Katrina Counts Its New Orleans Dead: 10,000

A week after the storm, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned on NBC's "Today" that "it wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000" dead.

Despite the depressing estimate, he was more positive than in previous days, when he broke down crying during a interview; back then, he went almost hysteric on the inefficiency of the authorities which failed in several cases to avoid after-disaster unnecessary decease.

"We're making great progress now, the momentum has picked up. I'm starting to see some critical tasks being completed," he told NBC.

Meanwhile, physicians who volunteered to care for the sick say the situation is more under control. Doctors, surgeons and paramedics say they have been offered all governmental support in order for the health care problems to be solved in the devastated region.

But, surprisingly, it seems that they are better managing the situation on the location of the disaster, as many doctors, hospitals and ordinary people struggle to offer their support and can't cross over the bureaucracy line.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University, hospitals are contacting him, saying: "We need to take on patients," but they can't get through the bureaucracy.
"The crime of this story is, you've got millions of dollars in assets, and it's not deployed," Dr. Guy said. "We mount a better response in a Third World country."

Furthermore, news about home is coming from a rather unofficial source for the worried hurricane survivors.
A program available at the Google website, called Google Earth, at www.earth.google.com allows users to zoom in on any address for an aerial view drawn from the database of satellite photos.
At Google Maps, post hurricane images are also available about flooded areas in New Orleans.

So, the situation seems to get critical from another point of view, especially that there was also some other type of incidents reported. The New Orleans police announced yesterday they had had to shoot five men Sunday who had been firing at a team of Army Corps engineers trying to repair a bridge damaged by Katrina. Official speculation says that many of these sniper attacks have come from drug-takers who, unable to find drugs, have gone out of control and reacted violently.
As of yesterday, reports say city police are enforcing a "shoot-to-kill" policy to restore order in the city.