Hanging in There

Written by: Tara Liloia on Sep 2, 2005 10:41 PM EDT

Though President Bush attempted to reassure the American people that help had arrived today, the situation in Louisiana is not improving quickly. More than 10,000 people are feared dead as survivors of Hurricane Katrina wait out their fourth day in the city waiting for rescue.

At Charity Hospital, New Orleans' largest public hospital, the staff coped with the food and water shortage by giving each other intravenous drips of sugar solutions just to stay alive to care for their patients.

The Superdome, which was supposed to be the "safe" place where residents could evacuate, has turned into a chaotic and disorganized mess that has become dangerous to the evacuees:

Keith Brooks left the Superdome two days after he arrived.

"It wasn't fit for a dog in there," he said.

The food was "slop." Officials threw bottles of water for people to catch, he said. He recalled sick, elderly people being ignored and said he saw a 14-year-old girl being raped.

Violence has has escalated on both the sides of the law as the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, made it clear that looters faced the very real possibility of being killed:

"These troops are battle-tested. They have M16s and are locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

Blanco's draconian response may be due in part to desperation on the part of the police force. Reports state that approximately a third of the New Orleans police force deserted their jobs after the hurricane, leaving the remaining officers short of men and quickly overwhelmed. On CNN, a frustrated officer recounted the tug of war going on between the strained police force and those needing help:

"People want help, so we try to help them. We don't get there fast enough, so they shoot."

The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, throwing aside the usual political back-patting, has made several emphatic pleas on behalf of his residents:

"I need reinforcements. I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. Now get off your asses and fix this. Let's do something and let's fix the biggest goddam crisis in the history of this country."

"This is a national disaster," he said. "Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get it here to New Orleans."

Bush's response today to a woman in Biloxi, Mississippi who had lost everything... "Hang in there."

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