New Orleans police were on Friday preparing to begin the first forcible removals of the estimated 10 000 residents still refusing to leave the city.
A final sweep for voluntary refugees was under way on Thursday night, but some locals were already being taken away by force.
National Guard officers led at least three people away in plastic handcuffs. A Houston Chronicle reporter saw officers handcuff a resident of the Garden District who they said had become belligerent after being asked about evacuation.
Others witnessed two people in handcuffs being loaded into a truck. ”Those two were intoxicated and they didn’t want to go, but they are just roaming around causing trouble,” an officer said.
In the city’s historic French Quarter, many people were still warning on Thursday that they would hold out to the bitter end.
The evacuation is expected to get tougher on Friday after the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Tuesday approved an order permitting mandatory removals.
An armed drug enforcement team was going from house to house in the city’s Ninth Ward yesterday, breaking down doors to find stragglers and persuade them to evacuate.
Many are already giving up their attempts to hold out as water supplies run out and floodwaters, clogged with sewage and toxic waste, fail to recede.
”Some are finally saying ‘I’ve had enough’,” Michael Keegan, a US immigration and customs enforcement spokesperson said. ”They are getting dehydrated. They are running out of food. There are human remains in different houses. The smells mess with your psyche.”
The 1 000 police officers responsible for enforcing the mayor’s order insist they will be firm but fair.
”We are not going to be rough,” police chief Eddie Compass said. ”We are going to be sensitive. We are going to use the minimum amount of force.”
There is still no clear picture of how many have died. Emergency crews have ordered 25 000 body bags, and officials say more than 10 000 people could be dead. However, the official death toll across the Gulf states is still only just over 300.
But hundreds more corpses are expected to be discovered as the floodwaters recede and rescuers begin the grim task of searching through flooded buildings for people who were unable to escape the rising waters.
Gregg Silverman, a volunteer rescuer, said he had expected to find many more survivors in the city’s flooded streets. Instead, he found mostly bodies.
”They had me climb up on a roof, and I did bring an axe up to where a guy had tried to stick a pipe up through a vent,” Silverman said.
”Unfortunately, he had probably just recently perished. His dog was still there, barking. The dog wouldn’t come. We had to leave the dog just up there in the attic.”
Talking about the other bodies he and fellow rescue workers had found, he said: ”Obviously, we are not recovering them. We are just tying them up to banisters, leaving them on the roof.”
Army engineers pumping water from the city said they feared floating bodies could become caught in the pumps, which are currently removing 311 cubic metres of water a second.
”It’s got a huge focus of our attention right now,” said John Rickey, of the army corps of engineers. ”Those remains are people’s loved ones.”
In Washington, Congress approved a $52-billion budget for additional emergency aid on top of $10,5-billion already provided, and officials admitted that the total bill was likely to exceed $100-billion.
The cost of housing and support to individuals alone accounts for $23-billion of the latest budget approval.
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, made the first visit to New Orleans by a top-level government official on Thursday night, but attracted as much criticism as praise.
One New Orleans resident swore loudly at him as he toured the city, while in the Mississippi city of Gulfport, a passer-by described the tour as a ”waste of time and taxpayer money”.
Cheney said recovery seemed to be going well in the affected areas. ”I think the progress we’re making is significant,” he told reporters.
The former secretary of state, Colin Powell — the first Bush administration’s highest-ranking black official — criticised the government’s response.
”There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don’t think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don’t know why,” he told ABC news.
He denied racism was to blame for the governmental foot-dragging. ”I don’t think it’s racism, I think it’s economic,” he said. ”But poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor.”
Powell has been named as a potential ”hurricane tsar” to lead the reconstruction of New Orleans. – Guardian Unlimited Â