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By ALEX BERENSON |
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Paul Buck/European Pressphoto Agency |
Police officials did not give a timetable for the forced evacuations.
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Lynne Sladky/Associated Press |
A SWAT team descended on an apartment building in New Orleans in search of snipers.
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James Nielsen/AFP ?Getty Images |
Officers are walking door to door in New Orleans to evacuate residents.
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Paul Buck |
Officers are walking door to door in New Orleans to evacuate residents.
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Larry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency |
Officers are walking door to door in New Orleans to evacuate residents.
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The announcement came as some sections of the city took small steps toward recovery, a week after Hurricane Katrina struck, causing levees to burst and flooding large swaths of the city. Today, residents cleaned debris from streets and boarded up abandoned houses in some neighborhoods, while other people left voluntarily after being reached by police officers and soldiers.
As many as 10,000 people remain in the city, and some residents said they would not comply with official orders to leave their homes - which could produce ugly confrontations with police officers or soldiers.
But city officials said today that the risk of __________________ had left them with no choice but to use force, if necessary, to evacuate anyone who resisted leaving.
Police officials did not give a timetable for the forced evacuations, but said
"There's a martial law declaration in place that gives us legal authority for mandatory evacuations," said the superintendent of police, P. Edwin Compass III, said at a news conference today. "We'll use the minimum amount of force necessary."
In Washington, President Bush asked Congress to approve an additional $51.8 billion to help the Gulf Coast region recover from the hurricane and resulting floods.
"We are sparing no effort to help those who have been affected by Katrina and are in need of help," the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said. Congressional Democrats have charged that the administration's response has been slow and inept. The request follows a $10.5 billion package the president signed on Friday.
In Baton Rouge, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown, announced that his agency would begin issuing debit cards, worth at least $2,000 each, to enable hurricane victims to buy supplies. More than 319,000 people have already applied for federal disaster relief.
"The concept is to get them some cash in hand, which allows them, empowers them to make their own decisions about what they need to have to restart their lives," Mr. Brown said. "This is not something that FEMA's done before."
Mr. Brown, who spoke with the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said both had agreed that it was critical to reconstitute the New Orleans Police Department, which now has only a few hundred officers, after reports of numerous resignations amid the chaotic response to the disaster. Many have been sent to
Louisiana's Army National Guard, which now has nearly 10,000 soldiers stationed in New Orleans, has become the primary law-enforcement agency. About 4,000 troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division are also helping police the city, which has had outbreaks of looting and violence in the wake of the hurricane. As the prospect of forced evacuations took center stage here, rescue efforts continued. Crews on boats have now searched nearly the entire city, and many areas have been searched more than once, officials said.
Floodwaters continued to recede slowly as limited pumping continued and the city remained warm. In some neighborhoods, water levels appeared to be as much as four feet lower than their peak last week, while in other neighborhoods they had dropped only a few inches.
The Environmental Protection Agency warned today that the floodwaters were contaminated with E. coli and coliform bacteria, lead and other dangerous substances, and that contact with it should be avoided. A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Skinner, said today that at least four people had been confirmed dead from bacteria in the contaminated water.
"Human contact with the floodwater should be avoided as much as possible," the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said. Corpses are expected to be laid bare as the water recedes, and the authorities have growing concerns about gas leaks, fires, toxic water and diseases spread by mosquitoes in the fetid waters flooding the city's streets and lapping at doorsteps. As many as 20,000 may have died as a result of the hurricane and flooding, Lt. David Benelli, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, said.
Capt. Marlon Defillo of the police said that instead of forcing unwilling residents to evacuate, law enforcement authorities were focusing for now on people who wanted to be rescued. And Lt. Gen. Joseph R. Inge of the Army said at a Pentagon briefing that any such evacuations were a job for the 900 police officers in the city and that as a law enforcement issue, the regular troops would not be used.
State officials said that the decision ultimately rested with Mr. Nagin, but that Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's approval would be required before Louisiana National Guard forces, which she commands, could conduct a coercive evacuation.
"It's a very tough decision to force an American out of their home," the chief of disaster relief for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Arthur G. Jones, said. "We're there to help them, not hurt them."
This morning, Mr. Jones said those left in the city should depart, as Mr. Nagin has repeatedly urged.
"For their own common sense, they should get out as quick as they can," Mr. Jones said. "I'm afraid that the longer they wait the worse it's going to be."
Governor Blanco, speaking before a cabinet meeting, held a moment of silence and sounded somber as she addressed her top aides. "It's as though one region of the state has been erased," she said. "The magnitude is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. "
In the first indication of how many dead Louisiana might expect, a spokesman for the Louisiana State Department of Health Hospitals, Robert Johannessen, said today that FEMA had ordered 25,000 body bags. While the official death toll remained under 100, Mr. Johannessen acknowledged that a substantive count had not even started.
Mr. Brown, the director of FEMA, said the agency had hired a contractor, Kenyon International Emergency Services, based in
President Bush has promised an investigation into what went wrong in the response to Hurricane Katrina and planned to dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney to the Gulf Coast to cut through any bureaucratic obstacles slowing the recovery.
The Senate and the House have also announced their own investigation into the government's response, with Senator Susan Collins of
Officials said about 60 percent of New Orleans was still under water, down from a peak of about 80 percent. Most of the gain came because the Army Corps of Engineers began opening gaps in the city's levees after the water level in surrounding bodies of water fell. The holes ensured that the levees - designed to keep water out of the below-sea-level city - would not hold it in.
Four of the approximately 40 pumping stations in the New Orleans area were running on Tuesday at least at partial capacity, officials said, but haltingly; a fifth giant one, at the 17th Street Canal, site of a major levee breach, started but had to be shut off again because the pumps sucked in debris.
Officials said it would take 24 days to pump the water from an eastern section of New Orleans and 80 days to clear the flooding from Chalmette, the nearby seat of St. Bernard Parish.
The bodies are to be identified by a team of forensic pathologists, medical examiners, coroners and morticians from local funeral homes.
"We are going to take one deceased victim at a time and count one at a time," said Robert Johannessen, a spokesman for Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals. Of the process of identifying the bodies, Mr. Johannessen said, "It could take days, it could take years, it could take lifetimes."
The official death toll in Louisiana stood at 83 on Tuesday, but state officials said the counting had only begun. In
Louisiana officials have offered a first glimpse at the environmental wreckage. The state secretary of environmental quality, Michael D. McDaniel, said that wildlife habitats along hundreds of miles of coastline had been destroyed and that the hurricane exacerbated the slow coastal erosion that had already made the coast more vulnerable to hurricanes.
Mr. McDaniel said that there was no alternative to pumping billions of gallons of brackish water back into Lake Pontchartrain, but that it was too early to determine the harmfulness of the toxins and pollutants that were being slowly sifted out of New Orleans.
In New Orleans, fires have broken out and gas leaks are numerous. In at least one case, a fire in a building in the central part of the city this afternoon was being fought by
Still, parts of the city, like the Ninth Ward and New Orleans East, along with Chalmette in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, remain inundated, and it could take two months to get electricity fully restored to the hardest-hit areas, officials said. Police officers and firefighters have been inoculated against
The spine of St. Charles Avenue, with its broken canopy of oak trees and its streetcar tracks laced with downed power lines, provided a look at the successes and failures of New Orleans's recovery effort on Tuesday. Near St. Charles and Josephine Street, a fire consumed two city blocks, officials from the
At Lee Circle, Victor Mejia, 58, a janitor, stood in the shade on Tuesday and said that he had no intention of leaving. "I live here," he said. "Where am I going to go?"
문제)
1. After days of pleading with residents of New Orleans to leave the partly destroyed city, local officials said on Wednesday that they would begin forced evacuations of all residents, including people living in dry and undamaged homes. City officials said the risk of __________________ had left them with no choice but to use force, if necessary, to evacuate anyone who resisted leaving. | ||
violence among those remaining there additional levees breaking and causing more flooding fire and disease erosion of much of the city into Lake Pontchartrain |
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정답 : http://nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/07cnd-storm.html