'Hope is Fading' at New Orleans Convention Center

Rapes, beatings and armed robberies were reported in parts of the city, and Gov. Kathleen Blanco issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq have landed in New Orleans. “They have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded,” she said. “These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.” At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to Houston, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a line that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses. After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on to the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.

    New Orleans – Four days after Hurricane Katrina blasted through, corpses continued to rot along sidewalks and thousands remained stranded – crying for food, water and a way to evacuate.

    By midmorning Friday, despite a constant buzzing of military helicopters overhead, there was still no sign of the relief to the thousands at the city’s convention center.

    “I’m trying to keep hope alive, but slowly my hope is fading,” said refugee Carl Clark. “Believe it or not, these people are human. Right now they’re crowded like animals. They’re trying to keep their dignity. ... I don’t even know what the Red Cross looks like.”

    Raymond Whitfield, 51, watched a National Guard truck drive by the convention center, but like most other official vehicles, it did not stop.

    “The National Guard just drives around and around. I know the police, the National Guard, they got generators, so they can sleep and eat,” he said.

    “Look at them,” he said of the men inside the truck, “they’re not even sweating.”

    “Everybody’s on the edge right now,” said 28-year-old Kenya Green. “Every day, it’s ‘The bus is coming, The bus is coming,’ but still nothing. ... They don’t give us no information.”

    *Bush Critical*

    President Bush, before leaving for a trip…

Posted by ShiftShapers
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