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New Orleans mayor: Thousands likely dead

Cars are piled up among debris from Hurricane Katrina Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005 in Gulfport, Miss. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)



NEW ORLEANS -- Authorities all but surrendered the streets of New Orleans to floodwaters, looting and other lawlessness Wednesday as the mayor called for a total evacuation and warned the death toll from Hurricane Katrina could reach into the thousands.

The frightening estimate came as desperation deepened in the city, with gunfire crackling sporadically and looters by the hundreds roaming the streets and ransacking tiny shops and big-box stores alike with seeming impunity.


"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

That would make Katrina the deadliest natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

With most of the city under water, Army engineers struggled to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers, and authorities drew up plans to clear out the tens of thousands of people left in the Big Easy and practically abandon the below-sea-level city. Most of the evacuees - including thousands now suffering in the hot and muggy Superdome - will be moved to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away.

There will be a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months," Nagin said. And he said people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

President Bush flew over the ravaged city and parts of Mississippi's hurricane-blasted coastline in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."

"We're dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history," Bush said later in a televised address from the White House, which most victims could not see because power remains out to 1 million Gulf Coast residents.

The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in U.S. history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the "golden 72 hours" rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.

As fires burned from broken natural-gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard frantically dropping baskets to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145-mph fury Monday. Atop one apartment building, two children held up a giant sign scrawled with the words: "Help us!"

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, 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.

Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched. On Tuesday, an officer who tried to intervene was shot in the head and critically wounded.

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.

Starting late Wednesday, authorities planned to move at least 25,000 storm refugees to the Astrodome in a vast, two-day convoy of some 500 buses provided by the federal government. With the air-conditioning knocked out, the Superdome has become stifling, its toilets are broken and there is nowhere for anyone to bathe.

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.

"We have to," Nagin said. "It's not living conditions."

In addition to the Astrodome solution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, and so-called floating dormitories.

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 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage. Read More


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