New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, in a frank interview, told CNN affiliate station WWL of his anger at the response to the humanitarian crisis in his city. Below are edited extracts
Excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed. I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about - you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.
I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound busline in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention centre. It's bursting at the seams. We don't have anything and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.
It's awful down here, man.
I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.
They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.
Now, you got some knuckleheads out there and they are taking advantage of this lawless - this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small minority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.
And one of the things people - nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.
You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's that reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drug stores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.
We authorised $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.
Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique - when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up - you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorise the resources that we need? Come on, man.
And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.
I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.
Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same.