'I'M TERRIFIED. I REALLY AM - I FEEL LIKE THE WORLD'S GONE NUTS.' - Yahoo! News

'I'M TERRIFIED. I REALLY AM - I FEEL LIKE THE WORLD'S GONE NUTS.' - Yahoo! News: "Sat Sep 3, 6:00 AM ET

'LET them know I'm a human being,' implored Yolanda Harris.

Standing amid urine-soaked trash on the floor of the convention center and wearing two left-foot shoes, Harris recounted the horror she had seen since this city was buried under billions of gallons of water.

'I'm about to lose my mind, I saw so many dead people,' she said.

She had come to the convention center Tuesday when she heard rumors that relief supplies and evacuation buses were to be sent there. Instead, she found a nightmare.

She dragged a reporter to a back garage door and pointed to bloodstains where an elderly diabetic with bleeding sores on her feet had been left to die.

'They covered her with a blanket,' Harris said. 'But someone cut a hole in the blanket around her head, and I could see she died smiling.'

Harris had seen people cooking in the convention center kitchen — ignoring the unspeakable atrocities around them.

'They raped a 13-year-old girl,' she said. 'We're humans, but we're living like animals here. I am a decent human being. Let them know I'm a human being.'

Hope was raised yesterday as National Guard troops poured in to restore order. But the hope soon turned to anger as soldiers herded the crowds like so much cattle and left the sick, old and dying to swelter another day under a merciless sun.

'They're treating us like we're the enemy!' roared refugee Elton Washington as armored Humvees and troop carriers rumbled by outside the convention center and moved crowds off the street to make room for a supply staging area."