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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_s..._hk4&printer=1

Residents Guard Neighborhoods From Looters By ROBERT TANNER, AP
National Writer
Mon Sep 5, 2:38 AM ET

When night falls, Charlie Hackett climbs the steps to his boarded-up
window, takes down the plywood, grabs his 12-gauge shotgun and waits.
He is waiting for looters and troublemakers, for anyone thinking his
neighborhood has been abandoned like so many others across the city.
Two doors down, John Carolan is doing the same on his screened-in
porch, pistol by his side. They are not about to give up their homes to
the lawlessness that has engulfed New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina.

"We kind of together decided we would defend what we have here and we
would stay up and defend the neighborhood," says Hackett, an Army
veteran with a snow-white beard and a business installing custom
kitchens.

"I don't want to kill anybody," he says, "but I'd sure like to scare
'em."

With generators giving them power, food to last for weeks and several
guns each for protection, the men are two of a scattered community
holed up across the residential streets of the city's Garden District,
a lush neighborhood with many antebellum mansions.

The streets, where towering live oaks once offered cool shade, are now
often impassable because of huge fallen branches and downed power
lines. Lovely porches framed in wrought iron lay smashed. Many of the
homes appear only slightly damaged, or even untouched.

But the neighborhoods are stunningly empty, and so quiet that they
sound like a forest.

It is a short drive but a world away from the city's downtown, where
tens of thousands of hungry, thirsty and increasingly angry people
waited in misery at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center
before evacuations finally began.

Here, Carolan starts his nightly watch by lighting a big fire in his
barbecue pit. Hackett turns his lights on and jams a 15-foot wooden
brace against the front door so no one can break through.

The night is "black, black, black," Hackett says. "It reminds me of
when I was in Vietnam, it reminds me of Dac To."

They have not had a problem staying awake. Each night there are
gunshots in the distance, sometimes people walking through, an
occasional car driving by.

"Last night I had to draw down on some people," Carolan says. A car
with what sounded like a crowd of drunken, partying kids came through
and stopped.

"I had to come out with a flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other,"
he says, crossing his arms like an X. "I said: `Who are you? Do you
live here? What are you doing here?' They said, `We're leaving.'"

Hackett, who in his 50s, lives alone, with his two cats and a bunch of
neighbor's pets that he is caring for. Carolan, 46, is keeping watch
with his brother, wife, son, and 3-year-old granddaughter.

In the first few days, they were especially fearful. Looters smashed
windows and ransacked a discount store and a drugstore a few streets
over. Three men came to Carolan's house asking about his generator and
brandished a machete. He showed them his gun and they left.

"It was pandemonium for a couple of nights. We just felt that when they
got done with the stores, they'd come to the homes," Hackett says.
"When it's not easy pickings, they'll go somewhere else."

Things have gotten quieter, the men say, but not quiet.

"What do you say, I'm a survivor," John Carolan says with a laugh,
thinking of the reality TV show. "Hey, give me the million bucks now."

How long can Carolan and the others hold out?

Hackett has enough gas and food for a month. Carolan says they have
weeks' worth of food and bug repellent, and he will siphon gas from
left-behind cars to keep his electricity going.

"Everything we have is in our homes. With the lawlessness in this town,
are you going to walk away from everything you built?" Carolan says. "A
lot of people think we're stupid. They say, `Why did you stay?' I say,
`Why didn't you stay?'"

It sounds like there may be a "forced evacuation" coming soon where the
military will remove everyone from New Orleans...including those
standing guard over their property.

TMT

The way I understand it N.O. is uninhabital at the present time. If I was
out of danger from drowning or starving I would be at my home protecting
what's mine also. However, if every one in the city is forced to leave then
there is no need to wait and protect as the looters will be gone also.
Dick

--
Richard H. Neighbors
Building and repairing fine billiard cues for real pool players at
affordable prices.
Over 35 years exp. Located in Cincinnati OH
ph.# 513 233-7499
e-mail
web site http://www.dickiecues.com
"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
oups.com...
It sounds like there may be a "forced evacuation" coming soon where the
military will remove everyone from New Orleans...including those
standing guard over their property.

TMT

Well it's official....everybody needs to get out of New Orleans whether
they want to or not.

Cops and military will be confiscating any weapons when they "relocate"
you to greener pastures.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/hurricane...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-

New Orleans Mayor Orders Forced Evacuation By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated
Press Writer
8 minutes ago

As flood waters receded inch by inch Tuesday, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray
Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to
force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to
leave the dark, dangerous city.

Nagin's emergency declaration released late Tuesday targets those still
in the city unless they have been designated by government officials as
helping with the relief effort.

The move comes after some citizens bluntly told authorities who had
come to deliver them from the flooded metropolis that they would not
leave their homes and property. An estimated 10,000 residents are
believed to still be in New Orleans, and some have been holed up in
their homes for more than a week.

While acknowledging the emergency declaration, police Capt. Marlon
Defillo said late Tuesday that forced removal of citizens had not yet
begun. He said that officers who were visiting homes were still
reminding people that police may not be able to rescue them if they
stay.

"That would be a P.R. nightmare for us," Defillo said of any forced
evacuations. "That's an absolute last resort."

Repeated telephone calls to Nagin's spokeswoman, Tami Frazier, seeking
comment were not returned.

Meanwhile, engineers struggled to drain the saucer of a city of
billions of gallons of water, a Herculean task that could take weeks
- if they are lucky.

The Army Corps of Engineers said the timetable ranges from three weeks
to nearly three months, depending on a string of variables, including
rainfall, the still-unknown condition of the pumps abandoned to
Hurricane Katrina, and whether the system can withstand the flotsam of
broken buildings, trees, trash and corpses.

Work has also been impeded by sporadic gunfire coming from "criminals
with guns," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' chief district
engineer.

The contractors are "getting used to it and that's pretty scary,"
Wagenaar said.

Despite complications, "we have to get the water out of the city or the
nightmare will continue," said Louisiana Environmental Secretary Mike
McDaniel. He said the water will be pumped into Lake Pontchartrain even
though it is fouled with sewage, heavy metals, gasoline and other
dangerous substances.

The pumping began after the Corps used hundreds of sandbags and rocks
over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street
Canal levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80
percent of this below sea-level city.

Following an aerial tour Tuesday, Nagin said the water was dropping
ever so slightly, and he estimated that it covered only 60 percent of
the city.

"Even in areas where the water was as high as the rooftops, I started
to see parts of the buildings," he said, adding, "I'm starting to see
rays of light."

But he also warned of the horrors that could be revealed when the
waters recede. "It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the
nation up again," said Nagin, who a day earlier upped his estimate of
the death toll in his city to as much as 10,000.

The job to rid the city of water got off to a woefully slow start.

Once all of the city's pumping stations are running, they can move
water at a rate of 29 billion gallons a day and lower the water level a
half-inch per hour, or about a foot per day. But by late Tuesday
afternoon, Corps officials said only three of New Orleans' normal
contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating.

With the water dropping, military and police turned their attention to
evacuating the streets. Among those refusing to leave was 69-year-old
John Ebanks, who waved off would-be rescuers from a porch stocked with
food, mosquito spray and other supplies.

"You've got to protect your property, that's the main thing," Ebanks
said. "This is all I've got. I'm pretty damn old to start over."

In St. Bernard Parish, 38-year-old Dennis Rizzuto took a break from a
Monopoly game with his family to emerge from the second-floor window of
his home.

He said he had plenty of water, food to last a month and a generator
powering his home. "They're going to have to drag me" out, Rizzuto
said.

In a plea to holdouts who might be listening to portable radios in the
powerless city, Nagin warned that the fetid water could carry disease
and that natural gas was leaking all over town.

"This is not a safe environment," Nagin said. "I understand the spirit
that's basically, `I don't want to abandon my city.' It's OK. Leave for
a little while. Let us get you to a better place. Let us clean the city
up."

To that end, the Pentagon began sending 5,000 paratroopers from the
Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division to use small boats, including
inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in
flooded sections of the city.

Some National Guardsmen and helicopters were diverted from their search
missions Tuesday to fight fires, an emerging threat in a city that is
still at least a day and a half away from restoring the first running
water since the storm.

A candle was blamed for starting one major blaze in the lower Garden
District - a historic neighborhood of mostly wooden homes. The flames
started in an abandoned brick building and spread to a neighboring
apartment house. The blazes burned for hours before Chinook helicopters
with water pouches were brought in to fight the blaze.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said lawlessness in the
city "has subsided tremendously," and officers warned that those caught
looting in an area where the governor has declared an emergency can get
up to 15 years in prison. About 124 prisoners filled a downtown jail
set up at the city's train and bus terminal.

"We continue to get better day by day," Compass said.

The signs of hope came against increasingly angry rhetoric over the
federal response as too little too late. In Washington, congressional
leaders planned hearings into the aftermath of the storm.

"We need to rebuild the confidence of the American people ... in our
government's ability to protect them from attack, whether it comes from
nature or from terrorists," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio,
voting record), D-Conn. "The government simply did not act quickly and
effectively enough."

Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard was even more blunt.

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area," he
said on CBS' "Early Show." "Take whatever idiot they have at the top of
whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot.
Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Five of the 13 sub-basins in New Orleans were still seriously flooded,
and barges and crews were getting into place to fix levee breaches at
two other spots - the London Avenue canal and the Industrial canal.
The London Avenue canal is in the northwestern section of the city, the
Industrial canal in the east.

The Corps is concentrating on the London Avenue canal, where workers
will spend at least two weeks filling a 45-foot hole with rocks and
sandbags, Wagenaar said. Once that drainage canal is fixed, then more
pumps can start running.

Before work can even begin on the Industrial canal two barges pushed
onto a bridge by Katrina and a sunken barge need to be removed. The
Coast Guard has said 110 barges, ships and boats sank or ran aground
during the storm - 67 of them in the Mississippi River, and another
43 along the coast.

The levees were deliberately breached in some spots to let the water
flow back out into Lake Pontchartrain, where the water level had
dropped below that inside the city.

How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of
the pumps - especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the
Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are
screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from
time to time.

"We're working every avenue to do whatever we can to get things back in
order," said Walter Baumy, Corps manager for the project. "We're going
to accomplish the mission of getting the water out of the city."

Well it's official....everybody needs to get out of New Orleans whether
they want to or not.

Cops and military will be confiscating any weapons when they "relocate"
you to greener pastures.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/hurricane...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-

New Orleans Mayor Orders Forced Evacuation By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated
Press Writer
8 minutes ago

As flood waters receded inch by inch Tuesday, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray
Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to
force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to
leave the dark, dangerous city.

Nagin's emergency declaration released late Tuesday targets those still
in the city unless they have been designated by government officials as
helping with the relief effort.

The move comes after some citizens bluntly told authorities who had
come to deliver them from the flooded metropolis that they would not
leave their homes and property. An estimated 10,000 residents are
believed to still be in New Orleans, and some have been holed up in
their homes for more than a week.

While acknowledging the emergency declaration, police Capt. Marlon
Defillo said late Tuesday that forced removal of citizens had not yet
begun. He said that officers who were visiting homes were still
reminding people that police may not be able to rescue them if they
stay.

"That would be a P.R. nightmare for us," Defillo said of any forced
evacuations. "That's an absolute last resort."

Repeated telephone calls to Nagin's spokeswoman, Tami Frazier, seeking
comment were not returned.

Meanwhile, engineers struggled to drain the saucer of a city of
billions of gallons of water, a Herculean task that could take weeks
- if they are lucky.

The Army Corps of Engineers said the timetable ranges from three weeks
to nearly three months, depending on a string of variables, including
rainfall, the still-unknown condition of the pumps abandoned to
Hurricane Katrina, and whether the system can withstand the flotsam of
broken buildings, trees, trash and corpses.

Work has also been impeded by sporadic gunfire coming from "criminals
with guns," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' chief district
engineer.

The contractors are "getting used to it and that's pretty scary,"
Wagenaar said.

Despite complications, "we have to get the water out of the city or the
nightmare will continue," said Louisiana Environmental Secretary Mike
McDaniel. He said the water will be pumped into Lake Pontchartrain even
though it is fouled with sewage, heavy metals, gasoline and other
dangerous substances.

The pumping began after the Corps used hundreds of sandbags and rocks
over the Labor Day weekend to close a 200-foot gap in the 17th Street
Canal levee that burst in the aftermath of the storm and swamped 80
percent of this below sea-level city.

Following an aerial tour Tuesday, Nagin said the water was dropping
ever so slightly, and he estimated that it covered only 60 percent of
the city.

"Even in areas where the water was as high as the rooftops, I started
to see parts of the buildings," he said, adding, "I'm starting to see
rays of light."

But he also warned of the horrors that could be revealed when the
waters recede. "It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the
nation up again," said Nagin, who a day earlier upped his estimate of
the death toll in his city to as much as 10,000.

The job to rid the city of water got off to a woefully slow start.

Once all of the city's pumping stations are running, they can move
water at a rate of 29 billion gallons a day and lower the water level a
half-inch per hour, or about a foot per day. But by late Tuesday
afternoon, Corps officials said only three of New Orleans' normal
contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating.

With the water dropping, military and police turned their attention to
evacuating the streets. Among those refusing to leave was 69-year-old
John Ebanks, who waved off would-be rescuers from a porch stocked with
food, mosquito spray and other supplies.

"You've got to protect your property, that's the main thing," Ebanks
said. "This is all I've got. I'm pretty damn old to start over."

In St. Bernard Parish, 38-year-old Dennis Rizzuto took a break from a
Monopoly game with his family to emerge from the second-floor window of
his home.

He said he had plenty of water, food to last a month and a generator
powering his home. "They're going to have to drag me" out, Rizzuto
said.

In a plea to holdouts who might be listening to portable radios in the
powerless city, Nagin warned that the fetid water could carry disease
and that natural gas was leaking all over town.

"This is not a safe environment," Nagin said. "I understand the spirit
that's basically, `I don't want to abandon my city.' It's OK. Leave for
a little while. Let us get you to a better place. Let us clean the city
up."

To that end, the Pentagon began sending 5,000 paratroopers from the
Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division to use small boats, including
inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in
flooded sections of the city.

Some National Guardsmen and helicopters were diverted from their search
missions Tuesday to fight fires, an emerging threat in a city that is
still at least a day and a half away from restoring the first running
water since the storm.

A candle was blamed for starting one major blaze in the lower Garden
District - a historic neighborhood of mostly wooden homes. The flames
started in an abandoned brick building and spread to a neighboring
apartment house. The blazes burned for hours before Chinook helicopters
with water pouches were brought in to fight the blaze.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said lawlessness in the
city "has subsided tremendously," and officers warned that those caught
looting in an area where the governor has declared an emergency can get
up to 15 years in prison. About 124 prisoners filled a downtown jail
set up at the city's train and bus terminal.

"We continue to get better day by day," Compass said.

The signs of hope came against increasingly angry rhetoric over the
federal response as too little too late. In Washington, congressional
leaders planned hearings into the aftermath of the storm.

"We need to rebuild the confidence of the American people ... in our
government's ability to protect them from attack, whether it comes from
nature or from terrorists," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio,
voting record), D-Conn. "The government simply did not act quickly and
effectively enough."

Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard was even more blunt.

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area," he
said on CBS' "Early Show." "Take whatever idiot they have at the top of
whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot.
Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Five of the 13 sub-basins in New Orleans were still seriously flooded,
and barges and crews were getting into place to fix levee breaches at
two other spots - the London Avenue canal and the Industrial canal.
The London Avenue canal is in the northwestern section of the city, the
Industrial canal in the east.

The Corps is concentrating on the London Avenue canal, where workers
will spend at least two weeks filling a 45-foot hole with rocks and
sandbags, Wagenaar said. Once that drainage canal is fixed, then more
pumps can start running.

Before work can even begin on the Industrial canal two barges pushed
onto a bridge by Katrina and a sunken barge need to be removed. The
Coast Guard has said 110 barges, ships and boats sank or ran aground
during the storm - 67 of them in the Mississippi River, and another
43 along the coast.

The levees were deliberately breached in some spots to let the water
flow back out into Lake Pontchartrain, where the water level had
dropped below that inside the city.

How long it takes to drain the city could depend on the condition of
the pumps - especially whether they were submerged and damaged, the
Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are
screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from
time to time.

"We're working every avenue to do whatever we can to get things back in
order," said Walter Baumy, Corps manager for the project. "We're going
to accomplish the mission of getting the water out of the city."