It's starting already.

[IvanOffelitch]

Happening even sooner than I thought.

News link

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile as the city plunges deeper into chaos.


"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The number of officers called off the search-and-rescue mission amounts to virtually the entire police force in New Orleans.

Amid the turmoil Wednesday, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a 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.

Looters also chased down a state police truck full of food. The New Orleans police chief ran off looters while city officials themselves were commandeering equipment from a looted Office Depot. During a state of emergency, authorities have broad powers to take private supplies and buildings for their use.

Managers at a nursing home were prepared to cope with the power outages and had enough food for days, but then the looting began. The home's bus driver was forced to surrender the vehicle to carjackers.

Bands of people drove by the nursing home, shouting to residents, "Get out!" Eighty residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were being evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.

"We had enough food for 10 days," said Peggy Hoffman, the home's executive director. "Now we'll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot."

At one store, hordes of people from all ages, races and walks of life grabbed food and water. Some drove away with trunkloads of beer.

At one point, two officers drew their guns on the looters, but the thieves left without incident. One of the officers said he was not going to arrest anyone for snatching up food and water.

One young man was seen wading through chest-deep floodwater, carrying a case of soda, after looting a grocery store.

"It's really difficult because my opinion of the looting is it started with people running out of food, and you can't really argue with that too much," Nagin said. "Then it escalated to this kind of mass chaos where people are taking electronic stuff and all that."

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she has asked the White House to send more people to help with evacuations and rescues, thereby freeing up National Guardsmen to stop looters.

"We will restore law and order," Blanco said. "What angers me the most is that disasters like this often bring out the worst in people. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior."

John Matessino, president of the Louisiana Hospital Association, said he had not heard of anyone breaking into the hospitals, but he added that thieves got into the parking garage at one hospital and were stealing car batteries and stereos.

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. At one point, officers stranded on the roof of a hotel were fired at by criminals on the street.

Authorities said an officer was shot in the head and a looter was wounded in a shootout. The officer and looter were expected to survive.

 

[starfish]

That is so horrible that they have to worry more about pathetic looters than rescuing people.

 

[bigmann245]

shoot them all i say. shoot them all twice.

 

[HiDnGoD]

There should be no fuckin around with these scum.
Martial law.
Bring in the Marines, or Army in Bradley's, Abrams. Mounted patrols.
These people should be shot first. Have a couple of regiments running around the state, putting people up against the wall, & it'll stop in a hurry.

 

[redguru]

They are sending in 25,000 more troops. 10,000 of which are Military Police. They need to evacuate everyone from the city in a methodical fashion and let no one in but rescue and cleanup personnel. Anyone brandishing a firearm should be dealt with lethally, as well as anyone pillaging non-emergency items. Not sure if the Governor has declared martial law, yet, but it should be done. Society needs order. You cannot expect order from chaos.

 

[WolfPack Charlie]

Uh......if the city is in so much disaray, who's even going to notice a few shitbag thieves come up missing? Perfect time for some mob justice.

 

[hamstershaver]

cnn just showed a bunch of coverage on the looters, its unreal how much footage they had on it, and the amount of stuff these morons were taking, shopping carts full of vcrs

 

[GrandMaster]

of course they take a pic of the black people stealing
lol

 

[bigmann245]

of course they take a pic of the black people stealing
lol

why, white people arent? maybe that tells you something? im not racist but unless they are really only showing blacks steeling i would say that the majority are. its sad but you see it in every riot, every looting, it seems the blacks are the first to take someone elses shit. again, im not racist at all. my brother in law and niece are black. and i went to school with 85% black in new york. not sayiong the white people arent, i guess they are just smarter about not doing it in front of a tv camera.

 

[deltreefitness]

cnn just showed a bunch of coverage on the looters, its unreal how much footage they had on it, and the amount of stuff these morons were taking, shopping carts full of vcrs

Who the hell still uses a VCR?

 

[hamstershaver]

Who the hell still uses a VCR?

i dont think they plan on using them

 

[PIGEON-RAT]

of course they take a pic of the black people stealing
lol

Blacks make up nearly 70% of New Orleans population, and most of the poorer people are black. Then you have to consider that most of the people that stayed in the city were the poor that didn't have the means to leave. So just considering that you can expect most of the people doing the looting to be black since the fewer, wealthier whites aren't likely to be around.

 

[GrandMaster]

why, white people arent? maybe that tells you something? im not racist but unless they are really only showing blacks steeling i would say that the majority are. its sad but you see it in every riot, every looting, it seems the blacks are the first to take someone elses shit. again, im not racist at all. my brother in law and niece are black. and i went to school with 85% black in new york. not sayiong the white people arent, i guess they are just smarter about not doing it in front of a tv camera.

nah man i completely understand where your commin from
all the shit with them saying " its cuz im black" and whatever else
they are always thinking that they are being attacked because they are black... but from my experiences... its their own fuckin fault. im not a racist either, but out of all the white bro's i've had, asians, brownies, blacks.... all i can honestly remember them doing is stealing shit, and RIGHT infront of you too with no shame. thats y they get that steriotype. a shame really.
every race has their bad and their good, but like u said, maybe white ppl are smart enough not to do it infront of cameras....who knows...

 

[redguru]

I think a majority of these looted items are plannedto be used as currency in the future. Forward looking, yes, but I don't approve of thier methodology.

 

[HumorMe]

Search-and-rescue teams finding bodies, not survivors

By SCOTT DODD

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BILOXI – Ranger was getting discouraged.

He’s a black Lab. His job is to find people trapped in wreckage. Wednesday, he found nothing but bodies.

Ranger is part of a search-and-rescue team of dogs and firefighters from Central Florida. They arrived Tuesday and spent Wednesday going home to home and building to building, searching for survivors.

They found a few who had climbed into their attics to escape raging waves, then couldn’t get out once their homes collapsed. Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney said rescuers still hope to find more people alive, although he acknowledged the task was getting harder. Today, firefighters may have to shift to recovering bodies.

"We have to do our job," Boney said, "and right now, our job is to rescue."

But throughout the day Wednesday, it became clear that few survivors were left in the shattered structures where some people rode out the storm.

Ranger and his handler, Patrick Murphy, searched one apartment house where residents had been smashed by falling concrete. The search team couldn’t remove the bodies – they’ll need heavy equipment to get them out from under the slabs – so they tagged them and moved on.

They marked most houses with a red "X," meaning unsafe for entry, and a number below, showing the number of bodies inside.

This particular search team, Florida Task Force 3, had a lot of work last year, after four storms hit Florida. Two of their dogs, Marley and Jessie, searched the wreckage at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks (Ranger was too young).

But they’ve never seen anything like this, Murphy said – mile after mile of wreckage and death.

"It’s very stressful on the dog," he said.

 

[velvett]

I just saw the news and they said red X was people alive, black were dead.

 

[deltreefitness]

i dont think they plan on using them

No one even buys them out of white vans or oldsmobile trunks anymore. Maybe @ $10 a pop. Idiots.

 

[HumorMe]

I just saw the news and they said red X was people alive, black were dead.

According to the article I just posted, red X meant unsafe entry and the number below it meant how many were dead inside.

Who knows.

 

[Lestat]

this is just crazy what is happening

 

[bran987]

hilarious I saw one waving at the TV camera with stolen electronics all over himself

smart

 

[UA_Iron]

electronics are fucken cheap anymore

thats pretty stupid - I hope they get shot.

 

[bdog527]

lol-A reporter on cnn went in to a wal-mart to talk to some of the looters and stumbled on to two police officers with carts full of clothes and other "necessities".

 

[big4life]

I would say that I'm disappointed, but people don't surprise me anymore.

 

[Spartacus]

Who the hell still uses a VCR?

bin laden's bunch

 

[HiDnGoD]

It's sad really. When you think you live in the most evolved society on Earth, that it only takes 1 storm & 2 days for this shit to erupt.