New Orleans Evacuation under Way as more Storms Looming over US

09/09/2005| IslamWeb

More stragglers seem willing to flee the filthy water and stench of death as increasingly insistent rescuers make what may be their last peaceful pass through swamped New Orleans before using force.

Across a flooded city where as many as 10,000 holdouts were believed to be stubbornly staying put, police made it clear in orders barked from front porches and through closed doors that they would return - next time, getting tough.

The job of carrying out the mayor's order was left largely to the 1000 or so remaining members of New Orleans' beleaguered police force.

The near-conclusion of the voluntary evacuation came as receding floodwaters revealed still more rotting corpses.

Dr Bryan Patucci, coroner of St Bernard Parish, said the nursing home staff apparently believed it was more dangerous to move the residents than keep them at the building.

He said it may be impossible to identify all the victims until authorities compile a final list of missing persons.

The Army Corps of Engineers said the city was still about 60% flooded - down from as much as 80% last week - but was slowly being drained by 37 of the 174 pumps in the Orleans, St Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, and 17 portable pumps.

Together, those pumps can move 311 cubic metres of water per second, roughly equal to 432 Olympic-size swimming pools per hour.

In Washington, the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said the decision to pour heavily contaminated floodwaters from New Orleans streets into Lake Pontchartrain could pose future environmental problems.

Some 400,000 homes in the city are without power, with no immediate prospect of getting it back. Where water has been restored, it is not drinkable.

The city is still dangerous - not primarily, as it was last week, from armed criminals, but from the sewage-laden floodwaters, which are believed to contain E coli and other dangerous germs.

Fires were also a continuing problem. At least 11 blazes burned across the city on Thursday, including a rash of fires that raged across the campus of historically black Dillard University, destroying three large buildings.

More storms looming over US

US President George W Bush has asked Congress for an extra 52 billion dollars to help the regions devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

It has wreaked havoc throughout the southern Gulf states, spanning an area half the size of France.

And forecasters are predicting more storms, such as Ophelia which is nearing Florida and Nate which passed south of Bermuda on Wednesday.

The hurricane Katrina is estimated to have cost the US nearly 100 billion dollars, severely affecting oil production in the Gulf, and could significantly slow down the country's economy until reconstruction starts.

Bungler Bush

A German minister has caused uproar by saying US President George W Bush should be "shot down" for his handling of the crisis in hurricane-struck New Orleans.

Andreas Renner, Social Minister for Baden-Wuertemberg, dropped his bombshell during a visit to a local company.

Opposition Social Democrat (SPD) politicians in the state called for his resignation, noting conservatives were quick to call for the resignation in 2002 of a former SPD national justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who compared Bush to Hitler. She was later replaced.

PHOTO CAPTION

A dead body is covered with a tarp and marked with an 'X' beneath an overpass in New Orleans. (AFP)