Police
chased armed gangs roaming the darkened streets of
hurricane-devastated New Orleans today where a climate of fear has
increased after two days of looting.
Shots were fired across the southern city, ravaged by Hurricane
Katrina on Monday.
Authorities are sending thousands of National Guard to New Orleans
in a bid to restore order while media reports said hundreds of
exhausted police had been taken off survivor search duties to take
on gangs.
Residents reported hundreds of looters on the streets, carjackings,
armed robberies and even shots fired at helicopters evacuating
patients from local hospitals.
Media reports said one gang had commandeered a telephone
company
van to carry out robberies while Fox News television said two men
with AK47 semi-automatic rifles had opened fire on a police
station.
New Orleans already had one of the worst murder and crime rates in
the United States before Monday's storm, but robberies and
pillaging have shot up since the hurricane.
As darkness fell today, residents said they had seen police cars
and national guard trucks speeding through the flooded
debris-strewn streets following reports of attacks and
carjackings.
Police said two officers had been wounded since yesterday.
"The gangs are stealing anything they can get their hands on," said
one resident who requested anonymity.
"They take what they can and drive away as fast as they can."
Residents told of seeing motorists being dragged from their cars
and beaten until they hand over their wallets.
Hotel and store owners armed themselves to defend their
businesses.
One shoe store just off the Canal Street shopping district was
looted all morning and a fire broke out in the store around
midday.
Smoke rose over the French Quarter as firefighters struggled to put
it out.
They could
not get enough water pressure and floodwater did not work.
Judy, a 62-year-old intensive care nurse at Tulane Medical Centre,
said that last night, National Guard had to stop evacuating
patients away from New Orleans because people on the streets were
shooting at the rescue helicopters.
"When they were shooting they were taking out babies. What kind of
people would shoot at a medevac," the nurse said.
The looters took food, appliances, jewels, clothes and even guns
from a Wal-Mart store that was completely ransacked.
"We looted a store because we had no food and we had to do
something," tourist Jared Wood, a New York schoolteacher,
said
outside the French Quarter hotel where he was waiting for a ride
to
nearby Baton Rouge.
Wood said he and companion Erin O'Shea had leapt through the
smashed window of a supermarket to stock up on soup, power bars
and
soy milk while other looters gathered armfuls of soda and
beer.
O'Shea said she was threatened when she started to take pictures of
the looting.
Rosemary Rimmer-Clay, a 51-year-old social worker from Brighton,
England, who was here with her two grown sons, said Katrina made
her trip "90 per cent boredom and 10 per cent sheer terror".
"The police said there was rioting and we saw people running with
bags full of inappropriate items. It looked quite dodgy," she
said.
"It felt
like a film set and we were in the middle of it."
The Louisiana state governor said the lawlessness had driven her to
desperation.
"We beg the people to get out," Blanco told a news conference
called to urge remaining people in New Orleans to leave the
city.
"What angers me the most is that in these situations, you usually
see the best from people. But here we saw also the worse. We're
going to enforce law and order."
