Latest News from Gulf Coast

[kathy]

The U.S. government has received offers of aid from dozens of nations across the globe in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the State Department said.

Neither the White House nor the State Department has said whether these offers have been accepted.

However, Reuters reported Sunday that the United States has asked for assistance from the European Union and NATO.

The EU Executive Commission said the United States has asked for first aid kits, blankets, water trucks and 500,000 prepared meals, Reuters reported.

NATO said the United States had asked it for food supplies, Reuters reported. "NATO stands ready to continue to support the United States as it recovers from this natural disaster," the alliance reportedly said in a statement.

Among those offering assistance are India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, the four countries hardest-hit by the December 26 tsunami.

Other international organizations also offered help, ranging from medical teams to tents to cash donations. They include the Organization of American States, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and World Health Organization.

The United Nations has offered to help coordinate international relief.

Following is a list of some of countries offering aid:
Africa

# Nigeria has pledged $1 million to hurricane disaster relief, government officials told CNN. "Nigeria will be happy to pledge $1 million to the hurricane disaster fund in the spirit of brotherhood," Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

Asia

# China offered $5 million in aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina. If needed, the Chinese government also is prepared to send rescue workers, including medical experts, officials said.

# Japan has offered to provide $200,000 to the American Red Cross, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said. Japan also will provide up to $300,000 in emergency supplies such as tents, blankets and power generators if it receives requests, the ministry said.

# India is making a $5 million donation to the American Red Cross, Ronen Sen, Indian ambassador to the United States, said Saturday. In addition, Sen said India was willing to donate essential medicines to the relief effort.

# The Singapore armed forces, responding to requests by the Texas Army National Guard, has sent three Chinook helicopters to Fort Polk, Louisiana, to help in relief efforts.

# South Korea awaits a U.S. response after pledging aid, a government official said.

# Afghanistan pledged $100,000 to help provide aid to the hurricane victims, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

# Sri Lanka will donate $25,000 to the American Red Cross.

# Taiwan has pledged more than $3 million to the relief effort.

Americas

# Canada has offered to help in any way it can, and its navy is preparing a ship full of emergency disaster relief supplies to be sent when a request comes.

# Cuban President Fidel Castro offered to fly 1,100 doctors to Houston, Texas, with 26 tons of medicine to treat disaster victims.

# Mexico has offered $1 million and is sending 15 truckloads of water, food and medical supplies via Texas. The Mexican navy has offered to send two ships, two helicopters and 15 amphibious vehicles.

# Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vocal critic of the United States, offered to send cheap fuel, humanitarian aid and relief workers to the disaster area.

Australia

# Australia is giving $10 million, most of it to the American Red Cross, according to the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Europe

# France has offered mobile help from rescue teams in the French Antilles in the Caribbean, including a civil defense detachment of 35 people, tents, camp beds, generators, motor pumps, water treatment units and emergency kits, two CASA cargo aircraft, a ship (Batral Francis Garnier) and the frigate Ventose with its Panther helicopter, and a hurricane disaster unit. France also has offered assistance from the French mainland, including several aircraft. In addition, the NGO Telecoms Sans Frontieres, which specializes in restoring phone lines and Internet service in disasters, is ready to send a team of experts and equipment. Veolia Environment, which has facilities in Louisiana, has offered to make its local water management resources available.

# Germany has offered a range of assistance, including medical and transportation services, water treatment capabilities and aid in searching for victims and supplies. Germany also has said it is ready and willing to "dip into its own emergency oil reserves" to release some 2 million barrels a day for 30 days.

# Italy has offered to send aid and evacuation specialists immediately, Italy's civil protection unit said. Authorities have prepared two military transport planes to fly amphibious vessels, pumps, generators, tents and personnel to New Orleans, Louisiana, and other areas. They were awaiting word from U.S. officials, the unit said.

# The Netherlands will provide teams for inspecting dikes and for identifying victims if there is a formal request from the United States. It also will send a frigate from Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles to New Orleans shortly to provide emergency assistance, the Dutch government said.

# Russia has offered to help with rescue efforts but is awaiting a reply from Washington.

# Spain expects to receive a formal request to release gasoline stocks to the United States and is prepared to grant it, an Industry Ministry spokesman said.

# Sweden's Rescue Authority said it was on standby to supply water purifying equipment, health care supplies and emergency shelters if needed.

# British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said his country stands ready to help the United States in whatever way it can.

Middle East

# Qatar has offered the United States $100 million to assist in the humanitarian crisis triggered by Hurricane Katrina.

# Saudi Refining, a Houston-based subsidiary of state oil firm Saudi Aramco, will donate $5 million to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts for hurricane victims.

# Iran has offered to send humanitarian aid to hurricane victims, Reuters reported. "We are prepared to send our contributions to the people through the Red Crescent," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Reuters.

www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/katrina.world.aid/index.html

[kathy]

BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (AP) -- Margaret Pertuit lies still on a bed in a dark, waterlogged room at the Economy Inns Motel, awaiting one of two things: death or rescue.

Her thin, pale limbs are covered in the bruises common among people on blood thinners. But Pertuit, 85, has stopped taking her medication, half-hoping for the clot the drug is supposed to prevent.

"I just hope it will take me," she says.

For thousands stranded along the Mississippi coast since Hurricane Katrina, the damaged hotels where they took refuge have become almost uninhabitable.

From one motel to the next, the conditions are the same -- hot, smelly, soggy and dark. Toilets won't flush. Water won't run. Boredom won't end. Carpets are caked in mud and the concrete outside is often more inviting than the beds in the fetid rooms.

Just off Interstate 10 near Bay St. Louis, at what used to be a Waffles Plus restaurant and motel, Joanna Dubreuil and her two sons are luckier than most. Within the wreckage that surrounds them is an artesian well. The pump was carried away, so water now gurgles nonstop from a white plastic pipe jutting from the ground.

Dubreuil washes sheets in it but, fearing contamination, tries to keep a toddler from drinking it.

Ten people are living at the Waffles Plus, where vehicles passed by for five days without stopping. On the sixth morning, a church group pulled in and handed them a box of food -- the first they had received.

Jimmy Dubreuil, 23, had tried earlier in the week to enter a Dollar Store several miles away but says he was chased out by a police officer who pistol-whipped him. A fresh gash on his close-cropped head has been stapled shut.

"They started telling us we're thieves," he says. "We're not thieves. We just wanted to feed the babies."

BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (AP) -- Margaret Pertuit lies still on a bed in a dark, waterlogged room at the Economy Inns Motel, awaiting one of two things: death or rescue.

Her thin, pale limbs are covered in the bruises common among people on blood thinners. But Pertuit, 85, has stopped taking her medication, half-hoping for the clot the drug is supposed to prevent.

"I just hope it will take me," she says.

For thousands stranded along the Mississippi coast since Hurricane Katrina, the damaged hotels where they took refuge have become almost uninhabitable.

From one motel to the next, the conditions are the same -- hot, smelly, soggy and dark. Toilets won't flush. Water won't run. Boredom won't end. Carpets are caked in mud and the concrete outside is often more inviting than the beds in the fetid rooms.

Just off Interstate 10 near Bay St. Louis, at what used to be a Waffles Plus restaurant and motel, Joanna Dubreuil and her two sons are luckier than most. Within the wreckage that surrounds them is an artesian well. The pump was carried away, so water now gurgles nonstop from a white plastic pipe jutting from the ground.

Dubreuil washes sheets in it but, fearing contamination, tries to keep a toddler from drinking it.

Ten people are living at the Waffles Plus, where vehicles passed by for five days without stopping. On the sixth morning, a church group pulled in and handed them a box of food -- the first they had received.

Jimmy Dubreuil, 23, had tried earlier in the week to enter a Dollar Store several miles away but says he was chased out by a police officer who pistol-whipped him. A fresh gash on his close-cropped head has been stapled shut.

"They started telling us we're thieves," he says. "We're not thieves. We just wanted to feed the babies."

www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/katrina.mote.ap/index.htmll

[kathy]

New Orleans turned much of its attention Sunday to gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in perhaps thousands of corpses. ``It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine,'' the nation's homeland security chief warned.

As authorities struggled to keep order, police shot eight people, killing five or six, after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.

Air and boat crews searched flooded neighborhoods for survivors, and federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave for their own safety.

To expedite the rescues, the Coast Guard requested through the media that anyone stranded hang out brightly colored or white linens or something else to draw attention. But with the electricity out though much of the city, it was not known if the message was being received.

With large-scale evacuations completed at the Superdome and Convention Center, the death toll was not known. But bodies were everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics.

``I think it's evident it's in the thousands,'' Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday on CNN, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week. The U.S. Public Health Service said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.

In the first official count in the New Orleans area, Louisiana emergency medical director Louis Cataldie said authorities had verified 59 deaths - 10 of them at the Superdome.

``We need to prepare the country for what's coming,'' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, got caught by the flood. ... It is going to be about as ugly of a scene as I think you can imagine.''

Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said they did not want to evacuate.

``That is not a reasonable alternative,'' he said. ``We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The flooded places, when they're de-watered, are not going to be sanitary.''

In Sunday's bridge confrontation, 14 contractors on their way to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured, authorities said.

tinyurl.com/aq3lu

[kathy]

Snapshots of states taking in refugees from Hurricane Katrina:

TEXAS: More than 230,000 refugees are already in Texas. Gov. Rick Perry on Sunday ordered emergency officials to initiate an airlift to take some of them to other states that have offered help.

LOUISIANA: The Red Cross says more than 50,000 refugees were in its shelters. Tens of thousands of hurricane survivors were bused to Texas.

ARKANSAS: Gov. Mike Huckabee says Arkansas likely had 50,000 evacuees in the state as of Friday and another 20,000 could be expected.

TENNESSEE: Gov. Phil Bredesen says nearly 13,000 refugees were being sheltered and that number could double. More than 10,000 people have gone to Memphis, about 350 miles north of New Orleans.

MISSISSIPPI: More than 17,000 were in American Red Cross shelters, while untold others were in hotels, churches and private homes.

ALABAMA: Gov. Bob Riley is seeking to offer housing for 10,000 refugees.

MICHIGAN: The state has offered to house up to 10,000 refugees, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm says.

NEW MEXICO: Up to 6,000 hurricane victims may find shelter in New Mexico. Gov. Bill Richardson said the first 1,000 evacuees will be housed at the Albuquerque Convention Center.

SOUTH CAROLINA: U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn proposed housing up to 5,000 refugees in unused military barracks, an empty mall and other large buildings in Columbia.

MINNESOTA: Gov. Tim Pawlenty says Minnesota is preparing to host as many as 5,000 evacuees for a year or longer.

OKLAHOMA: Buses carrying nearly 2,000 evacuees arrived in Oklahoma on Saturday. As many as 3,000 others are expected to follow.

NORTH CAROLINA: Authorities say they are ready to house up to 1,500 evacuees at shelters.

FLORIDA: More than 1,100 people were in seven shelters, along with 13,500 refugees in hotels.

ARIZONA: One thousand or more refugees were expected to arrive sometime Sunday.

COLORADO: Up to 1,000 refugees will be housed at dorms at the former Lowry Air Force base.

OREGON: State officials are working to accommodate up to 1,000 people.

GEORGIA: State officials have opened 12 shelters housing more than 900 evacuees, Gov. Sonny Perdue says.

MISSOURI: The American Red Cross has housed more than 500 people, says Susie Stonner, a spokeswoman for the State Emergency Management agency.

WEST VIRGINIA: The first of an expected 500 refugees began arriving late Saturday.

ILLINOIS: Authorities were aware of 400 to 500 refugees in the state.

UTAH: About 450 refugees had arrived in Salt Lake City by Sunday.

CALIFORNIA: About 80 evacuees were expected to arrive Sunday in San Diego. Some 300 families were expected in San Francisco and another 100 in San Jose, emergency officials said.

tinyurl.com/bb3v2

[kathy]

In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming ``tribes'' and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.

``Some people became animals,'' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. ``We became more civilized.''

While hundreds of thousands fled the below-sea-level city before the storm, many refused to leave the Vieux Carre, or old quarter. Built on some of the highest ground around and equipped with underground power lines, residents considered it about the safest place to be.

Katrina blew off roof slates and knocked down some already-unstable buildings but otherwise left the 18th and 19th century homes with their trademark iron balconies intact. Even without water and power, most preferred it to the squalor and death in the emergency shelters set up at the Superdome and Convention Center.

But what had at first been a refuge soon became an ornate prison.

Police came through commandeering drivable vehicles and siphoning gas. Officials took over a hotel and ejected the guests.

An officer pumped his shotgun at a group trying to return to their hotel on Chartres Street.

``This is our block,'' he said, pointing the gun down a side street. ``Go that way.''

Jack Jones, a retired oil rig worker, bought a huge generator and stocked up on gasoline. But after hearing automatic gunfire on the next block one night, he became too afraid to use it - for fear of drawing attention.

Still, he continues to boil his clothes in vinegar and dip water out of neighbors' pools for toilet flushing and bathing.

tinyurl.com/b63eo

[kathy]

Conor Hunt reports on overnight developments:

dynamic.rte.ie/av/morningireland/2071709.smil

Paul Cunningham brings the latest from Jackson, Mississippi

dynamic.rte.ie/av/morningireland/2071710.smil

Robert Shortt, Washington Correspondent, outlines the current death tolls from several affected areas:

dynamic.rte.ie/av/morningireland/2071711.smil

Race becomes an issue after hurricane:

dynamic.rte.ie/av/morningireland/2071715.smil

[kathy]

In an open letter to President Bush, The Times-Picayune says every agency official should be fired

The New Orleans Times-Picayune called Sunday for the firing of every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, starting with director Michael Brown, for failing to rescue thousands of citizens stranded by Hurricane Katrina.

In a "Dear Mr. President" letter to President Bush, the newspaper said federal emergency officials spent "days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands," saying they could not reach victims. At the same time, the editorial said, television reporters were able to do live newscasts from downtown New Orleans and journalists regularly went in and out of the city.

"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry," the editorial said. "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame."

www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/112591795678620.xml&coll=7

[kathy]

For the first time on Monday, Gulf Coast residents began to see beyond Hurricane Katrina's destruction to the burgeoning relief effort that continues to arrive from all around the country.

Often, that relief is coming from a ragtag citizen corps of do-gooders, swooping in to fill what many saw as a void created by a mismanaged federal emergency response.

"The people in the projects here weren't getting any help at all - no food, no diapers for the kids," said Pastor Herman Henderson, wading through piles of clothes, food and baby formula he'd collected from his congregation in Birmingham, Ala. "I've brought three trucks of supplies down to help these people, because nobody else was."

But bad news seemed to arrive just as quickly as the good Samaritans fanning out along the coast. Biloxi's mayor predicted that Katrina would prove to be deadlier than Hurricane Camille, which killed about 200 in 1969.

"We have generations of families here," said Vincent Creel, aide to Mayor A.J. Holloway. "We're finding they said, `My mother and father stayed through Hurricane Camille and did OK, and I'm going to stay.'"

Now, he said, "We're finding their bodies."

Because of the wide swath of Katrina, "I expect to be finding bodies for weeks," said Biloxi Fire Chief David Roberts.

Those searches will be slowed by the stench of more than just human corpses: Roberts said cadaver dogs are alerting rescuers to dead animals and rotting meat in refrigerators, prompting time-consuming efforts to sift through the debris.

"It's frustrating, but it's gratifying it's not a body," Roberts said.

With help from firefighters from as far away as New York City, about 98 percent of the city has been covered in the initial search for bodies.

The spread of disease from rotting food piling up along the coast continued to worry health officials.

There was no lab or working test equipment in the days after the storm, and doctors were forced to loot a nearby pharmacy to get enough drugs to treat patients. At Hanthingy Medical Center in Bay St. Louis, emergency room director Dr. Sean Appleyard said officials there were bracing for more patients admitted for sanitation-related causes. In an area that's taken on a surreal quality in the past week, even the water here isn't what it seems: Emergency rooms are filled with those who drank what Katrina has turned into poison.

Said Appleyard: "We expect a rise of bacterial diseases like cholera and dysentery."

tinyurl.com/d5lor

[kathy]

New Orleans residents who fled Hurricane Katrina began making their way back home for their first sobering look at the devastation.

Hundreds jammed the roads leading into certain areas of the flooded city.

Jefferson Parish officials said traffic would be allowed in for 12 hours and locals were encouraged to inspect their property, salvage personal belongings and leave.

Many sobbed as they surveyed neighbourhoods where bungalows were submerged in water almost to the roof.

President Bush made his second visit to the battered region in four days, touring Baton Rouge, now the headquarters of relief efforts in Louisiana, and Poplarville, Mississippi.

"There's still a lot of work to do but we will continue to save lives, we will continue to get it done," he said during a tour of a prayer centre.

He said the country's response had been "amazing" and that America could be proud of the efforts of churches, synagogues, mosques and community organisations.

Scores of stranded British tourists began arriving home with horrifying tales of looting, violence and death.

Many were trapped for days in the filth-ridden New Orleans Superdome.

Jamie Trout, from Sunderland, said the problem was what followed the hurricane - the flooding, chaos and anarchy.

tinyurl.com/dt4zq

[kathy]

Authorities said Monday that some of Hurricane Katrina's evacuees have contracted a bacterial disease that is considered a more benign cousin of cholera, but is potentially fatal in people whose immune systems have been compromised.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said the bacterium, vibrio vulnificus, might have been picked up by people with open wounds who were forced to wade through polluted floodwaters for a long time.

ADVERTISEMENT
Von Roebuck, a CDC spokesman, said officials had detected the disease among some storm evacuees and stragglers but had not been able to determine how many cases there were. It does not appear that anyone has died from the disease, Roebuck said.

Since flooding began, authorities have predicted that New Orleans could be stricken with a host of diseases, particularly as unretrieved bodies remained in the water. This appears to be the first confirmation of illness caused by the storm and the flood.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Monday that the possibility of epidemics was a critical concern.

"The water quality in the streets continues to deteriorate," Nagin said. "There is some really nasty looking stuff out there. I worry about it every day. The more time that passes, there are more dead bodies left floating, and more mosquitoes breeding and hatching. They bite people who are dead."

Nagin said he was concerned about a widespread outbreak of the potentially fatal West Nile virus. For two days, he has called upon the federal government to provide crop dusters that can coat the city with chemicals to kill mosquitoes breeding in the floodwaters. That had not occurred by Monday evening.

He said he was also concerned about airborne toxic hazards and natural gas in the area.

Those health threats are why every resident must leave the city — even those living on dry land, Nagin said, adding that they "will be able to come back."

Vibrio vulnificus belongs to the same family as cholera — and those stricken with the bacterium were discovered, officials said, only because tests were done amid false reports that cholera had been discovered among evacuees.

Read Full Article:
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-disease6sep06,0,850083.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[kathy]

MOSQUITOES, POST HURRICANE - USA

Discussion about the risk of Mosquito related problems in aftermath of hurricane and floods

tinyurl.com/9rnq5

[systemvibrations]

Something that no one has possibly mentioned, that may be of interest, is that FOX Network devised a docu-drama that aired approx. one month before hurricaine Katrina that told the story of Lousianna or New Orleans being flooded due to a hurricaine dubbed 'Julia' if I remember correctly. Anyway it went on to teach that a revolt in American Oil Policy would lead to a fuel shortage, a recision and U.S. troops being deployed in Saudi Arabia. It went into great detail and was obviously intended to control a public reaction. However great effort was put into the making of this film with phony interviews including the Major of New Orleans. It's worth a watch if you can get hold of it.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0461695/

Hopefully this has been of use to someone. Peace.

[gbartlett]

So where's the movie Oil Storm? Nothing there but the review.