Ivan! Jeanne! & Karl & Dennis The Menace & Katrina

Evacuation of Superdome halted after shots fired

The Associated Press
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2005

The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were reported fired at a military helicopter and arson fires broke out outside the arena. No injuries were immediately reported.

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. Paramedics became increasingly alarmed by the sight of people with guns.

Richard Zeuschlag, chief of the ambulance service that was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome, said it was suspending operations ''until they gain control of the Superdome.''

Shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak, he 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.

Tens of thousands of people started rushing out of other buildings when they saw buses pulling up and hoped to get on, he said. But the immediate focus was on evacuating people from the Superdome, and the other refugees were left to mill around.

Zeuschlag said paramedics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of people with guns at the Superdome. 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 100 people were on the landing pad, some with guns.

''He was frightened and would not land,'' Zeuschlag. [..]

Astrodome officials said they would accept only the 25,000 people stranded at the Superdome ?- a rule that was tested when a school bus arrived from New Orleans filled with families with children seeking shelter.

At first, Astrodome officials said the refugees couldn't come in, but then allowed them to enter for food and water. Another school bus also was allowed in.

The Astrodome is far from a hotel, but it was a step above the dank, sweltering Superdome, where the floodwaters were rising, the air conditioning was out, the ceiling leaked, trash piled up and toilets were broken. [..]

In New Orleans, the refugees had lined up for the first buses, some inching along in wheelchairs, some carrying babies. Almost everyone carried a plastic bag or bundled bedspread holding the few possessions they had left. Many had no idea where they were heading.


''We tried to find out. We're pretty much adrift right now,'' said Cyril Ellisworth, 46. ''We're pretty much adrift in life. They tell us to line up and go, and we just line up and go.''

The Astrodome's new residents will be issued passes that will allow them to leave and return as they please, something that wasn't permitted in New Orleans. [..]

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said.

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

Mayor has sent out an SOS.

New Orleans Mayor Issues 'Desperate SOS'
By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS - Fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. "This is a desperate SOS," the mayor said.

"We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and he and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing ?- no food, no water, no medicine.