Armoured military vehicles and National Guard troops started
moving into New Orleans yesterday
amid continuing reports of violence and chaos,
including shots fired at a helicopter evacuating from the Superdome to
Houston. The chaos threatens to further disrupt relief
efforts and attempts by authorities to rescue residents still trapped
in the flooded city and
evacuate thousands of others living among corpses and human waste,
reports CNN.

The death toll
continues to rise, with officials fearing a massive
public health crisis from poor sanitary conditions, including tons of
spoiling shrimp and chicken strewn through neighbourhood streets. Death
toll estimates still range in the thousands, with countless people missing.

“This is a desperate SOS,”
said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in a statement yesterday afternoon, with
thousands of people still stranded with no food, water or electricity – and
fading hope. Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael Brown said his
agency was attempting to work “under conditions of urban warfare.” Police
warned media to stay off the streets because of escalating danger, and
cautioned others about attempted shootings and rapes.

But as chaos reigns, many are questioning why America’s response to Katrina has been so inadequate. It’s “a national
disgrace,” said the head of New Orleans’s
emergency operations, Terry Ebbert, of
the response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “FEMA has been here three days, yet there is not command and
control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can’t
bail out the city of New Orleans.” And what’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice doing “laughing it up” at a Broadway performance of Monty Python farce Spamalot while
the Gulf Coast lays in tatters?

President Bush
asks for the people of the Gulf coast to be patient and urges all
Americans not to buy petrol if they don’t need it. While House Speaker
Dennis Hastert suggests it’s not worth rebuilding New Orleans: “It doesn’t make sense to me,” he told the Chicago Daily Herald. “And it’s a question that
certainly we should ask.”

Meanwhile, seventy miles west of New Orleans,
the state capital of Baton Rouge
received its own storm surge overnight, says The
Washington Post:
a huge wave of displaced people, “dragging their anger, misery and desperation
along with them.” The influx of about 3,000 hurricane refugees has seen Baton
Rouge become the largest city in Louisiana
in one day, with local officials predicting it could double in size, to
about 800,000, permanently.