'And Now We Are in Hell'

Walking about the perimeter of the Superdome, in brilliant sunshine and blistering heat, Bush could take no more than a few steps before angry and pleading residents clutched at him. An elderly woman could not get her thyroid medicine; another needed dialysis. A 3-week-old baby, clad only in a diaper, lay listless in her young mother's arm. She had a fever.

"I know this sounds like a stupid question," began a young woman wearing a "Home Sweet Louisiana" T-shirt, "but how are we supposed to go on as a community? As a people?"

"Be patient," Maj. Bush answered. "Help is on the way."

The president and the governor both asserted Wednesday that everyone would be moving to a spiffier football stadium. But although Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had announced at 11 a.m. a plan to evacuate the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome, Maj. Bush had received no information through mid-afternoon. By his estimate about 15,000 people remained in the Superdome, and more straggled in through the day, either wading in on foot or dropped off by a helicopter rescue effort that so far has plucked 3,000 people from the roofs of flooded homes.

Communication is spotty throughout New Orleans, which remains without power and swamped with warm, waist-high water in many places. Only one route is passable into the city and authorities have sealed it off to all but emergency vehicles, although a few media people managed to pass the checkpoint. On television, high-level officials said they hoped the evacuation would be complete in 48 hours. Public officials at the Superdome said they thought that was unrealistic. With water so high around the stadium, people can be moved only a few handfuls at a time on large-tired trucks, which will transport them to buses on the interstate.

"I have to get out of here," said Albert Bryan, 58, shirtless and wearing all his jewelry. On Sunday, he was heading west out of Metairie in a two-car convoy with his wife, sister, two sons, daughter and three grandchildren. He was stuck in horrific traffic, going nowhere, and "the radio made the Superdome sound pretty good." In they came.

"None of this has been planned," he said. "Not a single elected official has come down here in days to talk to us and tell us anything, not the mayor, not the police chief, nobody. On Sunday the colonel said his main objective was to protect and serve, and that has been a mockery. No one has materialized to do anything. I'm a social worker, and I can tell you, no one thinks about the human aspects."

"This is mass chaos," said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather be in Iraq," where he was deployed for 14 months, until January. "You got your constant danger, but I had something to protect myself. [And] three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they had no plan."

Glenn Martes, 13, had no plan, either, but he has a quick eye. As his family waded toward the Superdome from their destroyed home two days ago, he grabbed a football floating by, "something to calm your nerves," he said.

Inside on Wednesday, he was going long to try to catch a pass from Perrance Williams, 17, whose chest muscles gleamed under the generator lights on the field.

Williams looked good down there, as if a scout might be watching from the stands. "I play in the projects," he said. He never thought he'd be playing in the Superdome, but there he was.