National Guard Continues Evacuation of New Orleans; Almost 1,000 Dead in Stampede in Baghdad
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: It's 3:00 p.m. Central Time in New Orleans where tensions have been rising along with the flood waters. It's now a frantic race against time to evacuate literally tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people. And they're desperately trying to plug leaking levees. The terrible toll in Mississippi under way, as well. We're getting a clearer picture right now of the death and despair in that state. We expect a live update this hour from the governor, Haley Barbour. The president of the United States taking command. This hour, Mr. Bush heads a White House meeting on help for hurricane victims and then plans to speak to the American public. He speaks at the top of the next hour from the Rose Garden. What exactly is the federal government doing right now? And will it be enough? I'm Wolf Blitzer, and you're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Up for desperate times and desperate measures in New Orleans. According to the Associated Press, the mayor, Ray Nagin, now says at least hundreds of people are dead there. And possibly -- even likely, he says -- thousands of people are dead. As that city continues to drown in flood waters, U.S. Army engineers have been struggling to plug busted levees with 3,000-pound sandbags. One top engineer told me here just a short while ago here in THE SITUATION ROOM that that process could take two to three days at the earliest. And then, he says, it could take another three to six months to get that water out of the city. Officials are moving forward with a plan to evacuate 23,000 people holed up in the New Orleans Superdome and in need, desperate need right now, of food and water and much, much more. Texas is sending almost 500 buses to carry evacuees to Houston where they'll stay in another stadium. That would be the Astrodome. In Mississippi, at least 110 deaths have been reported but not confirmed. The Harrison County coroner says search-and-rescue teams have probably gotten into about only half of the damaged areas, but it may be several days, perhaps even weeks, before some of those areas are reached. President Bush is now back in Washington. He cut short his vacation. This hour, he's set to meet with top White House aides dealing with the response to the hurricane disaster. And in the next hour, he's planning to go before the cameras to talk about the crisis along the Gulf Coast. He'll be speaking with the American people from the Rose Garden. We'll carry his remarks live. Let's take a look at Katrina now by some of the latest numbers that we're getting state-by-state. First, Louisiana. As we said, the New Orleans mayor saying perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people are dead. More than 700,000 people are still without power. New Orleans' mayor says it could take 12 to 16 weeks before people will be allowed to return. Let's move over to Mississippi where they say 110 people are now dead -- that's the report -- as many as 100 from a single county alone. That would be Harrison County. A million people in that state are without power. That represents 75 percent of the state. Twenty thousand people in Mississippi are in shelters right now. Let's move over to Alabama. Two dead, that's the confirmation there. Nearly 500,000 people -- half a million people -- are still without electricity in Alabama. As we've mentioned, the situation is getting worse in New Orleans by the minute. Conditions are deteriorating for a city now virtually under water. Our John Zarrella described the scene just a little while ago.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's no system of water. There's no sanitation any longer. The knee-deep water in the hotel lobby, it just reeks with stench. It is a miserable, deteriorating situation in the city. It's growing worse by the hour, and the water is rising.</s>BLITZER: CNN producer Kim Segal is on the scene for us. Kim, where exactly in New Orleans are you right now?</s>KIM SEGAL, CNN PRODUCER: Well, Wolf, I am on Canal Street. But what I want to tell you is, a local police officer came up to me and asked me to tell you to get the word out. There is a fire. There's a fire at the Footaction Clothing Store. And it is on the corner of Bourbon and Canal. There's a fire. There's smoke billowing out of the building. And the buildings are so close here, the police officer told me he's afraid the whole block is in danger. And he wants everybody to know, because he does not have radio communications with any of his colleagues, that there is a fire now downtown. And the looting is still going on.</s>BLITZER: And this is in the historic French Quarter, is that right?</s>SEGAL: That's right. If you know Canal Street, which is a main street on the outskirts of the French Quarter, the hotels, a lot of the major hotels are down here where we are. This fire is taking place literally a couple doors down from the Renaissance Hotel. That was the hotel that was evacuated earlier this morning. So thankfully anyone who was in the Renaissance is now out.</s>BLITZER: Kim, are the streets around where this fire has burst open, are the streets passable there? Could fire trucks even get close to that situation?</s>SEGAL: The water where the fire is taking place is maybe a foot deep. It's not bad yet. It keeps coming up. And it's getting higher and higher. We started on that block</s>BLITZER: Kim, there's been some confusion about the nature of the water on the streets of New Orleans, how dirty it is, how stinky it might be, how dangerous it might be because of insects or mosquitoes. Describe it as best you can.</s>SEGAL: Wolf, before I do this, I have a lieutenant here with the New Orleans Police Department who wants to talk to you, OK? Hold on. I'm going to give him the phone.</s>BLITZER: Thanks.</s>LT. BRIAN WININGER, NEW ORLEANS POLICE DEPARTMENT: Hello?</s>BLITZER: Yes, Lieutenant. Give us your name, please.</s>WININGER: My name is Lieutenant Brian Wininger,</s>W-I-N-I-N-G-E-R. BLITZER: And tell us what's going on, from your perspective.</s>WININGER: What's going on now is a lot of water. And from what I understand, we're trying to evacuate everybody out. So I would say, you know, get everybody to -- the Superdome, I know, and a lot of people are on the interstate trying to evacuate everybody. But it's just -- you know, we're just holding it in right now. We do have a big fire at Bourbon and Canal at the Foot Locker. But, you know, we can't get to it right now.</s>BLITZER: How dangerous is the situation where you are, Brian?</s>WININGER: What's that?</s>BLITZER: How dangerous is the situation where you are?</s>WININGER: I think the biggest danger we have right now is disease, you know, in the water. The water's full of gas and diesel. It's like it's probably going to be like a hazardous waste dump, I guess, you know?</s>BLITZER: Are people getting out? Can they get out? Because I understand it's not that easy to get out of New Orleans.</s>WININGER: No. There's places you can get through, especially -- we just pushed a whole bunch of people from Canal and Bourbon there to the river, where they can get to the convention center, trying to get them up there.</s>BLITZER: How do people fight a fire in an area where you are right now, Brian, under these conditions?</s>WININGER: I really don't know if they're going to get there. I know you all called it in, and I appreciate it. We called it in. I don't even know if the fire trucks can make it here. So hopefully they can, you know? But we cleared out the building. Nobody's in it, that we know of.</s>BLITZER: So at least -- as far as you can tell, there is nobody that's directly endangered right now, unless that fire spreads?</s>WININGER: Right, right.</s>BLITZER: Brian, give us a little perspective. You've been there for the past three days. The situation clearly getting worse, as I said earlier, by the minute. How bad is it right now?</s>WININGER: We're kind of out of communication, so I don't know if the water's still coming in. My understanding is they're still trying to close a place called the 17th Street Canal. But they might have closed it already. Communication's gone. You know, our radios are out. We have no electricity, so we can't charge them. We're trying to do the best we can, you know?</s>BLITZER: Well, good luck to you, Brian...</s>WININGER: Can I say something?</s>BLITZER: Pardon?</s>WININGER: I want you to put on the air Athena (ph), Monte Leone (ph), Nicole Barbay (ph), Jake Snapp (ph), Carol Richian (ph), Easterland McKendall (ph) and Nick Gurnen (ph). Tell all of our families that we're safe.</s>BLITZER: All right, well, thank you. That's good to know.</s>WININGER: And the First District's OK. People in the First District are OK.</s>BLITZER: OK. Well, good to hear that, Brian. Thank you very much. And we'll check back with you, and check back with Kim Segal, as well.</s>WININGER: Thank you (ph).</s>BLITZER: All right, thank you very much, Brian. Appreciate it very much. Good luck to you. Good luck to our Kim Segal. She's still on the scene for us in New Orleans. Let's go over to CNN's Jeanne Meserve. She's made the move from New Orleans. She's in Baton Rouge right now. Jeanne, first of all, tell our viewers what it was like in the immediate hours before you left New Orleans.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the cameramen I was with described it as Bangladesh. That's what it looks like, a major, major catastrophe that's taking an extraordinary toll, not just in terms of human life, but for the living. They have lost their homes. They can't get to their jobs, if there are jobs, because businesses are destroyed. Businesses cannot rebuild because there's no infrastructure. It defies comprehension that the United States can look like this. I want to introduce you to someone, if I could. This is Dorian Browder, a resident of New Orleans who came out on Sunday, has been here in Baton Rouge ever since. Dorian, you're upset at the lack of -- you're upset at the lack of preparation for this, right?</s>DORIAN BROWDER, EVACUEE FROM NEW ORLEANS: Yes, I am. It was overwhelming when I found out that they had not prepared for this catastrophe. We were only able to really contain a 3 Category hurricane, and they knew this was a possibility to be a 5 Category. They had many years to prepare for this, the professions, the Corps of Engineers. Why had they not brainstormed this? Why would they not be prepared? I don't understand it. What are they doing every day in their offices, the atrocity?</s>MESERVE: We've talked a lot about the difficulties that people who remained in the city are having. You came out here. It's not easy for you, either, is it?</s>BROWDER: Not at all. Right now, we are in dire situations, very dire. The majority of us staying in this hotel -- it's called the Baymont in Baton Rouge -- we have ran out of moneys. We have no homes to go to. I'm looking and wondering what has happened to my elderly mother. I don't know. We're at a loss. We have no jobs to go to. We're just at a loss. We are devastated. We're upset. We think that things should have been better prepared from Washington, D.C., the president, on down to our governor, Kathleen Blanco.</s>MESERVE: Dorian, thank you so much. And good luck.</s>BROWDER: Thank you.</s>MESERVE: That's sort of typical, Wolf, of the kind of reaction you're getting from people who have left the city or are in the city. I have to tell you, getting out of the city for us was difficult. We had to just sort of improvise our way across the city to get to dry land and then out. We made it, thank goodness. But on the way, it looked like the Dust Bowl. You've seen the pictures of the Dust Bowl, of people piled onto the back of trucks, moving their lives. That's what's happening here. It's extraordinary to witness. Wolf?</s>BLITZER: Jeanne, I take it you left the city because it was simply getting much too dangerous?</s>MESERVE: Yes, the projections were this morning that the water was going to rise another two feet. We've been having an extraordinary difficult time doing our jobs, operating off car batteries. We were afraid we were going to lose our capability to charge them, because the cars were going underwater, or the water was going to make those in the garage inaccessible to us. We just felt we weren't going to be able to produce much for the network. And there are health concerns. We still have a cameraman who broke his foot shooting during the hurricane on Monday. He still has not gotten any medical attention. All of us have been in water that, as you've heard, is highly contaminated. And, frankly, we all wanted to get back to our loved ones. So we have come out. Many of us are going to continue to cover this aftermath. This is, I truly believe, Wolf, apart from 9/11, one of the most significant events that has ever hit this country. It's just astounding. But, Wolf, what I want to say, yes, we got out. We are lucky. What we went through is nothing next to what the people of New Orleans are going to have to go through in the coming days, and frankly for the coming years. Anybody who tells you this is going to be put to rights in a matter of months simply hasn't seen the situation. Wolf?</s>BLITZER: I don't think the pictures can do justice to what you've seen with your own eyes, Jeanne. Just describe -- take a moment -- and just collect your thoughts and describe some of the images that you saw in New Orleans as you were -- when you were there and as you were preparing to leave.</s>MESERVE: People carrying their children, trying to get them to safety. A woman coming down to the police, close to hysteric, saying, my elderly mother is in a building over there. She needs dialysis. She can't get dialysis. She is dying. Can you help me? And the police have to say, there is absolutely nothing we can do. They said, we don't have a precinct house. We don't have communications. There is absolutely nothing we can do for you. That was amazing to me. The other thing that struck me was the looting. The police were standing in the middle of the street. And right in front of them, stores were being ransacked. And they didn't even make an effort to stop it. I don't think they could, under the situation. One, they were totally outnumbered. They couldn't call for any kind of reinforcements. And I think, frankly, the priority now isn't property. The priority has to be people and people's lives. The police are there protectively, I think, in case things escalate even further, but they're powerless. They're powerless in this situation. The other thing -- we've talked a lot about the flooding, and the flooding is the biggest story. Don't get me wrong. But to go through the dry areas of the city was also startling. I've covered other hurricanes. I've seen hurricane destruction. I have stopped and said, oh, my gosh, look at that building. We have to get a picture. Today, every building looked like that. There were cars smashed to smithereens. There were buildings that had totally collapsed. I have trouble coming up with the words to describe it. Even in the dry areas of the city, things are horrible. It's going to take a lot of work to get that put to rights. We did see, as we were coming back, help going in. We did see tree removal trucks. We saw electric trucks. Help is beginning to come in. And we even saw -- this was a very strong image -- Air Force One, or what we believe was Air Force One. A lot of us have covered the White House. And if it wasn't, I'm shocked. And you know more about the president's schedule than I do, but we believe we saw Air Force One flying over the city as we were leaving. And that was an image to us, because we've been out of communication, unaware really of what's happening in the outside world, and a sign that you've heard, you've heard, you've listened. Another thing that sticks with me is what's going on in the hotels. Our hotel was magnificent, in terms of how they handled the situation. And today, they evacuated all the people in our hotel to another hotel that was drier. But some of the hotels I know just have to be in quite dire straits. They were booked to the hilt. You've got people living in very crowded conditions, whole families in rooms. They do not have plumbing of any type. It is going to become a health hazard in the hotels, if those people aren't given some assistance sometime soon. And I don't know about the food and water situation in some of those other hotels. Some of them were right near the water. Some of them had a lot of glass. I know at least one of them -- one of those that was heavily glassed was fully booked. I don't know what's happened to those people. They must be having a difficult time of it, too. Wolf?</s>BLITZER: I'm going to let you collect your thoughts, Jeanne. But one quick note. Two days ago on this program, you described the situation as apocalypse, your words, what you saw. Only in the past hour or so, we heard the mayor of New Orleans -- I don't know if you know this yet -- Ray Nagin say that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, he believes, are now dead in New Orleans. You saw this unfold with your very eyes. Give us your quick reaction to what the mayor of New Orleans has just said.</s>MESERVE: He's absolutely right. And when I was out there on I-10 looking at those houses flooded to the eves, I believe I said on your show, this is life and death. And it's going to be a lot more death than life. I have no doubt that it's in the thousands. No doubt at all. And there could be, as everyone has been talking, a secondary set of catastrophic events, the disease and the death that that could bring. Wolf?</s>BLITZER: I think you said Armageddon instead of apocalypse, but what's the difference at this stage? Jeanne Meserve, we'll check back with you.</s>MESERVE: You're right.</s>BLITZER: Thank you very much. The U.S. Coast Guard says it's rescued now more than 1,200 hurricane victims. That number keeps on going up, thank God. The Coast Guard chopper pilot Lieutenant Craig O'Brien has become a hero many times over, saving the trapped and the stranded. He's joining us now on the phone. Captain, thanks very much. Can you hear me OK?</s>LT. CRAIG O'BRIEN, U.S. COAST GUARD AIR STATION: Yes, Wolf. I can hear you fine. Thank you.</s>BLITZER: All right, give us -- you've done this back and forth. How many of these operations have you done? How many people have you personally saved?</s>O'BRIEN: Personally, the numbers are getting almost too high to count. I'm primarily flying at night, because I'm permanently stationed here in New Orleans at Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans. Last night, in a two-hour period, we had almost over 36 people as we're shuttling them throughout this city. As some of your reporters have said, words cannot describe what you see when flying over this city, especially at night. Hundreds and hundreds of flashlights are signaling us, strobe lights, flares. It's a tough situation for a search-and-rescue professional. But what I can tell you, the men and women of the Coast Guard, the Navy, the Army, the Air National Guard, the Air Force, Customs, it's an impressive joint operation. And we're doing everything and anything we can do at 150, 200 percent to get as many of these people out of New Orleans into safe haven as we can.</s>BLITZER: Lieutenant, I had promoted you to captain. I know it's Lieutenant Craig O'Brien. Lieutenant, how do you pick who shall live and, in effect, who might die?</s>O'BRIEN: Wolf, we have -- the communication medium here, we're trying to establish the highest priority people to get out of the city. But as the police lieutenant said, communications are, you know, poor at best. The people on scene, the aircraft commanders in the aircrafts, we're put in a really troublesome situation. At night, we can't tell. We go by the signals, and we just rescue whoever we can. And our rescue swimmers are going down on the scene. They triage people and figure out who needs to get out the quickest to get them advanced medical care.</s>BLITZER: Lieutenant Craig O'Brien, I want to speak with you more in the next hour, if we can reconnect. Good luck to you. Good luck to all the men and women of the United States Coast Guard. Thanks for doing the heroic work that you're doing, literally saving people's lives. There's nothing more important than that. Our Kim Segal, just a little while ago, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, was describing a fire that had erupted at a store there, a Foot Locker. We're just getting this video now into CNN via videophone from New Orleans. I think you can make -- you can see some of the firefighters with their hoses trying to deal with this fire in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans. Just as if they need more disaster and destruction on top of everything else, fire erupting in New Orleans, as well. We'll watch this video together with you. Hopefully, the firefighters will get the situation under control. Much more coverage, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Coming up, the president of the United States responds. We'll have a report on what Mr. Bush and his administration are doing right now to try to help hurricane victims. Much more of our coverage coming up. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.