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No one in charge. DHS Secretary Chertoff is making a whole bunch of excuses for the most staggering federal failure I have ever heard of. Here's Chertoff's interview with NPR's Robert Siegel (here's a link to the link). The unflappable NPR Texas correspondent John Burnett now on the scene in New Orleans is almost shouting at the conditions at the NO convention center. The fact that no one is on top of this is very upsetting. Why isn't Chertoff in New Orleans? Or at least Baton Rouge?
Here's my rough transcript of Burnett's interview with the NPR host Robert Siegel on All Things Considered tonight. It followed Chertoff's chilling interview with Siegel.
John Burnett: There are 2,000 people living outside the convention center. There is no food. There is absolutely no water. There is no medical treatment. There are no police. There are two dead bodies on the ground and in a wheel chair around the convention center, both elderly people. We understand two more died earlier.
We understand that a 10 year old girl was raped in the convention center in the last two nights. Pople are absolutely desperate there.
I have never seen anything like this.
They have seen buses go past, they have seen police go past, but no one has brought them food. They are living like animals.
Now the Superdome is being evacuated, and that's a very good thing. I think these people want to know when on earth are you going to look after us?
they feel abandoned...
A lot of the looters distributed the food and water they got to the rest of the group
Host: The secretary (Chertoff) spoke of distribution points. Is there any place nearby where authorities say they should be going to get supplies?
John Burnett: No. In fact authorities have been telling people to go to the convention center for three days and they will be bused away out of the area...
The superdome is getting all the attention and the people we interviewed were very upset that no one seems to know they exist there living in this squalor.
Host: Is there someone in charge?
John Burnett: No. There is no one. There is no one in charge of this effort. They seem to be throwing it back between the national guard, city police and state police. The plan seems to be changing by the hour. These people were told to go to the superdome, then to the convention center, then they were told buses would pick them up, and so they are just livid that they keep being told things but nothing is happening...
Update: Buses evacuating people from the Superdome are required to have an armed escort.
People are dying in the New Orleans hospitals.