The Superdome evacuation has been halted due to a military helicopter taking gunfire. This is lovely:
The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were fired at a military helicopter, an ambulance official overseeing the operation said. No immediate injuries were reported.
"We have suspended operations until they gain control of the Superdome," said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome.
He said that military would not fly out of the Superdome either because of the gunfire and that the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control.
"That's not enough," Zeuschlag. "We need a thousand."
He said that shots were fired at a military helicopter over the Superdome before daybreak.
He also said that during the night, when a medical evacuation helicopter tried to land at a hospital in the outlying town of Kenner, the pilot reported that 100 people were on the landing pad, and some of them had guns.
"He was frightened and would not land," Zeuschlag.
He said medics were calling him and crying for help because they were so scared of people with guns at the Superdome.
Katrina did her worst, now some people are going to do theirs. I don't know why they just got around yesterday to activating more National Guard. You'd have to figure you'd need all the soldiers you could lay your hands on if the lid came off New Orleans.
I'm sure this situation is exactly the reason they didn't want to evacuate the city in the first place --the dregs of society would stay behind to have a field day.
UPDATE
All boat rescues have been suspended as well.
UPDATE II
Bedlam at the Superdome.
This whole problem (or at least, a lot of what the problem is) could be averted by making mandatory bussing to anywhere else available for those who had no independent means to leave, when/as a mandatory evacuation order is issued, or in the case of New Orleans, was.
Like this: prearrange corridors and locations for shelters for massive numbers of people without independent means to transport themselves and then issue the evac order, announce where the busses are picking up people and then line up the busses and take as many as possible out of harm's way.
It's frustrating to leave the most incapable behind to create even more incapable conditions that the more able will have to then contend with in addition to looking out for themselves.
We really need a process established for mandatory evacuations before they are issued: mandatory, meaning everyone and a process by which the most unable among us can be included despite their inability to manage their own conditions.
Posted by: -S- at September 1, 2005 02:04 PMWhat's the Over and Under on the pool for the amount of time before the report on the Bush Admin's failure to prepare for the looting that they knew would happen as soon as the hurricane hit? Because it is all his fault, you know.
The current insurgency in New Orleans is just additional proof that we should never have gone in there in the first place.
Posted by: James at September 1, 2005 02:21 PMLMAO James! You are absolutely right! Thanks for the chuckle...
I logged on to vent that I just saw Bob Schiefer of CBS news actually say that fear, anger, and frustration is what was "making" these ignorant, bog-trotting, opportunistic, looting sociopaths shoot at the rescuers trying to help them.
That attitude and the political mileage Bush's enemies are trying to get out of making this whole situation--from the hurricane itself on down to the inability to "beam" the survivors to instant safety--his fault are one of the biggest problems in NO. It's ain't just the broken levees...
If law-abiding citizens and/or LE had picked off the first batch of looters that tried to break into a hospital or make off with the electronics department of Wal-Mart, and kept on picking off anyone who exhibited that kind of behavior, I bet most of this wouldn't be happening. But I'd bet my bank account (which, granted, isn't much) that the token LE officers that were first sent in to quell the looting were told not to "hurt" anyone.
Jeez.
Posted by: Amy at September 1, 2005 03:06 PMGlad to see I'm not the only one that thinks this!
Posted by: lynnieb at September 3, 2005 07:59 AM