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U.S. Aid Effort Criticized in New Orleans

Days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall east of New Orleans, thousands remain stranded in the city, many without food or fresh water. The city's mayor has issued what he called an "Urgent SOS" for help.

Heavily armed National Guard troops evacuated people from the squalid conditions of the damaged Superdome; the evacuees are being bused to the Astrodome in Houston.

But it has now emerged that people stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center -- about eight blocks away from the Superdome -- are in dire straights, lacking basic essentials and avoiding corpses and waste on the streets.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is overseeing the biggest recovery operation in U.S. history. President Bush is proposing $10 billion in relief for the area.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.