ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
More troops and supplies made their way through the flooded streets of New Orleans today. City officials said it was about time, but many people were still seeking relief from the abysmal conditions and a way out. Anne Hull of The Washington Post spoke to us earlier, not far from the downtown convention center.
Ms. ANNE HULL (The Washington Post): I've seen downtown's fairly ghostly boulevards, but every block or so, you'll come upon encampments of people who have essentially abandoned the convention center.
SIEGEL: These are people who you say often have left the convention center, but yet today is the day when it seems that supplies actually finally did reach the convention center.
Ms. HULL: About 1:30, there was a rumor that medical supplies were being dropped into the convention center, and there have been lots of choppers filling the skies in the last 20 minutes or so, and people are starting to funnel back to the convention center. Some people say the extra helicopters in the sky are to sort of keep order. When supplies are brought in to the place, there's some disorder that erupts, and the helicopters are supposed to calm everyone, although that's not what actually happens.
SIEGEL: When you say that you find every once in a while, down an empty boulevard, a group of people, is it a family? Is it--do you get the sense these are people who are neighbors back home before they left their home? Who are these folks?
Ms. HULL: It's a combination. There are small families, and then there are kind of hangers-on people who bonded because they were put into a particular section of the convention center, and they formed a quasi-family, and they just kind of stick together and sort of promised to stay together, and they kind of move together as bands. There are other random stragglers walking around, but people tend to cluster in groups of anywhere from seven to 20. I'm now looking at a group of about 20 people who say they're going to Texas, but don't know how in the world they're going to get there.
SIEGEL: I guess the point that I'd like to clarify for people and for myself is: At this point, people are stranded in New Orleans, not because there's flooding and they can't get past the water. That's not the issue. The issue is they just have no transport to get to any particular destination?
Ms. HULL: That's right. They are short on cash, short on places to go. New Orleans in a place of multigenerational families. People do not want to leave. Now they are ready to leave, but don't have anywhere to go. Some are just hoping to hop a ride either to Texas or Baton Rouge. Many people have a dollar in their pocket and are wearing the same clothes they had on Monday night.
SIEGEL: There's also been a fire somewhere in downtown New Orleans today.
Ms. HULL: Yes. I'm looking at it right now. The black smoke has been billowing for the last three or four hours. It's making the sky, which is a pretty beautiful blue and dry day, fairly gray and overcast over one portion of the city.
SIEGEL: What do people say to you, I mean, when you talk to them? What is the emotion you hear expressed most often?
Ms. HULL: I've spoken with a lot of faithful people who liken this to some sort of biblical lesson for the country to come together. I've spoken to people who begged for a cup of ice or a ride to Baton Rouge. They just feel abandoned by their government, but they're still here. They don't understand it. I don't see anger. I see questioning and misery and just--they want to know why. `What's happened? Why are we still sitting here on the curb?'
SIEGEL: Well, Anne Hull of The Washington Post, thank you very much for talking with us from New Orleans today.
Ms. HULL: Thank you, Robert.
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