Tens Of Thousands Still Stranded In New Orleans
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Breaking News, Hurricane KatrinaThe rescue efforts have stepped up, but this story by the Washington Post demonstrates the sheer number of people who were left stranded in Katrina’s wake.
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 — Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country’s emergency management.President Bush authorized the dispatch of 7,200 active-duty ground troops to the area — the first major commitment of regular ground forces in the crisis — and the Pentagon announced that an additional 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total Guard contingent to about 40,000.
What’s the mood on the ground?
But there remained an overwhelming display of human misery on the streets of New Orleans, where the last 1,500 people were being evacuated from the Convention Center amid an overpowering odor of human waste and rotting garbage. The evacuees, most of them black and poor, spoke of violence, anarchy and family members who died for lack of food, water and medical care.
And apparently, Bush has requested to take over the operation.
Is this politics or an effort to do some real good?
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
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