Us > More troops to New Orleans as refugees flee chaos

Under fire for his government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, which wrecked the city of jazz and Mardi Gras and may have killed thousands of people, Bush said he will send 7,200 additional active-duty troops over three days.

Another 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total to 40,000. A total of 54,000 military personnel are now committed to relief efforts.

"Many of our citizens are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans, and that is unacceptable," said Bush, who will return to the stricken region on Monday, a week after Katrina hammered an area the size of Britain.

After days of broken promises, U.S. troops started moving emergency supplies into New Orleans and were trying to halt widespread looting and horrific violence even as they fed evacuees and moved them to shelters in Texas.

Thousands of survivors were evacuated from the two major shelters in New Orleans -- the Superdome arena and a convention center -- where they endured brutal conditions.

Chinook helicopters holding upwards of 20 people took off and landed as fast as National Guard troops could load people at the convention center. And dozens of buses loaded up with 50 people at a time on streets nearby.

Tens of thousands of evacuees have already been taken to stadiums and other shelters in Texas and northern Louisiana. But military officials said up to 80,000 people were still stranded in New Orleans.

Many at the convention center described nights at the mercy of rapists and murderers. They complained security forces sent to guard them were trigger happy and killed innocent people.

"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. "A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck's windshield and they shot him dead."

Those who fled the city and found shelter elsewhere described horrific scenes in New Orleans' neighborhoods before they escaped.

"There were bodies floating everywhere. Lots of them. Some had bullets in them," said Michael Davis, 18, as he described his escape from a neighborhood that was immersed in more than 10 feet of water earlier this week. He ultimately found refuge at a domed arena in Lafayette, Louisiana

"THIS IS WRONG"

Many were angry at the government.

"They have us living here like animals," said Wvonnette Grace-Jordan, who was at the New Orleans convention center with five children. "We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America."

Other people were still trapped in their homes surrounded by filthy floodwater. CNN showed footage from a helicopter dropping bottles of clean water to men wading down flooded streets.

Several buildings in the city have burned to the ground in recent days for want of pumped water, with firefighters unable to do more than keep onlookers safely away.

There was blistering criticism at home and abroad of the slow, badly organized response to one of the worst natural catastrophes to hit the world's richest and most powerful country.

The administration was sending Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region on Sunday. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was due to travel there later on Saturday.

"If you look at the effect of this hurricane, except for the fact that there was no immediate large loss of life, for all intents and purposes it's as if an atomic bomb was dropped on New Orleans," Chertoff said.

Most of Katrina's victims are poor and black, unable to evacuate the area as the storm raced in, and the tragedy has highlighted the vast racial divide in the United States.

Some suggested Washington would have moved more quickly if rich whites were in danger.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," black rapper Kanye West alleged during an NBC benefit concert on Friday night for Hurricane Katrina victims. The Bush administration has rejected accusations of racial bias in the response to the hurricane.

Bush promised on Saturday to fix the failings of the emergency efforts.

"Where our response is not working we'll make it right. Where our response is working we will duplicate it," he said.

Bush signed a $10.5 billion relief package for Gulf Coast areas hit by Katrina, and lawmakers said they planned to allocate more money in the coming weeks.

COLLECTING CORPSES

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said rescue teams were collecting bodies and sending them to morgues, but he declined to discuss a body count.

"We are starting the collection of bodies, treating them with respect, getting them into morgues and tagging them," he said.

As Army troops and National Guard units establish control of New Orleans, they will seek to drive looting gangs off the streets and disarm them.

Jim Letten, the U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, said law enforcement agencies were beginning to get a grip on the situation after the mayhem of the past five days.

"The streets of New Orleans belong to its citizens, not the violent thugs who have stuck their heads up out of holes in an attempt to exploit a national tragedy," Letten told reporters.

Across the United States, gas prices vaulted to over $3 a gallon after Katrina's 140 mph (225 kph) winds shut eight oil refineries and crippled others.

Marathon Oil, which had one refinery shut and two others with reduced output due to the hurricane, said it would be back at full capacity by Monday. It was not immediately clear when the other refineries shut by the hurricane would resume production.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it would take between 36 and 80 days to remove floodwaters that swamped New Orleans.

Work crews gained control over one of the breaches in the levee and expected to have another major gap closed on Saturday, said Brig. Gen. Robert Crear.

2005-09-04