Desperate rescues in US after hurricane
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-08-30 16:05

About 30 minutes later the passenger-laden skiff pulled up to a shallow spot along the interstate where police and firefighters lowered a ladder.

"Just take your time. You're alright. I gotcha now," a firefighter said as he helped a woman climb out of the boat.

The man in the green shirt was one of the last to leave the skiff.

"Can you pass me my cane?" Ronald Wood said as he steadied himself on the concrete barrier. "I'm kinda cold right now," he said as he climbed into a waiting ambulance. "I feel pretty sick."

James Johnson, 47, told AFP he had spent 12 hours trapped in his attic with nothing but a hammer and a screwdriver.

As the rising water filled his home, he pounded away at the insulation-lined roof trying to escape. "I feel a lot better now," he said as he untied his life jacket.

The massive rescue effort here included military and Coast Guard helicopters and continued well into the pitch black night as Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries agents arrived to relieve exhausted fire department crews.

"There's only a few firefighters left and they're pretty burned out," said Lieutenant Keith LaCaze as he prepared to lower about 40 boats into the black waters.

But for every person saved there were scores more left stranded, many in extreme danger.

Darryl Thibodeaux, 49, couldn't get off the freeway to find his brother.

"He's blind and his roof collapsed but I can't get to him. I can't drive through this and I can't swim," he said as he stared down into waist-high water that was filled with floating debris and covered in oil slicks.

"I'm afraid to go in that water because I know they have snakes and alligators in that water," Thibodeaux said.

Blanco said some 1,200 people were stranded in the St. Bernard Parish neighborhood of the city "but safe."

"As of tonight, several hundred people have been rescued from their homes, from their attics, from their rooftops," she told CNN.

"We've got boats moving through neighborhoods. We've got hundreds and hundreds of houses inundated with water in eastern New Orleans," she said.

"We've got a massive search-and-rescue situation going on," the governor said. "And I believe that, you know, that we're going to pull out hundreds of people.

"We're trying to get to those who are in most danger," she said. "Some are actually in safe attics. They don't want to be there but they're safer than others."

Hurricane Katrina made landfall early Monday as a category four storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale and caused widespread damage and flooding in New Orleans and other cities on the southern Gulf Coast of the United States.

Hurricane Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm late Monday.

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