Governor says entire city 0f New Orleans needs to be evacuated

With conditions in the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans rapidly deteriorating, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday that people now huddled in the Superdome and other rescue centers need to be evacuated.

"The situation is untenable," Blanco said during a news conference. "It's just heartbreaking."

Because two levees broke Tuesday, the city was rapidly filling with water and the prospect of having power was a long time off, the governor said. She said the storm also severed a major water main, leaving the city without drinkable water.

"The goal is to bring enough supplies to sustain the people until we can establish a network to get them out," Blanco said.

Blanco's comments came after she flew to New Orleans with FEMA director Mike Brown and other officials. They stopped at the Superdome, where Mayor Ray Nagin outlined the dire situation: hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still need rescuing from rooftops and attics, he said.

The governor said that at midnight, all of the boat operators trying to rescue people from rooftops were told to take a break.

"They refused. They couldn't do it," Blanco said.

Blanco said rescuers were unable to get to people stranded in one tall building because so many other people were "calling to them and jumping from rooftops" into the water to be rescued first.

Things are so bad, Nagin said, that rescue boats are bypassing the dead.

"We're not even dealing with dead bodies," Nagin said. "They're just pushing them on the side."

Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, adjutant general for the Louisiana National Guard, said search and rescue teams are still picking up people throughout the city, leaving them on island-like highway overpasses and on the Mississippi River levee to wait until they can be moved again.