Conditions in New Orleans Still Dire - Pumping May Take Months - New York Times

Conditions in New Orleans Still Dire - Pumping May Take Months - New York Times:

"Five days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the chaotic scene at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport evoked the mix of hope and despair that has gripped this city. Disorder prevailed, as thousands of survivors with glazed looks and nothing more than garbage bags of possessions waited in interminable lines for a chance to get out.

Patrolmen yelled out the number of available seats on each flight, and passengers boarded planes not knowing where they would land, and not caring. An increasing number of cities and states across the country were offering to take them in.

The airport was a stark landscape of triage, with rows of people on stretchers and others bound to wheelchairs, including someone already dead, in a wing that had been converted into the world's largest emergency room. A morgue had been set up in one concourse.
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No one could convincingly say when the last of the living would be removed from the city, though state officials said they hoped to complete the process by Sunday. Dead bodies continued to present themselves at every turn. Medical authorities said 8 to 10 people an hour were dying at the city's hospitals."