Its only getting worse:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/
NEW ORLEANS - Storm victims were raped and beaten, fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as parts of hurricane-flooded New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. “This is a desperate SOS,” Mayor Ray Nagin said.
Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims grew increasingly hungry, thirsty and tired of waiting for buses to take them out.
“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 evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing — no food, no water, no medicine.
About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at the center to await buses grew increasingly hostile. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly beaten back by an angry mob.
“We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten,” Compass said. “Tourists are walking in that direction, and they are getting preyed upon.”
In hopes of defusing the unrest at the convention center, Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city’s unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam at the convention center appeared to make leaving difficult.
Meantime, a frenzied rescue effort was under way up and down the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama, where seaside communities built on resort and casino business were flattened.
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city underwater.
In a statement to CNN, Nagin said: “This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don’t anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we’re running out of supplies.”
In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the government is sending 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting and other lawlessness in New Orleans. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city, he said.
But across the city, rescuers themselves came under attack from storm victims.
“Hospitals are trying to evacuate,” said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center.