A picture is emerging from the scattered reports that are coming in live to the cable tv channels. It appears to me that thousands of people, literally, are stranded in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, and possibly other locations. Nighttime rescues are picking up very large boatloads of people from the Ninth Ward, all being conducted by local residents, not the “authorities” who are totally overwhelmed according to many reports and quit at nightfall.
UPDATE: the VP of Tulane Hospital is reporting that their hospital is surrounded by six feet of water, rising an inch every 5 minutes. The levee has actually broken between Lake Pontchartrain and downtown New Orleans. According to this hospital official, there are white caps of flooding water heading down Canal Street. I just checked the live weather data and it is not raining in New Orleans, this water is coming from a major levee breach. An air evacuation of one hospital is underway with 70 patients on ventilators, and the Tulane one is waiting for the same. This is a very serious situation. The Times-Picayune’s web page (they have no paper right now) confirms the levee breakage. These are the very levees for hurricane protection that Bush slashed the budget for over dire warnings and protest from locals.
As night fell on a devastated region, the water was still rising in the city, and nobody was willing to predict when it would stop. After the destruction already apparent in the wake of Katrina, the American Red Cross was mobilizing for what regional officials were calling the largest recovery operation in the organization’s history.
SECOND UPDATE: The Mayor of New Orleans says 80 percent of the city is under water
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