Troops scouring New Orleans for survivors and victims reported finding at least 40 mutilated bodies in the Convention Center refugee center.
Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times Picayune many of the dead were elderly, or showed signs of trauma.
"There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut," he said. I'll want confirmation on this. In our sunday paper, the Express-News, they had a story of a reporter being led all over the Superdome by a guy who swore there was a pile of bodies in the freezer.
Never found any. |
As the searches became more organized since the Aug. 29 onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said repair crews had patched the ruptured levee along the 17th Street Canal and had begun pumping out water.
The failure of the levee system after the storm left about 80 percent of the city flooded up to 20 feet deep, and Corps officials said it would take nearly three months to drain some neighborhoods, CNN reported.
Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley told reporters that thousands of people -- many of them with pets -- are insisting on staying in what he called "a hazard." "We advise people that this city has been destroyed. It has been completely destroyed," Riley said. |