Reuters
Wednesday August 31, 06:22 PM
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - About 23,000 refugees stuck at the New Orleans Superdome arena after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city will be given shelter in Houston, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said on Wednesday, as looters and rising floodwaters sowed chaos in the devastated Louisiana city.
Perry told a news conference he would allow the refugees to shelter in the Houston Astrodome after neighboring Louisiana Advertisement
Gov. Kathleen Blanco asked for help.
He expected to see people arriving from New Orleans, about 350 miles (550 km) away, in the next 24 hours, aboard some 500 buses provided by federal emergency officials.
In New Orleans, engineers tried to plug a leaking levee that let lake water pour into the city two days after Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast. People left stranded were running out of food and water and growing desperate as authorities tried to decide how to get them out.
"We've sent buses in. We will be either loading them by boat, helicopter, anything that is necessary," Blanco told ABC's "Good Morning America."
Katrina's death toll was more than 100 and expected to rise much higher.
The U.S. Energy Department said it would release oil from a strategic reserve to offset losses in the Gulf of Mexico, where the storm had shut down production. U.S. crude-oil prices eased below $70 per barrel on the news, but gasoline futures prices jumped by about 20 cents per gallon, to $2.67.
Katrina struck Louisiana with 140 mph (224 kph) winds, while slamming into the coasts of neighboring Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida.
A 30-foot (10-metre) storm surge in Mississippi wiped away 90 percent of the buildings along the coast at Biloxi and Gulfport.
At least 110 people died in Mississippi. "We're just estimating, but the number could go double or triple from what we're talking about now," a civil defence director told the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion Ledger.
Biloxi, Mississippi, spokesman Vincent Creel earlier said the death toll would be "in the hundreds."
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu told reporters she had heard at least 50 to 100 people were dead in New Orleans.
A million people fled the New Orleans area before Katrina arrived. But former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy estimated 80,000 were trapped in the flooded city and urged U.S. President George W. Bush to send more troops.
"We have to send the army to stop this or we will lose New Orleans and we will lose 80,000 people," Barthelemy told CNN. "If we can spend the monies that we are spending to help the people in Iraq, then we can do the same thing for New Orleans."
The U.S. military was sending a hospital ship and two helicopter-carriers to assist two other Navy ships already conducting rescues in the area. Governors of the afflicted states mobilized 8,000 National Guard troops.
Amid the looting, gun-toting citizens took to the streets in some areas to try to restore order in New Orleans. Where it was still dry, some store owners sat in front of their businesses, guns in hand.
One had put up a sign reading:
"You loot, I shoot."
Louisiana officials said 3,000 people had been rescued, but many more waited to be picked up in boats that cruised flooded streets or helicopters that buzzed overhead.
"I'm alive. I'm alive," shouted a joyous woman as she was ferried from a home nearly swallowed by the flood.
BODIES FLOATING
Rescue teams busy saving people left bodies floating in the high waters.
Looting erupted as people broke into stores to grab supplies, television sets, jewellery, clothes and computers.
"It's a lot of chaos right now," Louisiana state police Director H.L. Whitehorn said.
New Orleans at first appeared to have received a glancing blow from Katrina, but the raging waters of Lake Pontchartrain tore holes in the levees that protect the low-lying city, then slowly filled it up.
Mayor Ray Nagin said 80 percent of the city was submerged in water that was in places 20 feet (6 metres) deep.
Attempts failed on Tuesday to plug a 200-foot gap (60-metre-) in the levee system with 3,000-pound (1,360-kg) sandbags and concrete barriers, but officials said they would keep trying.
"The National Guard has been dropping sandbags into it, but it's like dropping it into a black hole," Blanco said.
The lake should return to normal levels within about 36 hours, and the water now flooding New Orleans would begin to drain, said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers senior project engineer Al Naomi.
CARJACKINGS
He said the historic French Quarter, the main draw for New Orleans' huge tourist industry, should escape with only minor flooding because it sits 5 feet (1.5 metres) above sea level.
But Nagin estimated it would be 12 to 16 weeks before residents could return. The floods knocked out electricity, contaminated the water supply and cut off most highway routes into New Orleans.
In hard-hit Jefferson Parish, parish president Aaron Broussard said, "Jefferson Parish as we knew it is gone forever."
Police said there were dozens of carjackings overnight, by desperate survivors trying to leave town or obtain supplies. Somebody fired at a rescue helicopter Tuesday night, forcing its crew to abandon efforts to evacuate patients from a hospital, a state official said.
Authorities were so intent on rescuing flood victims that at first they let the looting go unstopped, Nagin said.
But he told CNN the situation had escalated and authorities were "bringing it under control as we speak."
He said 3,500 National Guard troops were being sent to New Orleans. Louisiana state police were sending 40 troopers and two armored personnel carriers.
Authorities sought to cope with a growing number homeless evacuees. Conditions had deterirorated in the Superdome, which had no electricity and holes in the roof caused by the storm.
Katrina knocked out electricity to about 2.3 million customers, or nearly 5 million people, in four states, utility companies said. Restoring power could take weeks, they warned.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be provided to an unnamed oil refining company as early as Thursday.
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