Young Kiwis make it out of New Orleans hellhole

Four young Kiwi women had last night escaped the hell New Orleans has become.

Marianne Lynch, Natasha Rive, Kay-Lynn Mann and Stacey Howes were forced to seek shelter from the hurricane in a central city hotel.

The parents of the women were relieved to hear they had escaped after days of food shortages and fear of the chaos outside.

Debbie Mann, Kay-Lynn's mum, said: "I asked 'where are you', and she said 'I don't know'. But she's not in New Orleans. She said she's fine."

The four had headed for New Orleans after working as camp counsellors through Camp America. They teamed up with three South African girls from the same camp, and took shelter in the Ramada Inn, near the Louisiana Superdome.

There were conflicting reports last night on how the group had managed to escape. Some parents had heard they were on a bus for Houston, but Kay-Lynn told her mother they had caught a ride with a medical truck and were expecting to flyto Dallas.

"You send these kids away as adults but when you're in a situation like this they are very young."

Gayle Plackemeier, the Houston mother of one of the children at Heart of the Hill camp, was preparing to collect the young women from where they were evacuated to. "I don't want them to go to Dallas. I want them home."

Meanwhile, Zoe Hadlum, of Levin, was sheltering at a shopping mall with other tourists, hiding from armed looters and surviving on potato chips. She got a message to her father Malcolm yesterday, saying she expected to get out of New Orleans today.

New Zealander Cynthia Miller was evacuated with husband Gary Jones by an Australian news crew. She told Channel 7 the couple had sheltered at a shopping mall. "It's a nightmare. There is no security."

Ms Miller's sister, Carol Maister, was relieved the couple was out, but furious it had taken a news organisation to do it. "The bloody government didn't do anything."

Mr Jones said the pair had broken the law to survive. "We're looters, just like everybody else."

Lucy Lawless' mother Julie Ryan said her daughter felt grateful to have made it back safely to her home in Los Angeles to join her husband and three children after escaping the devastation.

Lawless had been filming Vampire Bats, a made-for-TV movie for US network CBS, in New Orleans when the hurricane struck.

Her husband and producer of the movie, Rob Tapert, said many of the costumes had been lost in the floodwaters and the movie would be completed in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade expected to be updated on the situation for New Zealanders by the New Zealand Embassy in Washington today.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY