Dispatch from hell on earth

Haunting details from an article in the New York Times by Ralph Blumenthal, about rescue workers in New Orleans:

A truckload of National Guard troops said they had helped rush to the hospital a woman who delivered a baby in the back of a state wildlife and fisheries truck.

A man stepped out of a rescue boat cradling a piglet.

Pauline Stauss, 80, was rescued with a dog and three cats that she was keeping for her daughter.

Kate Guelfo, 83, was the first of five in her flooded house to be rescued. With just one spot available in the rescue boat, her housemates pushed her out the window to safety, agreeing themselves to await later rescue. Ms. Guelfo's arm was black and blue, but she was grateful.

Natural gas bubbled up from severed lines. Petroleum fires flickered on the water.

Power lines dangled onto roads, and telephone poles teetered, snapped like matchsticks.

Levees breached in several places poured water from Lake Pontchartrain into the city.

Battling the waters are hundreds of emergency workers mobilized by FEMA, including the Coast Guard and incident teams from Texas, Missouri and Tennessee.

The teams, 70-member groups of firefighters and medical specialists, arrive with 18-wheelers and other trucks loaded with generators, chainsaws, tents and dogs that can sniff out the living and the dead.

As of Tuesday night, they reported saving 315 people, including a 400-pound woman who was reached by cutting through a roof and a belligerent woman who had run out of methadone.

Let the editorial finger-pointing begin, hindsight being perfect and all.

This is rumor control. Here are the facts.

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