THE family of a British hurricane victim told last night how she and her boyfriend had been in fear of their lives as they scavenged for food while the authorities operated a shoot-to-kill policy against looters.

Tourists were forced to rummage among the rubble for food while dodging gangs and law enforcement sharpshooters. At the same time the American authorities were said to have blocked consular officials from entering New Orleans three times to help scores of Britons trapped amid the squalor.

The ordeal continued for tourists evacuated from New Orleans, who were initially told by Foreign Office officials who arranged emergency hotel accommodation that they would have to foot their bills.

Peter McGowan, whose sister Teresa Cherrie was trapped in the devastated area with her boyfriend John Drysdale, described yesterday how they had been reduced to looting to survive: “They are having to scavenge for food and Teresa is terrified,” he said. “At first it was the gangs they feared, then it was trigger-happy cops.”

The family told how Cherrie, 42, and Drysdale, 41, both from Renfrew, near Glasgow, had searched for food outside a supermarket after shelves were stripped by gangs.

The couple were eventually rescued yesterday afternoon from an apartment block in the French Quarter of Baton Rouge One New Orleans blogger in the city wrote yesterday: “Bunch of stressed out, trigger-happy police and military types driving by suspicious as all hell. It’s not safe standing out on the street.”

Last week thousands of troops poured into the area with orders to fire on looters.

Louisiana state officials last Friday again blocked requests to allow British consular staff into the city amid increasingly desperate attempts to evacuate up to 100 Britons from the area, including up to 30 trapped in appalling conditions in the city’s Superdome stadium.

The Britons, many of them on a gap year, were herded into the stadium along with about 25,000 other people unable to flee the city. The building was later declared unsafe, but evacuation halted after rescue workers came under sniper fire.

The girlfriend of one Briton was threatened with rape, and another said people trapped inside were becoming so desperate that one leapt to her death.

Will Nelson, 21, of Epsom, Surrey, sent an e-mail to his family last Friday pleading for help. “Please can you try and contact the embassy, tell them that we really need their help with getting out of here — it’s turning into a war zone,” he wrote.

Yesterday he said troops in the Superdome had told Britons to use sharp objects such as scissors or tweezers to protect themselves from gangs. “At one point we had to carry a US national guard on a stretcher after he had been shot by looters outside,” he said.

Nelson was among about 40 foreigners escorted from the dome by the army for their safety, amid baying New Orleans residents furious at being left behind. His father, Keith Nelson, said: “I am seriously unimpressed with the American authorities, but not terribly impressed with the help, support and information we have been getting from the British authorities either.”

Nelson and his travelling companion Jennifer Sachs, 21, from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, were evacuated to a hotel in Dallas, Texas, last Friday.

He said British consular staff only agreed to foot the hotel bill after complaints from parents.

Sachs’s father, Bruce, called New Orleans police the day before the hurricane struck, asking what his daughter should do. “I asked, ‘What is your plan?’ The police responded, ‘We have no plan.’ I was stunned. Those words are still ringing in my head. They abandoned the poor, the sick, the disabled, the elderly and most of the tourists.”

Last Friday, 26 Britons from the Superdome finally left New Orleans with a police escort, in a convoy of five coaches carrying 103 tourists.

The Foreign Office said yesterday that Alan Charlton, the British deputy ambassador, travelled from Washington to liaise with Louisiana state officials.

As Britons prepared to fly home from Texas last night, relatives of others were still awaiting news. Margaret Smith, 84, of Landrake, Cornwall, has not heard from her daughter Beverley Gregory, of Ocean Springs, a town in the path of Katrina. She is also waiting for news of her grandson Justin, 28, and great-granddaughter Sage, 8, believed to have been in New Orleans when Katrina struck.

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