New Orleans the Lost City

[musicradio77]

From the Daily News:

New Orleans the lost city

Teary gov orders full-scale evacuation
No drinking water as main is severed
Looting chaos spurs martial law

BY RICHARD SISK in Washington
and CORKY SIEMASZKO in New York
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

New Orleans was ordered evacuated last night after levees weakened by Hurricane Katrina gave way and the roiling waters of Lake Pontchartrain flooded the historic jazz city.

"The magnitude of the situation is untenable," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, her eyes wet with tears, said after giving the unprecedented order. "It's just heartbreaking."

Coast Guard helicopters, hovering like giant dragonflies over a watery hell, plucked thousands of stranded survivors from rooftops while cops in boats rescued hundreds more. But they could not keep pace with the rising waters that inundated more than 80% of the city.

With food and water scarce and looters running rampant in some neighborhoods, officials declared martial law and prepared to do the unthinkable - abandon one of America's most storied and beloved cities.

"We've lost our city," said Marc Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans, now serving as president of the National Urban League. "I fear it's potentially like Pompeii."

President Bush cut short his Crawford, Tex., vacation and returned to Washington to deal with what may turn out to be the nation's worst-ever natural disaster.

Katrina has been blamed for more than 100 deaths, mostly in Mississippi, and the toll is expected to go higher. More than a million people across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were without power and clean drinking water. Millions more were displaced by Monday's storm, and officials feared it could be months before most would be able to return.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dispatched an emergency crew to New Orleans to save the city. They hoped to seal the 200-foot-wide gap in the 17th St. Canal Levee by dropping 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach.

But New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said last night that efforts to stop the flow of water were failing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the Pentagon to activate its U.S. Northern Command's joint task force in case troops are needed to police the region.

"We're gonna be reinventing New Orleans," said Bill Lokey, regional director of FEMA.

Famous for partying in the face of adversity, New Orleans thought it had dodged a bullet when Katrina veered eastward early Monday and hit Mississippi and Alabama with the full force of its fury. Many tourists hit Bourbon St. and celebrated till dawn.

But yesterday the Big Easy woke up to a big mess - and 20- foot-deep water in large swaths of the city. Adding to the misery, officials discovered the storm had severed a major water main, leaving the city without drinkable water.

"The devastation is greater than our worst fears," Blanco said. "It's totally overwhelming."

Most of New Orleans' 485,000 residents had heeded the order to evacuate ahead of Katrina, but thousands too poor to make the trek rode out the storm in homes that turned into deathtraps when the floodwaters rose.

Caught in their attics, some chopped their way out through the roofs with pickaxes. There were reports of others using shotguns to blast their way out.

Scrambling onto their rooftops, they screamed, "Help! Help!" and waved shirts tied to sticks to alert the Coast Guard choppers, which lowered daredevil officers in baskets to carry thousands of people to safety.

"I was so scared I don't feel I have any entrails anymore," said 80-year-old Mary Stewart, after she was rescued from the attic of a beauty salon.

Officials reported that a 3-foot shark had been spotted cruising the flooded streets.

Nagin said that with hundreds, if not thousands, of people still trapped, rescue boats could not collect the corpses that police spotted in the water.

"We're not even dealing with dead bodies," Nagin said. "They're just pushing them on the side."

The Superdome swelled with thousands of storm refugees from all parts of the city. But with water rising around the stadium and aid trucks unable to reach the refugees, the 10,000-plus people were ordered to leave New Orleans - possibly for good. The governor said last night she wanted the Superdome evacuated within two days.

Patients in hospital smocks were evacuated from city hospitals, and the most desperately ill were flown by chopper to hospitals deeper into Louisiana and Texas.

Prisoners - some of them soaking wet after spending hours in flooded cells - were marched at gunpoint onto armored buses that took them to lockups outside of Baton Rouge.

Even the venerable Times-Picayune newspaper was forced to abandon its newsroom and decamp for higher ground in the suburbs.

Earlier, looters descended on the French Quarter like locusts. A New Orleans cop was shot in the head in one confrontation with looters but is expected to survive.

Denise Bollinger, a tourist from Philadelphia, watched the looting in amazement. "It's downtown Baghdad," she said.

[Dean Winchester]

as popularized by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday and more recently, Harry Connick Jr.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss her each night and day
I know I'm not wrong because the feeling's
Getting stronger the longer I stay away

Miss the moss-covered vines, tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
I'd love to see that old lazy Mississippi
Running in the spring

Moonlight on the bayous
Creole tunes fill the air
I dream about magnolias in June
And I'm wishin I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans

[Stormtracker TF]

Simply unbelievable to see a city that huge being completely abandoned. New Orleans will never be the same...That whole area will never be the same. This will almost certainly be the worst natural disaster in US history.

[The Chauffeur]

That was the last city in the US i wanted to visit. But now even if it was rebuilt, I don't know if I could enjoy visiting it. But if they do, I made a promise to myself I would go and spend to support tourism

[Penny Lane]

I don't know. Should it even be rebuilt? Maybe it should just be used as a seaport. The city is so vulnerable being below sea level. It will take years and mucho $ to rebuild. What a catastrphe!

[EmoJoe]

I hope its rebuilt.

[Rene]

its weird to think that this will actually be in history books

[Pitooey]

This catastrophe is unbelievable.

It just makes me so sad........