La. governor calls for more troops as violence rises in New Orleans

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Governor Kathleen Blanco called yesterday for massive reinforcements of National Guard and federal troops to seize control of New Orleans streets, which city officials said had disintegrated into an anarchic scene of fighting, gunfire, and unattended corpses. At least two law enforcement authorities were wounded by gunfire in the city, officials said, and a medical team was withdrawn after it came under fire.

The chaos and violence rose even as the water levels continued to abate, repair work progressed on the breached levee that had flooded much of New Orleans, and National Guard troops continued to pour into the devastated city.

''We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they had been dropped off and given no food, water, or medicine. Some rescue and relief missions were suspended because of violent encounters with frustrated crowds.

''This is a desperate SOS," said New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who called for more buses to evacuate residents and for help to restore security around the convention center.

President Bush, who planned to visit the devastated Gulf Coast region today, said the disaster surpassed the destruction of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Congressional leaders returned from their August recess to take up a $10 billion relief package.

Blanco said at least 40,000 troops are needed to reestablish control of the city and complete the massive evacuation of tens of thousands of residents who remain stranded.

''I've actually asked for uniformed troops of any sort. . . . 40,000 -- no less," said Blanco, who appeared drawn and exhausted at a news conference in Baton Rouge. ''I know there are dead bodies. Frankly, our situation is so difficult we actually believe there will be thousands, but we don't have an official count in any way or shape."

In Mississippi, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina was 126 and rising as crews drove through the coastal area, picking up bodies on sidewalks and depositing them in refrigerated mobile morgues. Coroners conducted autopsies in parking lots because the only available light was from the sun.

Outside the New Orleans convention center, at least seven bodies lay near sidewalks packed with people without food, water, or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement, according to the Associated Press. Thousands of people had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

A senior citizen lay dead in a chaise longue on a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him, according to the report. Around the corner, another senior citizen was found dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

Some Federal Emergency Management Agency rescue operations were suspended in areas where gunfire had broken out, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said in Washington. ''In areas where our employees have been determined to potentially be in danger, we have pulled back," he said.

Gunfire also was reported at New Orleans hospitals, many of which were evacuated yesterday.

''At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in, people are shooting at them," Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Cheri Ben-lesan said from the city's emergency operations center.

A National Guard military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the officer's rifle, New Orleans police Captain Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.

The reports of widespread crime and corpses in the open in New Orleans were greeted with skepticism by state officials in Baton Rouge. ''We need to watch our rhetoric," said Blanco, who added she had no confirmation about corpses lying in the streets of New Orleans. But television images left no doubt about the reports from the convention center.

Colonel Henry Whitehorn, commander of the State Police, said nearly all reports of violence had been proven to be rumors by SWAT teams that responded to calls about rioting, and that police were taking steadily increasing control of the city's streets. ''The people are just desperate and hungry," Whitehorn said. ''We feel we will have law and order."

Whitehorn said authorities are working on establishing a temporary jail to hold people accused of looting and other crimes.

By yesterday, 7,400 National Guard troops had been deployed in Louisiana and 6,000 in Mississippi, according to Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore, commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. A total of 28,000 active-duty Army and National Guard troops from around the country have been pledged to the effort along the battered Gulf Coast.

Bush has tapped Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to coordinate the federal security and relief effort.

State officials reported significant progress in repairing the worst of three breaches in the levees around New Orleans. Work began yesterday to drive interlocking steel plates into the breach at the 17th Street Canal, the biggest of the breaches that allowed the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to flood 80 percent of the city, said Cleo Allen, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation and Development. Sandbags also were dropped by helicopter at the site.

The breach will not be completely filled, she said, so that flood waters in the city can flow back into the lake. The level of Lake Pontchartrain continues to fall, officials said. At another breach, Allen said, water from New Orleans has begun moving back to the lake.

As more people were evacuated from New Orleans -- officials hope for as many as 15,000 a day -- 131 shelters set up around the state are already strained with 50,000 disaster victims. The evacuees face stays of several weeks or longer at the shelters before improved transitional housing can be found, said Nanette White, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Social Services.

''In the best case, we hope that number [only] quadrupled," White said, referring to the number of evacuees in state shelters. ''I'm scared to think about it, but I hope we are able to shelter these people instead of putting them in the morgue."

Plans to move the homeless from shelters to transitional housing are evolving, said David Passey, a FEMA spokesman. ''We're looking at everything from dorm space to converting public buildings to using campgrounds," he said. How long many of the displaced may have to live in such transitional settings was unclear as federal officials said that the recovery of New Orleans will take months and that many water-damaged structures may need to be razed.

Another FEMA official, who asked not to be identified, said the magnitude of the disaster is forcing emergency agencies to develop new plans quickly. ''We have plans to house 100,000 people," the official said. ''But when something like this comes up, we're worrying about millions of folks." Blanco estimated that the government would need to house 200,000 to 300,000 people, but many more have left the area and found shelter on their own.

Blanco said she had no estimate of the number of people still to be evacuated from New Orleans. Yesterday, hundreds of buses left New Orleans for Houston with evacuees who had been sheltered in unsanitary conditions at the Superdome. Other displaced residents followed the caravan in cars, hoping to find shelter at the Astrodome, the Houston sports stadium where evacuees will be housed temporarily.

An estimated 781,000 customers remained without electricity in Louisiana yesterday, according to state officials. Thirty nursing homes and hospitals in New Orleans had been evacuated, with some patients carried to roofs in stretchers to await an airlift by helicopter.