Stories from the Hurricane

CNN has an interesting roundup of their reporters perspectives. Here is a link and a couple of blurbs.

"Shreveport hospital in dire need

_{Posted: 12:36 p.m. ET
CNN's Deborah Feyerick in Shreveport, Louisiana}

We had a conversation with one family who had left New Orleans. They are desperately trying to get in touch with their sister. She is a college nurse at the Memorial Medical Hospital on Napoleon Street. The story they told us of what is going on at that hospital is quite dramatic.

According to their sister, looters are trying to get into the hospital. There's no electricity. The nurses, the doctors and their families have virtually locked themselves into the medical center and they don't know when they are going to be able to get out.

The story they were telling us is that the hospital administration was telling the staff there it would be five days until they might be able to be rescued. They are telling us that people in the hospital are dying because there's no electricity.

One nurse walked outside to get a breath of fresh air. She was robbed at gunpoint. There were National Guard that was around the hospital, but apparently we are told they pulled out in order to help with the prisoner uprising that happened yesterday.

And according to the story they are telling the people who are in that hospital simply don't know how they are going to get out. They want their sister to try to meet them in Shreveport. Right now they can't get in touch with her. We tried to call her. We can't get in touch with the hospital either. It's a desperate situation."

"In New Orleans, there's no sanitation any longer. The knee-deep water in the hotel lobby is just full of stench. It is a miserable, deteriorating situation in the city and it is growing worse by the hour and the water is rising.

The fact of the matter is this bowl, as they call it, is filling up. The estimates of time that it's going to take to get the water out of the bowl are three to six months. You could be sitting there in absolutely untenable conditions, in water that is filled with disease and germs, for months to come, walking through it, slogging through it.

With the looting that's going on and with the deteriorating sanitation conditions, it is a situation where you can't cover the story because you can't venture out from the hotel. It's so dangerous, one, because the water is getting higher, and two, because of the disease factor that is beginning. There's no food, there's no water."

"We have seen looting all day long. We actually went right up to a Walgreens where people were trying on shoes to get the correct size. They were picking out whatever it is they wanted -- televisions, just anything they could get. The police have definitely been trying to keep it to a minimum. The police are in boats but there's really nothing they can do. I don't know where they would even take anybody. They are taking all the looted material and they are trying to keep the chaos to a minimum."