Swearing it is, then.

Fucking hell.

Rescue services yesterday began the huge task of evacuating the arena and the rest of the city, although the plan to remove thousands of survivors had to be suspended when shots were reportedly fired at helicopters.

Most of the people waiting to be saved told remarkable stories of fear and desperation but none more than those who had been in the Superdome.

"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, as she cradled her three-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies were running low; one mother said she was given two nappies and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.

At least two people, including a child, were reportedly raped in the night and at least three people died, including one man who jumped 15 metres to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

The hurricane left most of southern Louisiana without power, and the arena was not spared. An emergency generator kept some lights on but quickly failed. The sanitation gave out early as well, and the dome soon filled with the overpowering stench of human waste, made worse by the swampy heat.

"There is faeces on the walls," Bryan Hebert said. "There is faeces all over the place."

And here:

The evacuation of patients from Charity Hospital was halted after the facility came under sniper fire, while groups of armed men wandered the streets, buildings smoldered and people picked through stores for what they could find.

...A police officer working in downtown New Orleans said police were siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles in an effort to keep their squad cars running.

The officer said police are "on their own" for food and water, scrounging up what they can from anybody who is generous enough to give them some -- and that they have no communication whatsoever.

...President Bush, in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," said that their [sic] should be "zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this."

You *fuckwit*. By all means, if they're threatening others or ripping off TVs, jewellery and the like, the National Guard and the cops can shoot on sight as far as I'm concerned. But a lot of the people who've been looting have been doing it for food, water, medical supplies, diapers, because you gouged the levee programs so badly the city flooded, and you gouged National Guard and FEMA so badly that they can't even keep order in the designated emergency shelter or keep people fed. And this is with several days' *notice* of impending disaster. Earthquakes and terrorists don't give that kind of warning. No bloody wonder many of those who couldn't get out of the city preferred to take their chances in their own homes.

Congratulations, George W. You're the first president in living memory to lose a major US city.

Memories of New Orleans

I've mentioned some of this stuff before, but now seems like as good a time as any to repeat myself. Before I do, I'll just pimp Shortie's Katrina resource site, which may be useful to those looking for information or ways to help.

Back in 1994, when I was 19, I went a-travelling on my own for the first time. I had a month to visit the USA - I hadn't been there since my family took me at age 8 or so - and aside from meeting a few online friends I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. The friendly guy at STA Travel told me "You have to see New Orleans". I was curious, I didn't know all that much about it other than that people kept mentioning it, so I let him book me in for three nights at the St. Charles Guest House, in the Garden District and close to the streetcar.

( Visits #1, 2, and 3. )

Faith-Based Relief

FEMA are offering a list of organisations accepting money for disaster relief. Second on that list, just under the Red Cross, is an outfit called 'Operation Blessing'.

Who are Operation Blessing? Well, there's an AP article about them here. Excerpt:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -Airplanes sent to Zaire by evangelist Pat Robertson's tax- exempt humanitarian organization were used almost exclusively for his diamond mining business, say two pilots who flew them.

Three airplanes were flown to Zaire in September 1994 by Operation Blessing. However, chief pilot Robert Hinkle said only one or two of the roughly 40 flights during his six months in the country could be considered humanitarian. All the rest of the flights were mining-related, he told The (Norfolk) Virginia-Pilot.

Robertson's spokesman first denied the accounts by Hinkle and a co-pilot, Tahir Brohi of England. Later, Gene Kapp, vice president for public relations at Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, said the planes turned out to be unsuitable for medical relief and that Robertson reimbursed Operation Blessing for their use.

"Without Mr. Robertson's generous overture, Operation Blessing would have incurred further expenses with its aircraft," he said.

Robertson refused to be interviewed directly, the newspaper said in Sunday's editions. Calls to his office on Sunday were not answered.

Hinkle, from Chandler, Ariz., said he had assumed the flights would be for humanitarian work.

"We hauled medical supplies one time," Hinkle said in a telephone interview. "It might have been about 500 pounds at the most. It was a very minimal amount." The planes were capable of carrying about 7,000 pounds, he said.

Notes that Hinkle kept during most of the flights contain entries for 36 flights, the newspaper said. Of the 17 that mention the purpose of the trip, 15 are related to diamond mining.

More on OBI here; it notes that of those "one or two" humanitarian flights, one was a medicine delivery and the other was retrieval of stranded missionaries.