LMAO looks like they don't want to be help and want to loot longer....
New Orleans descended into chaos on Thursday with rampant looting and reports of people shooting at rescue helicopters and hospital workers. Throughout the day teams struggled to save residents trapped in flooded areas of the city but thousands of people remained without food and shelter.
Authorities said the death toll could be in the thousands, with rescue workers ignoring bodies in the streets as they concentrated on helping survivors. Hungry, angry residents gathered around the Superdome and convention centre complained that very few buses had been brought into the city to evacuate them.
The Pentagon mobilised additional National Guard troops, saying their numbers would rise to 30,000 within days, and deployed the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier to join other navy ships off the Gulf coast to help the relief effort. The National Guard, which includes a significant number of military police, will help local law enforcement officials deal with looting.
President George W. Bush on Thursday called for ?zero tolerance? of looters.
Rescue workers were trying to evacuate more than 40,000 people still trapped in New Orleans yesterday as overwhelmed hospitals attempted to deal with the influx of wounded and sick. In at least one hospital, patients were stranded with no food and water. At Charity hospital, a sniper reportedly opened fire as staff were trying to evacuate critically ill patients. A Navy hospital ship is expected to leave Baltimore on Friday for the region.
Michael Chertoff, homeland security secretary, said the government was ?working tirelessly? to deploy resources across the Gulf coast but it could take months before power was restored in New Orleans.
He rejected suggestions that the federal government had not prepared adequately for the category 5 hurricane. Critics have pointed to previous warnings that the levees in New Orleans, which are below sea level, were not robust enough to survive huge storms.
?A hurricane is a classic act of nature, an act of God. You can?t stop it,? said Mr Chertoff. ?What we can do and what we have done is get ourselves to the utmost level of preparedness. And while nobody can ever be completely prepared for an event of this horrible magnitude, I?d say we?re much better prepared than we?ve ever been.?
Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and former Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Bush administration, also dismissed suggestions that the federal government was not adequately prepared.
Mr Bush met former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who agreed to spearhead a campaign to raise funds for the relief effort.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c1ce50ea-1b...00e2511c8.html