National SITREP Report ..Sunday Sept. 4 2005

[Downdraft]

National Situation Update: Sunday, September 4, 2005
Homeland Security Threat Level: YELLOW (ELEVATED).
Exhaustion And Illness Adding To The City's Death Toll
Thousands of angry, exhausted and desperate storm victims gained a measure of deliverance Saturday as the evacuation of New Orleans continued and troops poured in to restore order after almost a week of near-anarchy. By yesterday evening, significant progress had been made clearing the Superdome and the city's convention center, two potentially dangerous flash points of anger where as many as 50,000 people had spent five grueling days since Hurricane Katrina struck.

Having largely emptied the cavernous Superdome, which had become a squalid pit of misery and violence, officials turned their attention to the convention center, where people waited to be evacuated as corpses rotted in the streets. The death toll in the city is not known, but the dying continues as people succumb to illness, exhaustion and days without food and water.

Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a prison in the town of St. Gabriel, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies. Search-and-rescue operations continued throughout New Orleans. State officials said thousands more remained trapped in the city and a full evacuation could take weeks.

Almost 13,000 Coast Guard personnel are in the city performing search-and-rescue operations and another 3,000 are expected to join them Monday. At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, about 1,000 people - tired and dirty from living for days on the sidewalks outside the center - were loaded into air-conditioned buses in the first two hours of the evacuation operation Saturday morning. An estimated 25,000 people have been waiting for help outside the center.

Food and water arrived there on military trucks for the first time Friday. People were relieved to get some supplies, but they were more interested in escaping the dreadful conditions. The National Guard said the evacuees will be taken to shelters in Houston, San Antonio and Baton Rouge. People were allowed to take whatever belongings they could carry onto the bus. Some carried or dragged bags and suitcases loaded with possessions from home; others took ice chests, food and blankets.

Louis Armstrong International Airport served as a massive clearing house for some of the storm's sickest victims Saturday. Military and Coast Guard helicopters flew a steady stream of evacuees from hospitals and rooftops to the airport southwest of downtown. Inside the four triage tents, medical personnel tended to people who had gone for days without their medication, some of whom were not lucid enough to describe their ailments.

With the evacuee situation stabilizing somewhat, and increasing numbers of armed soldiers and police on the streets, officials said Saturday they would start aggressively dealing with the bands of armed looters who pushed the city to the brink of complete breakdown. Frustration at the slow rate of recovery and the federal response to the disaster also mounted Saturday in Mississippi and Alabama, where storm victims voiced resentment that New Orleans seemed to be getting most of the attention. (Media Sources)