For Those Remaining, 'This Is Total Chaos'

"They need to get on the horn," Valerie Johnson said, pointing to flocks of helicopters working the skies. "They need to use their loudspeakers. The people don't know what's going on. They don't have radios, batteries."

New Orleans was under a mandatory evacuation order and Wilbert Washington simply wanted to know where to go. A nurse by training, a good Samaritan by conscience, Washington all but used up his gas ferrying strangers to places where they might get help, constantly being told to go somewhere else.

He was at the Superdome at 3:30 a.m., he said, when three buses pulled up to collect refugees from the storm. Frustrated, people began banging on the sides of the buses. The frightened drivers drove off. Washington described bodies left in the open at the city's convention center, where thousands of people were told to go, only to find no relief.

On the curb of a littered street, Lloyd Simmons, 68, struggled for breath after a fruitless search for help. An emphysema sufferer, he had medicine and a portable ventilator to help him breathe, but no electricity to make it work. Turned down everywhere he looked, he stood in the road and tried to flag down a column of National Guard transports.

"They wouldn't even stop," said Simmons, returning to the curb. He wondered: Where was the Red Cross, the mayor, the City Council and the government? "They've got to give help to people who need it right now," he said. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it. Tell me where I can get some electricity so I can get some air."

Nearby, Alton Love held the hand of his daughter, Adrian, 6. They spent a day and a night perched on a scorched highway. Another night, they camped on a relative's porch. They saw crowds in the street and lots of armed men.

"These old boys, they have guns. They're taking what they want from anybody and everybody. Where's our government response? They keep telling us they're coming and nobody's there yet," said Love, 38, a plumber. "My little daughter, she's scared to death. I put her on my back -- I'm tired. I don't let on to her I'm tired. Everybody else is gone. We're just left here."

New Orleans police carrying shotguns guarded the entrances to the city's famous French Quarter, where restaurants, bars, hotels and stores remained largely dry and intact. With only a few stragglers left, the streets Thursday stood all but empty. K-Paul's was deserted and boarded up. The same was true around the corner at celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse's NOLA, no longer serving Plaquemines Parish oysters or the shrimp-and-grits entree.

The quarter was not totally without its trademark food smells. Outside an Omni hotel, several New Orleans police officers were grilling spicy steaks on a makeshift sidewalk grill.

"Move on out of here," an officer warned a passerby.

As fat raindrops fell, over on Conti Street, Damian Tenhaaf hoisted steel grates into the streetfront windows of Olde Nawlins Cookery. "Barricading ourselves in," he said, explaining that looters had prowled the neighborhood earlier in the week. "We're going to get this metal on the walls, stack things in front of the door and sit up on the second floor with the guns."

Proprietor Mike Lala intends to wait out any trouble that emerges -- and shoot anyone who might have other ideas.

"This building's been here since 1838," said Lala, a Korean War vet and former television cameraman. "I figured the building would be all right, but I never even thought about looters. All I can do is make it difficult for them."

Lala choked up. Continuing after a moment, he said, "I can't believe I'm getting emotional about this stuff."

On Canal Street, Al Goldberg, a prosperous dentistry professor with heart trouble, appealed to a city police officer for help with his luggage. A few hours earlier, the Ritz-Carlton, evacuating the hotel, had dropped nine of its most vulnerable guests on a sidewalk. They were told a bus would pick them up.

The bus never came. Goldberg, his wife and the others wanted to get back through the floodwaters to the hotel, or pay someone to drive them to Baton Rouge. There were no takers.

"We can't stay here in the dark," said Michele Anderson, another guest. "We're sitting ducks."