Hurricane Katrina

Mayor authorizes forced evacuations

07:35 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Associated Press

AP

California National Guardsman Spc. Russell Palmer prays outside a home where a body was found in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS — To the estimated 10,000 residents still believed to be holed up in this ruined city, the mayor had a blunt new warning: Get out now—or risk being taken out by force.

As floodwaters began to slowly recede with the first of the city's pumps returning to operation, Mayor C. Ray Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to leave.

Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said that forced removal of citizens had not yet begun. "That's an absolute last resort," he said.

Nagin's order targets those still in the city unless they have been designated as helping with the relief effort. Repeated calls to Nagin's spokeswoman, Tami Frazier, seeking comment were not returned.

The move—which supersedes an earlier, milder order to evacuate made before Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore Aug. 29—comes after rescuers scouring New Orleans found hundreds of people willing to defy repeated urgings to get out.

They included people like Dennis Rizzuto, 38, who said he had plenty of water, food to last a month and a generator powering his home. He and his family were offered a boat ride to safety, but he declined.

"They're going to have to drag me," Rizzuto said.

That's a sentiment Capt. Scott Powell, of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, has heard before as he tries to evacuate people by air boat.

"A lot of people don't want to leave. They've got dogs and they just want to stay with their homes. They say they're going to stay until the water goes down," he said.

In Washington, President Bush and Congress pledged Tuesday to open separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina and New Orleans' broken levees. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., reiterated her calls for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be made autonomous from the Department of Homeland Security and for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the disaster, saying neither Congress nor the administration should do it.

"The people that I met in Houston—they want answers and they want to know what went wrong and they want to know what they are going to be able to count on in the future," she told NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, two days after visiting refugees at the Astrodome. "I don't think the government can investigate itself."

The pumping began after the Corps used hundreds of sandbags and rocks over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street Canal levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80 percent of this below sea-level city.

Although toxic floodwaters receded inch by inch, only five of New Orleans' normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating, the Army Corps of Engineers said.

How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of the pumps—especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from time to time.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said lawlessness in the city "has subsided tremendously," and officers warned that those caught looting in an area where the governor has declared an emergency can get up to 15 years in prison. About 120 prisoners filled a downtown jail set up at the city's train and bus terminal.

"We continue to get better day by day," Compass said.

Some National Guardsmen and helicopters were diverted from their search missions Tuesday to fight fires, an emerging threat in a city that has no water pressure to fight fires or electricity, which has prompted holdouts to use candles.

In a plea to those who might be listening to portable radios, Nagin warned that the fetid floodwater could carry disease and that natural gas was leaking all over town.

"This is not a safe environment," Nagin said. "I understand the spirit that's basically, `I don't want to abandon my city.' It's OK. Leave for a little while. Let us get you to a better place. Let us clean the city up."

To that end, the Pentagon began sending 5,000 paratroopers from the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division to use small boats to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in flooded sections of the city.

Some people may already be heeding the mayor's message. After surviving for days in New Orleans, Johnnie Lee MacGuire finally accepted an offer to evacuate.

"It's too filthy. Look at that—the fish is dead, you got dead dogs, you got dead people around there," the 66-year-old said.

Floodwaters also had receded from St. Bernard Parish southeast of New Orleans, but it was still a disaster scene with bedroom dressers and hot tubs scattered on roofs, toilet seats dangling in tree limbs and cars overturned in driveways. Water gurgled and spouted where natural gas seeped from below.

While New Orleans waited for the floodwaters to recede before counting its dead, the effort to accurately catalogue Mississippi's toll was struggling to keep up with the decaying effect of 90-degree heat.

Even when cadaver dogs pick up a scent, workers say they frequently can't get at the bodies without heavy equipment. That's leading officials to estimate that more than 1,000 people could be dead. As of Tuesday night, workers had recovered 196 bodies in Mississippi, the majority coming from coastal counties.

Nagin has estimated New Orleans' dead could reach 10,000.

"The state doesn't know the answer," said Lea Stokes, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. "I know people don't want to hear that, but we just don't know."

That uncertainty has led to an agonizing wait for people who are desperate to locate family and friends but cannot fathom the scope of the storm's devastation.

"We get a lot of information about New Orleans, but I don't even know how bad Alabama and Mississippi are," said Darryl Moch, 32, of Portland, Ore., who has tried for days to locate his best friend, Leon Harvey Packer, of Biloxi. "How bad was Mississippi hit? What's the number of people displaced? What's the estimated damage?"