Mayor: Everyone Must Evacuate

Residents Who Refuse To Leave New Orleans Will Be Forcibly Removed

(CBS/AP)  Walter Baumy, a Corps manager in charge of the engineering job, said it will take 24 to 80 days to drain the city.

Exactly how long the job will take depends on a number of factors. Among other things, the condition of the pumps — especially whether they were submerged and damaged — is not yet fully known, the Corps said. Also, the water is full of debris, and while there are screens on the pumps, it may be necessary to stop and clean them from time to time.

CBS News Correspondent John Roberts reports that there's oil and gas in the city's floodwater, and officials fear an explosion could happen.

Four people may have died of a waterborne bacterial infection circulating in Hurricane Katrina's flood waters, and health officials took steps Tuesday to stem spread of a diarrhea-causing virus among flood victims in Houston's Astrodome.

There are no large disease outbreaks yet attributed to the hurricane, but infection control within shelters housing thousands of evacuees is a top priority, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gerberding sought to put to rest concern about disease from exposure to dead bodies in the flooding – the corpses aren't infectious – or from agents not typically seen in this country, such as cholera.

Instead, doctors are being urged to watch for more likely causes of diarrheal illnesses: E. coli bacteria; the easy-to-spread noroviruses that, while seldom life-threatening, can cause days of misery; or Vibrio vulnificus, cholera-like bacteria that every year kill more than a dozen Gulf Coast residents.

Tuesday, fire broke out at a big house in the city's historic Garden District — a neighborhood with lots of antebellum mansions. National Guardsmen cordoned off the area as firefighters battled the blaze by helicopter. In all, firefighters battled at least four major fires in New Orleans by midafternoon.

At the same time, the effort to get the evacuees back on their feet continued on several fronts.

Patrick Rhode, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said evacuees would receive debit cards so that they could begin buying necessary personal items. He said the agency was going from shelter to shelter to make sure that evacuees received cards quickly and that the paperwork usually required would be reduced or eliminated.

The Air Force late Monday concluded its huge airlift of elderly and serious ill patients from New Orleans' major airport. A total of 9,788 patients and other evacuees were evacuated by air from the New Orleans area.

Local officials bitterly expressed frustration with the federal government's sluggish response as the tragedy unfolded.

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today," said Aaron Broussard, president of suburban Jefferson Parish.

"So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

Bureaucracy may have been responsible for a devastating delay in the rescue effort. CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that while Coast Guard helicopters had been pre-positioned and were making rescues two hours after the hurricane, the military response was much slower.

CBS News Correspondent Gloria Borger reports that one Air Force reserve colonel says his unit was crippled by red tape.

"We could have been airborne in six hours and overhead plucking out people but between all the agencies that have a part in the approval process it took 34 hours to get three of my helicopters airborne," said Tim Tarchick of the Air Force Reserve Command.