WARREN KERMITT folded his aching limbs and weary body into a small alcove at the airport and refused to join the thousands queueing to be airlifted out of New Orleans.
“I ain’t going nowhere without my wife and my kids,” he said. “If they’re floating in the water or lying dead with a bullet in their heads and their little bodies all scattered over the city with bullets in them, the good Lord might as well come and take me right now.
“Without my Petra, and without those dear little kids, my life ain’t worth nothing any more. Can you help me find them? Can you help me, please?”
He had dropped off Petra and the children, aged from 6 to 17, at the Howard Johnson hotel in the city on Sunday morning as Katrina raged across the Gulf. He then returned home to make it safe for the storm. Now he has no idea whether his wife and children are alive and, if so, where.
His story was repeated thousands of times over by people at the airport and the evacuation posts on Highway I10. In the chaos of the massive operation to save those who are left, families are being scattered across the country to places they have never even heard of.
The airport has become the hub for the search-and-rescue effort, and last night lorry loads of evacuees were arriving in greater numbers than those leaving on US Air Force C130 and C141 transport planes.
The check-in area and arrivals lounge, which would ordinarily be packed with business travellers and tourists, were crammed with wretched survivors, many angry at the pace of the evacuation and drained to the point of exhaustion.
Army personnel moved from stretcher to stretcher, shaking the figures lying there with their eyes closed and bodies frozen in misery, checking that they were still alive.
A woman was sitting on a chair, bending down towards her elderly mother lying almost rigid on a piece of cardboard, giving her water. “Stay with me now Momma, stay with me,” she said. The mother was one of thousands airlifted from nursing homes, hospitals andcare centres across the region.
Don Jacks, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is overseeing the operation, said: “What you are looking at is the world’s largest nursing home, right here, right now.”
Outside the airport, convoys of buses arrived and a flustered policeman helped to wave them through. “A couple more days and I’m outta here,” he said. “This is chaos, just chaos. I’m going to head for somewhere far away, somewhere where there are apple trees and cherry trees and where the flowers look beautiful and the sun shines, and we don’t have to worry any more about what we have seen here. Give me somewhere blissful and I’ll take it, we all will, but this isn’t it and I don’t think it ever will be.”
The refugee post on Highway I10 resembled a rubbish tip, with discarded intravenous drips, used surgical gloves and bandages, empty water bottles and other rubbish.
Rodney Dwyer, 36, went there after three days stuck on a bridge, waiting for help. He hung his head and admitted looting to keep himself and 200 other people with him alive.
“We had to get food so we broke into a store and we took cookies, and milk and Pampers for the babies,” he said. “How was we going to survive? There was no boats until a guy arrived earlier today and saved the neighbourhood. He was jumping into the water to drag people out and smashing windows to see if anyone was in there. He’s our hero right now.”
The tide of bedraggled and dispossessed humanity that has been swept from New Orleans by Katrina washed across much of the Deep South and into the Midwest yesterday, in the largest displacement of people since the Civil War.
More than 500,000 people uprooted by the storm sought refuge and food with increasing desperation, hounded by hunger and fear but mostly finding, and spreading, despair.
Red Cross officials said that every shelter in seven states was full, with 76,000 refugees. Hotels and motels hundreds of miles from New Orleans were also stretched to bursting.
The Houston Astrodome, which was expected to take in 23,000 evacuees from the New Orleans Superdome, closed its doors after taking 11,375 when fire chiefs declared that any more would represent a hazard.
Those turned away began filling up the nearby Reliant Centre, where the Houston Texans play football. Also in Texas, San Antonio and Dallas were braced for the arrival of more than 25,000 people.
Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capital, which is upriver from New Orleans, has been transformed into the state’s most populous city as refugees have poured in.
Mike Walker, a city councillor, said: “These people are here to stay, perhaps for ever. The Baton Rouge we live in and grew up in is no longer.”
In an unsettling echo of the scenes in New Orleans, teams of police marksmen had to secure several city blocks near the largest shelter, holding 5,000 people.
Katrina has displaced more than twice as many people as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and more in a few days than the thousands who fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
HOUR BY HOUR
- 4.30am Chemical plant explosion near French Quarter
- 6.36am Smoke seen rising from fires in the city
- 10am Fires confirmed in the central business district
- 10.15am First edition of local paper Times-Picayune goes on sale since paper was forced to evacuate its office on Tuesday
- 11am President Bush arrives to inspect damage in Mobile, Alabama
- 11.45am Relief convoy and buses for evacuation arrive at the Superdome
- 12.12pm Mr Bush arrives in Biloxi to inspect damage
- 12.20pm Government offers 30 million barrels of crude oil for sale from its strategic reserve to stabilise the oil market affected by the hurricane
