boats was out, rescuing many from flooded areas in the city's poorest sections.

Other people wandered aimlessly, on land and through shallows, pushing shopping carts of belongings. Some perched on sections of Interstate 10 that were above water.

The bulk of the city's refugees were in or around the Superdome, which has become a shelter of last resort for more than 20,000 people. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said conditions there had become desperate, with food, water and other supplies running out, with toilets overflowing and the air foul, with temperatures hitting 100 degrees and tempers flaring.

"It's becoming untenable," the governor said. "There's no power. It's getting more difficult to get food and water supplies in, just basic essentials." She said she wanted the Superdome totally evacuated within two days, and plans were being made to move most of the refugees to Houston's Astrodome, 350 miles away, in a convoy of hundreds of buses. About 700 of the elderly and sick were removed from the sweltering stadium on Wednesday, but they were being sent elsewhere in the state.

At Ellington Field Airport in Houston, the first of an expected four military transport planes carrying about 150 seriously ill and injured patients from New Orleans touched down at 9:15 p. m. Wednesday.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, besides offering use of the Astrodome and other shelters in Houston, said school-age children of the refugees would be promptly admitted to Texas public schools and given textbooks, lunches and transportation.

"In the face of such tragic circumstances," Governor Perry said, "we know we're neighbors and we're going to pull together so that these families can find as much normalcy as they can. We realize that by the grace of God we could be the ones that have this extraordinary need."

Across the region, there were tales of misery, with hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses destroyed, with roads washed away and airports shut down, with power grids shattered and five million people in four states lacking electricity.

And to the rising toll of victims killed, injured or homeless and jobless were added other plagues: possible epidemics; overwhelmed hospitals and sanitation facilities; lost communications and transportation systems; and almost everywhere hellish scenes of wreckage-strewn communities.

In Mississippi, at least 110 people were dead, hundreds of waterfront homes and businesses were destroyed, nearly a million homes were without power and dozens of casinos built on barges were heavily damaged or wrecked, depriving 14,000 people of jobs and the state of $500,000 a day in tax revenues. In Biloxi, looters rifled casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. The city of Gulfport was almost destroyed, and Biloxi was heavily damaged.

In Alabama, more than 400,000 homes and businesses were without power, flooding reached 11 feet in Mobile and hundreds of homes along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay were flooded. Florida, struck by the eastern edge of the cartwheeling storm on Monday, reported 11 deaths, and more than 100,000 homes and businesses were still without power.

Returning to Washington from a Texas vacation, Mr. Bush flew over the stricken area for a first-hand look at the destruction and at a news conference later on Wednesday said his administration was committed to the relief and recovery effort.

"The folks on the Gulf Coast are going to need the help of this country for a long time," the president said. "This is going to be a difficult road. The challenges we face on the ground are unprecedented.

"But there's no doubt in my mind that we're going to succeed. Right now, the days seem awfully dark for those affected. But I'm confident that, with time, you'll get your life back in order. New communities will flourish. The great city of New Orleans will be back on its feet. And America will be a stronger place for it."

Mr. Bush formally declared a major disaster in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida as the government and a host of state, local and private agencies began what was expected to be a search, rescue and relief task rivaling those of a nation under enemy attack. "We are dealing with one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history," the president said. The response, he said, would be commensurate, but he added a note of caution: "This recovery will take a long time. This recovery will take years."

At an earlier news conference in Washington with cabinet secretaries and other government leaders, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, said the relief effort would be one of the largest response mobilizations in the nation's history, a coordinated campaign by 14 federal agencies to save lives, provide relief and lead a comprehensive recovery effort.

Under the mobilization, the Pentagon was sending in eight ships carrying food, medicine, fuel and other supplies, as well as construction materials. The Defense Department also ordered the hospital ship Comfort redeployed from Baltimore. About 60 helicopters were sent to assist in search and rescues and to haul heavy cargo and to assess damage.

Eight 14-member Swift boat rescue teams were dispatched from California aboard Air Force C-5 cargo planes. More than 11,000 members of the National Guard were already in the region, providing rescue and relief assistance, officials said. Hundreds of heavy, high-wheeled trucks capable of plowing through water were also on the way.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed 39 disaster medical assistance teams from around the country, and has mobilized 1,700 trailer trucks to carry in water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents and tarpaulins.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said that a health emergency had been declared for the region and that a network of 40 medical shelters was being set up. Public health teams were also being assembled, Mr. Leavitt said, and 2,600 hospital beds in 12 states, and 40,000 nationwide, had been identified for use, if needed.

"We are gravely concerned about the potential for cholera, typhoid and dehydrating diseases that could come as a result of the stagnant water and other conditions," he said. "We'll also be working with local officials on sanitation and food safety."

The focus of the day was on New Orleans. Asked on ABC's "Good Morning America" how long the city would be uninhabitable, Mayor Nagin said: "Before this last challenge with the rising waters, I was estimating 10 weeks. We're probably looking at 12 to 16 weeks before people can come in. And the other issue that's concerning me is we have dead bodies in the water. At some point in time, the dead bodies are going to start to create a serious disease issue."

The refugees were eager to get out. "It's not like people are just there because they want to be there right now," Governor Blanco said. "They're there because they're trapped. They're trapped in the city. They can't move about that easily."

Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico had largely been shut down during the hurricane. With the resulting drop in production, gasoline shortages developed in some areas of the country, and prices surged above $3 a gallon. In response, the Department of Energy said it would release oil from the nation's strategic reserve to offset the production losses. The announcement helped push oil prices lower.

Jeremy Alford contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., for this article; Felicity Barringer from Metairie, La.; Ralph Blumenthal and Joseph B. Treaster from New Orleans; and Robert D. McFadden from New York.

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