New Orleans losing vital signs?

The news from the Big Easy is not encouraging.

In a surprising assessment of Hurricane Katrina’s lethal destruction, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Wednesday he feared that thousands had died in his city alone and that the entire city would have to be evacuated.

“We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water,” Nagin told reporters, adding that there are others dead in attics.

Asked for a number, he said, “Minimum hundreds, most likely thousands.”

This gloomy report on the effort to shore up the leaking levees:

Floodwaters continued to pour into New Orleans unabated Wednesday, hindering attempts to repair damaged levees that surround the below-sea-level city. And an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman warned that the repair work could actually make the situation worse.
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“You know, we’ve got an unprecedented situation here,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman John Hall told MSNBC.com via cell phone from New Orleans.

Hall said his own attempts to round up current information were being stymied because “I’m on the phone every minute” with reporters from around the globe. But he could say that the biggest problem remained a breach in the eastern wall of the 17th Street Canal.

“Last I heard,” the breach was 300 feet long, from 4 feet to 20 feet deep, “all under water,” Hall said. Other reports, including one on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, have estimated the breach to be as long as “500 yards and growing.”

Horrific. The health fears are increasing with reports of bodies floating in the waters.

"We are gravely concerned about the potential for cholera, typhoid and dehydrating diseases that could come as a result of the stagnant water and the conditions," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said Wednesday after announcing the emergency.

With 475 buses lining up to transport over 20,000 of the stranded refugees from the Super Dome to Houston's Astrodome, the New Orleans mayor said he believes there are between 50,000 to 100,000 people still in the city (living or dead, we assume). Meanwhile a certain number of people in the city seemed in no hurry to do anything except find merchandise to steal.

Officials watched helplessly as looters around the city ransacked stores for food, clothing, appliances and guns.

"We don't like looters one bit, but first and foremost is search and rescue," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Wednesday.

In the city's Carrollton section, which is on relatively high ground, looters commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a Rite-Aid pharmacy. The crowd stormed the store, carrying out so much ice, water and food that it dropped from their arms as they ran. The street was littered with packages of ramen noodles and other items.

New Orleans' homeland security chief, Terry Ebbert, said looters were breaking into stores all over town and stealing guns. He said there are gangs of armed men moving around the city.

The Times-Picayune newspaper reported that the gun section at a new Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District had been cleaned out by looters.
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On New Orleans' Canal Street, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores and grabbed merchandise. In Biloxi, Miss., people picked through casino slot machines for coins and ransacked other businesses. In some cases, the looting was in full view of police and National Guardsmen.

The historic French Quarter appeared to have been spared the worst flooding, but its stores were getting the worst of human nature.

"The looting is out of control. The French Quarter has been attacked," Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson said. "We're using exhausted, scarce police to control looting when they should be used for search and rescue while we still have people on rooftops."

Sen. Mary Landrieu's helicopter was taking off Tuesday for a flyover of the devastation and she watched as a group of people smashed a window at a gas-station convenience store and jumped in.

You can understand the desperation of those who are thirsty and hungry. But the problem with looting, even for survival purposes, is that it provides immoral encouragement to others to loot for pleasure.

Don't stop praying for New Orleanians.