Anarchy in the Big Easy

NYT THURSDAY: There are signs of complete social breakdown, experts and locals say, a descent into a kind of predatory violence... Developing...
 

UPDATE - 3:51 PST, September 1, 2005

City not safe for anyone
The Times-Picayune

Thursday, 3:45 p.m.

Across the city Thursday, the haunting fear of flooding was
replaced by a raw fear for life and public safety.

Navigating the St. Thomas area of the Lower Garden District in an SUV,
Times-Picayune reporter Gordon Russell, accompanied by a photographer from The New York Times, described a landscape of lawlessness where he feared for his life and felt his safety was threatened at nearly every turn.

At the Superdome and Marc N. Morial Convention Center, Russell said
throngs of hungry and desperate people displaced by the flood overwhelmed the few law enforcement or miliatary personnel present.

"There was no crowd control," Russell said. "People were swarming.
It was a near riot situation. The authorities have got to get some
military down here to get control of the situation."

Russell witnessed a shootout between police and citizens near the
Convention Center that left one man dead in a pool of blood. Police, perhaps caught off guard by their sudden arrival on the scene, slammed Russell and the photographer against a wall and threw their gear on the ground as they exited their SUV to record the event.

The journalists retreated to Russell's home Uptown where they hid in
fear. They planned to flee the city later today.

Almost everywhere Russell went Uptown, one of the few relatively dry
areas in Orleans Parish, he said he felt the threat of violence.

"There is a totally different feeling here than there was yesterday
(Wednesday)," said Russell, who has reported on the aftermatch of Hurricane Katrina since the storm devastated the city on Monday. "I'm scared. I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm getting out of here."